Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:11] Speaker B: Welcome to going underground broadcasting all around the world as Russia celebrates its Victory Day and its contribution to international peace by defeating the forces of fascism and Nazism. We're broadcasting from a UAE that has meanwhile this week been intercepting missiles and drones targeted by Iran. Millions have been killed, wounded or displaced by the Trump Netanyahu wars on Iran, Iran and Lebanon. Just as lies about the Soviet contribution to victory in World War II continue in the history books, universities and schools of Western Europe, there are lies about the Trump Netanyahu war in this region. All week it was difficult to ascertain how Trump was triangulating de facto over the dead bodies of 168 schoolgirls in Iran. Between his paymistress Miriam ADELSON, November's midterm U.S. election disaster and his upcoming visit to China, NATO propaganda media repeated lies about how open the Strait of Hormuz was, when of course it has been open since Trump assassinated Iran's leaders only to those Iran allows through its waters. Trump did have a long phone call with Putin and may have called today to congratulate Russia on Victory Day. But perhaps Putin won't let on how the war and spike in oil prices aided the Russian economy. That's of course, as the so called military operation Special Military Operation drags on and Britain and the EU amidst economic catastrophe, continue to pour money and weapons to dictator Zelensky. Joining me now from Moscow again is former lieutenant colonel in the Soviet and Russian armed forces, Dr. Dmitry Trenin, who is on Russia's Foreign and Defence Policy Council. Dimitri, thanks so much for coming back on. Before we get to the war in this region, the war in Europe, I should just say. The Venice Biennale started and a headline struck me in the propaganda media of NATO nations from the Financial Times, Russia's return to Venice risks rendering Biennale irrelevant. So even the idea of Russian artists exhibiting in Western Europe is seen as somehow sinful.
On Victory Day. What does that make you think about how the Soviet Union freed Western Europe and how Western Europe sees Russia today?
[00:02:17] Speaker A: Well, actually, of course, it's perhaps the most important date in the Russian calendar.
But today rather than, well, let's say, of course, we mark the anniversary and we think about the people who fought and gave their lives for their country, for the liberation of other nations.
But one thought is very, very concerning.
For the first time, I would say this year, you have to admit that it is Europe again that is Russia's principal adversary of the day.
This was not the case since 1945, since the defeat of Hitler, Germany.
But today Russia is at war again.
And this is not simply a war between Russia and Ukraine.
It is a war between Russia and the West.
A proxy war from the Western side, but a very direct war from the Russian side.
And for the first time in that war, it is Europe that is in the first ranks of those who are adversaries today.
It's a chilling thought and it gives you pause when you celebrate, because it's a celebration that is linked to very serious and very troubling thoughts about the future.
[00:04:12] Speaker B: Except it's not a small British oligarch elite that support the Nazis now. It's Britain supporting the Nazis in Ukraine, of course. Which leads us to the question, I mean, when is the victory day going to happen against the proxy forces in Ukraine?
When is Russia going to celebrate that?
[00:04:36] Speaker A: Well, it's a very different war from the war of 1941, 45.
And I think it would be wrong to simply laid over the memories, the current war, compare it one on one with the memories of the past. It's a different war and victory means something else than it meant in 1945.
So I think that today, in today's times, the principal goals of Russia's policies and the principal goals of the special military operation will take, I would say, a long time to accomplish.
It means that although the operation itself in a limited form will succeed, I'm pretty sure that victory will be ours.
But beyond that, Russia will face a hostile Europe.
It will face elements within Ukraine that will be outside of Russian control, that will try to do as much harm to Russia as they can. So it's going to be a long slog.
It's a long war that Russia is waging today. And it's not like next year or in two years time, there'll be peace and Russians and Europeans will celebrate together as they did for a long time after the end of the Cold War is going to take so much more time and it will take so much more effort on our side to reach the goal and to achieve victory. But as I said, victory will be ours.
But it doesn't mean that it will be victory over Europe or over Ukraine. It will be a victory against those elements in Ukraine that are branded Nazi, meaning ultra nationalist and ideological descendants of Hitlerism. And those forces in Europe, primarily among the elites that have built Russia into bogeyman again and that use the Russia threat for their own ulterior motives.
[00:07:24] Speaker B: But isn't the point that Russia is failing to capitalize on the chaos of a Trump presidency and after Trump will come back to normal the deep state, so called in the United States, that created the conditions for the proxy war in the first place and will be pouring ever more weapons than even Trump has been. Trump obviously has been giving satellite guidance. And Russia is clearly failing in this window of the Trump presidency before his perhaps impeachment after the midterms.
[00:07:58] Speaker A: Well, I don't know about Russia failing to use this window of opportunity.
I would disagree that there was or that there is a window of opportunity.
[00:08:11] Speaker B: Trump, not necessarily through negotiations, which are clearly appearing to be pointless, but through military means.
[00:08:20] Speaker A: Well, through military means.
I think this is my own conclusion. I think that the Russian way of war, certainly the Russian way of waging this particular war, is extremely restrained, and there are reasons for that.
Ukraine has long been considered part of the bigger Russian nation.
Kiev is the mother of Russian cities.
People on the battlefield, on the Ukrainian side look, most of them look the same as the people on the Russian side, if you listen to what the prisoners of war are saying, the way they're saying things.
So it's to many Russians, including those who among the decision makers, these people are misguided. They are being used by the west in the West's very long battle, very long war against Russia starting maybe in the 18th century or maybe in the 17th century or maybe even earlier than that. Some people point to the 16th century as the first war between Russia and Europe, the so called Livonian War.
[00:09:51] Speaker B: So, yeah, but I mean, on the restraint issue, on the rest, I mean, yeah, I mean, I was taught at school not about the 27 million that gave their lives for the fight against Nazism. I was taught about the Crimean War when I went to school.
So as regards restraint, I mean, on Mondays going underground, we're speaking to a former U.S. treasury official who says you don't show restraint against a hegemonic power. And the same criticism can be leveled against Iran as it can be against Putin and his conduct of this war. Restraint is what gives the opponent their advantage.
[00:10:27] Speaker A: Well, I think this war, you would appreciate that this war was not called a war and was not started as a war. It was started as a special operation, let's say more of a political operation on steroids, with the military essentially backing the internal Ukrainian forces toppling the regime that came to power due to a coup in 2014.
So this was something that very soon was exposed as wishful thinking.
And even after that, the war was fought with only a fraction of the Russian military forces
[00:11:23] Speaker B: during the restraint period, people were dying in Luhansk and Donetsk.
[00:11:29] Speaker A: That's True. I mean, they were dying during the eight years of neither war nor peace. After the coup In Kiev in 2014, the republics of Donbass, the Luhansk and the Donetsk republics held a referendum and they declared independence. And of course, this was met with military force sent by Kiev. And then for eight years, the Donetsk and Luhansk held out against the forces of Kiev without Russian support. Right.
[00:12:10] Speaker B: Well, without going through the history of it all over again, isn't the fact that Russia is not winning the smo, and in fact, the reason why it appears to be winning is because of the defeats by the United States and the vassal powers in Western Europe keep cascading around the world, whether it be the US Defeat against Iran and the complete economic catastrophes that have been caused by themselves in the European Union and in Britain. It's not so much Russia winning, it's the failure of the opponents as they repeated strategies that fail.
[00:12:49] Speaker A: Well, their strategies failed at the Middle East. If you look at the Ukrainian theater, I think they managed to muster their resources and talking first of all about the Europeans, and they managed to put up a very significant force on the Ukrainian side, arm them, guide them, give them everything that they need, from intel to weapons to production facilities for their drones and stuff like that.
So I would say that although Russia moved forward on the battlefield, although slowly and incrementally on the Ukrainian side, there was a major spike in primarily European involvement in the war. Mr. Trump has reduced America's involvement, but even then, the United States still provides Ukraine with a lot of, with a lot of assistance in various fields. And that discounts, I think Russia certainly could have destroyed lots of very important targets in Ukraine.
But Kyiv is still very much a normal city. You do not compare Kyiv to Beirut or Tehran or to one of the other cities that have been targets of U.S. nATO is taxed.
[00:14:32] Speaker B: Dimitri Chanin, I'll just have to stop you there. More from a member of Russia's Foreign Defense Policy Council after this break.
Welcome back to Going Underground. I'm still here with the former director of the Carnegie Moscow center and now member of Russia's Foreign and defense policy council, Dr. Dimitri Trenin. Dimitri, I interrupted you as you were describing how thanks to Western Europe bankrupting itself, it's managed to subsidize Kiev.
[00:15:07] Speaker A: Yes, they actually have been doing that at a huge expense to themselves.
But they see this Russia threat as, or what they call the Russia threat as extremely useful in their own attempt to consolidate the European Union, crumbling as it was before the war.
They manage to try to Relaunch their economies through militarization, that trying above all to keep themselves in power? Yeah, exactly on that point, actually fairly successful on all those three counts.
[00:15:51] Speaker B: But on that point, and going back to what I was talking about in part one about a window, won't that get worse as the economies of Western Europe get worse and worse? And as they divorce themselves from the United States, will they see their only root out those in power, the powerful elites that run, I would call it, a totalitarian Western Europe without freedom of speech.
The only way out is more war with Russia. And again, that means Russia is losing this strategic window before the midterms to act.
[00:16:24] Speaker A: Well, again, I don't think that there is such a big window and I don't think that it actually exists. The United States does not so much operate on the orders given by Donald Trump.
As you yourself point out, the United States is ruled by the deep state. And that deep state has been there for a long time and will be there after Donald Trump leaves the White House.
So Donald Trump is not all that essential for the fate of the outcome of the war, for the fate of this confrontation.
Let me tell you this. Donald Trump, allegedly, maybe not allegedly that there's been a lot of confirmation, but Donald Trump came up with a proposal back in August 2025 on how to end the Ukraine war. And President Putin agreed to use that proposal as a basis for peace settlement.
And since then, since August last year, Mr. Trump has not been able to lean hard on the Europeans or to order the Ukrainian client of the United States to accept the proposal agreed upon notionally between Washington and Moscow. And this tells you how significant Donald Trump is to the conduct of the war, to the outcome of the war.
The war continues without Donald Trump's very active participation.
[00:18:08] Speaker B: I'm not sure what they must have spoken about for 90 minutes. Then when they spoke on the phone, Trump and Putin, and afterwards, Trump said rather have been involved with ending the war with Ukraine. I said, before you help me out, I want to end your war. As regards Putin's suggestion that Russia should be part of the negotiations over ending the war on Iran, well, it's so easy.
[00:18:34] Speaker A: I mean, he could have prevailed. And I think that the leverage that the president of the United States has over the leaders, so called leaders of Europe is enough to make them agree to something that the president of the United States has managed to win the backing of the president of Russia. He could have ordered Zelensky to follow what, what Trump, his principal benefactor, his principal backer, has already agreed with Putin and yet this is not happening. It means that the President of the United States is essentially powerless to insist on something that is of central importance to ending this conflict.
[00:19:33] Speaker B: I mean, certainly Putin appears to believe the Trump Xi visit that at the time of this recording is still on later next week.
How do you characterize why Putin might want to visit just after the Trump Xi scheduled meeting in Beijing?
[00:19:55] Speaker A: Well, I think that Putin's visit dates had been agreed well before the, the rescheduling of the Trump visit to Beijing. Trump was originally supposed to be there, I think, in March, and Putin's visit was timed originally to happen after Victory Day in Russia. So in the second half of May.
That is the time that is often used, this time flaw often used for Russian visits to Beijing.
So there's no coincidence. I don't think there's any reason to believe that somehow the visit by Trump to Beijing and the visit by Putin are connected or that the two visits are connected to how to end the Ukraine war.
I don't think that there's much of a connection, frankly.
[00:20:55] Speaker B: I mean, of course, in the propaganda press of the United States, the Salzburg and New York Times, they're all over it. Trump and Xi face a Nixon Mao moment. I think it wasn't long ago they were talking about a reverse Nixon and that Trump was getting closer to Putin.
What do you think fears are in government circles in Moscow about any deals between Xi Jinping and Donald Trump, perhaps at Russia's expense?
[00:21:25] Speaker A: Well, I don't think that there are any fears at this point.
Of course, Russians are watching US China relations very closely, just as the Chinese are watching Russian American relations very closely, which is a normal thing.
You should pay attention to these things because they can matter to you.
But my understanding is that the Chinese are increasingly becoming aware of, of the nature of their conflict with the United States and that the idea that somehow that conflict could be averted, that the compromise could be reached, that China can win an equal treatment from the United States, these things are fading.
And I think that the new tendency in China is to take a much tougher attitude toward the United States, not hoping for a nice compromise that people were very much expecting during the Hu Jintao era in China, just before Xi Jinping came to power in the early 2000 and tens.
So I don't think that people in Moscow are fretting very much about what happens when Trump visits China and sits down with Jintin and discusses the world.
[00:23:10] Speaker B: Yeah, clearly they dismissed the threat of sanctions from Trump over Iran very quickly indeed. But then of Course, could that mean that Trump caves in to China and makes a deal perhaps over Taiwan? Who knows?
And Trump himself has a limited shelf life. This allows US China relations to progress whilst the proxy war on Russia through Ukraine continues.
[00:23:37] Speaker A: Well, I think that it's very likely that Trump would want to have some kind of a pause in the conflict with China.
He cannot handle a widening conflict or an intensifying conflict with China, even at the time when relations between Russia and the west are deteriorating very fast.
But again, you mentioned that Trump may be just months away from an attempted impeachment in Washington.
And Trump, again, Trump is at the midpoint in his second presidency.
And whatever happens at the polls in November is going to be less relevant to setting US foreign policy as well as domestic policy than he is even now. So an agreement with Trump may be not worth that much.
And I think that the Chinese are also looking beyond Trump today. What happens after, not only after November 26, but November 28, when Trump will finally. I mean, he may have to end his presidential career earlier, who knows? But that's the ultimate date and you need to look ahead and you have to look beyond Trump. I think he may have spent much of his political force until this present moment, and the debacle in Iran or with Iran may cost him dearly in the remaining two years.
[00:25:32] Speaker B: Yeah, and we know that that deep state doesn't like China. I mean, one could see it this victory day as if Russia's lost, say, Venezuela to a certain extent. It lost Syria.
And in Armenia, there was a conference in the past few days. Zelensky was there, Mark Rutte, Mark Carney was there. The man that had the bank of England stole some Venezuelan gold, I think. Ursula von der Leyen.
And what did you make of this happening in the Caucasus south caucuses?
What does that say about Russian influence?
[00:26:11] Speaker A: Well, Russian influence certainly exists, but Russia is not using it very much.
Armenia today depends enormously on the Russia trade.
Out of the entire trade, turnover of Armenia, half of it is with the countries of the Eurasian Economic Union. And let's say 90% or close to 90% of that is Armenia's trade with Russia.
The Armenian leadership has come up with an idea of, if you like, sitting on two chairs at the same time. They are benefiting hugely. Their GDP is growing very fast. They're benefiting hugely on its trade with Russia, but politically they want to side with the European Union. And Pashinyan. The Prime Minister for a long time has been very closely associated with pro Western forces and NGOs close to Soros and the like. So it's not that we have only now discovered that he is taking Armenia away from Russia. Again, Russia is not the Soviet Union not only in size or in its influence around the world. It's philosophy, its political philosophy is different. Okay, Dmitry. Alas, we're out of building an empire.
[00:27:53] Speaker B: We're out of time, alas. But happy victory day. Thank you, Dmitry Trinin.
[00:27:59] Speaker A: Thank you. You're welcome.
[00:28:01] Speaker B: That's it for the show. Our condolences to those of you bereaved by today's NATO nation wars of aggression. We'll be back on Monday for more continuing coverage of US wars on West Asia with an official in the Reagan administration who has nothing but condemnation for Trump's wars of aggression. Until then, keep in touch via all our social media if it's not censored to your country. And head to our channel goingundergrandtv on rumble.com to watch new and old episodes of Going Underground. See Monday.
