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,

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Administration, the new Trump Administration, is not putting forward proposals that the Russians consider

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that they can work with. They see it all as very nebulous and very

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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,

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Russia’s premier intelligence service, suggests that Western political

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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

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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

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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

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call up age to 18 years. Kiev has prepared the corresponding decision, and

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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

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of the hands of the Ukrainian ruling regime that has sold off their lives to

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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

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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

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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

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The Hill to be precise, one of the most interesting news magazines on

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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

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Durso who writes extensively for publications like The

25:18

Hill and other similarly weighty publications in the United States, and

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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

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also um is one of these people

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who is very critical of the whole American policy, the whole American role,

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the role followed by the current administration, of supporting the

26:27

continuation of the war in Ukraine. Anyway, this article which the hill

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published on, as I said, New Year’s Eve, um, is entitled “Hold Ukraine accountable for

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corruption, misspent aid” and uh the article goes into great detail about the

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corruption in Ukraine which I am not going to return to because to say it

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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

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many many others, the article says anything that is particularly new,

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but midway through the article, this

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bombshell is dropped: in April 2024 the

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leadership of Ukraine’s Military Intelligence participated in a series of

27:35

roundtable discussions at Washington think tanks and policy

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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

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overwhelmed. They advocated instead for increased asymmetric warfare inside

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Russia to gain an upper hand in negotiations to end the war. end

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quote. The result of this engagement was that the chief of military intelligence Kirilo Budanov was muzzled by Zelensky’s

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team in a series of media attacks in PR government websites. His key deputies

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were fired without his consent, weakening his

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agency. All very interesting. So, what does this tell us? It

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tells us that in April, April 2024, shortly after the fall of of Avdevka in

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February, and the fall of Ocheretyne in March,

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um, Budanov — I presume that is who is meant

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by the leadership of Ukraine’s Military Intelligence — came to Washington with his

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various aides and participated in a series of roundtable

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discussions, and these involved Washington think tanks and policy makers.

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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

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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;

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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

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the state of the war happening directly after a series of important events, the

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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

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an upper hand in negotiations to end the war so Kiriilo Budanov and his people said

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the Russians are too strong, they are going to win, we are going to lose the

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war, and that was disclosed by Ukrainian military

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Intelligence by Budanov and his people to the Americans in April. Now, April is a

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very interesting month. It was in April that President Biden signed off on the

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$61 billion appropriation which had just been voted

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through by Congress and which included a significant allocation I think it was

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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

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United States first began its debate in connection with the Kharkiv offensive, of

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authorizing missile strikes using ATACMS and Storm Shadow missiles inside

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Russia, as I recently discussed an article in the New York Times has now

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disclosed that it was at around this time that the United States government that the Biden Administration

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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

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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

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likely that it was about this time also that a further green light was given to

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the campaign of sabotage and assassinations inside Russia which we

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have seen including the recent assassination of course of General

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Kirillov, but the key point is that in April in

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April the Biden Administration, the American government,

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was briefed by Ukrainian military intelligence that the war was

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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

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whether Congress might be prepared to grant a further appropriation to keep

36:03

the war in Ukraine going, and instead it

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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

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missile system. Here again we get a brief glimpse

37:57

behind the curtain, and we could see

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how strange and how frankly

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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,

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so it’s been known by the Biden people since April

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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

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time about possible negotiations with the Russians which were also predicated

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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.