I am fully aware of the skepticism some of my colleagues have regarding the value of public sources and in particular over what is shown on Russian state television to understand and pronounce upon where Russian politics are headed. Nonetheless, I insist that public sources have with good reason been the stock in trade of American and other foreign intelligence on Russia going back to the origins of the Cold War. Today, when Russian state and private electronic media have become highly diverse and often quite free to pick up and transmit views from the talking classes, they are essential if we are to go beyond the use of unnamed, supposedly well informed Russian insiders that colleagues often allude to and instead have something clearly identified and debatable to talk about among ourselves.
And so, dear reader, I once again make reference to the Evening with Vladimir Solovyov talk show of yesterday in telling you that Putin’s handling of the war is coming under very great pressure from the Moscow elites who pull it to pieces before the audience without naming the Unspeakable One in the Kremlin but leaving no doubt whatsoever whom they are criticizing.
The U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran, the decapitation strike on the Ayatollah and on other top leaders in what Russians call the ‘decision-making centers’ of Iran, makes them all ask what the hell Mr. Putin is now waiting for to do the very same in Ukraine and to put an instant end to the long dragged-out war that is killing and maiming Russian service men every day and putting in question Russia’s deterrence, leading to ever more brazen provocations from the NATO Member States.
These same expert panelists last night asked how it can be that during the negotiations with Witkoff, the Kremlin has allowed the USA to conduct daily spy flights just outside all of its borders from the Far North in the Barents Sea to the Black Sea in the South. The purpose of these flights is perfectly well known: to prepare for a ‘preemptive strike’ on Russia similar to what was done to Iran and possibly using nuclear arms. ‘We should just shoot down these American spy planes’ they said last night with one voice.
The point of these panelists is that the U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran violates all the basic rules of international conduct from the founding documents of the United Nations. There are now no rules and Russia must adapt to this situation and defend itself arms in hand.
Is Mr. Putin deaf? The whole of Russia is hearing these lightly veiled denunciations of his management of defense and so far he has not responded to the American attack on Iran with more than telephone calls to the Gulf States sheikhs, which are given full coverage in the first 15 minutes of Russian state television news, no doubt to the great irritation of viewers.
I use this opportunity to call attention to a remarkable document that the economist and former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Paul Craig Roberts yesterday posted on his website:
Let us recall that Alexander Dugin has long been cited by Western commentators as a close adviser to President Putin. I have cast some doubt in the past on their alleged closeness, but I freely acknowledge that Dugin has been an influential thinker within the Kremlin elites. Here again we see a lightly veiled harsh attack on everything that Putin is doing on defense.
In closing, I have a bit of advice to offer to Russia’s Supreme Military Commander. Sir, your popularity with broad swathes of the Russian public is partly due to your use of pithy and often off-color folk sayings that resonate with simple folk. I return the favor by offering a rude American folk expression: if you cannot take a crap, get off the toilet seat! The moment of truth has arrived.
Zelensky calls for European troops to positioned near the front lines, ready for introduction of a cease fire. This is precisely what former British PM Boris Johnson told reporters in an interview yesterday, and it is the worst possible advice.
The leader of the Russian team, Vladimir Medinsky, said in an interview a day ago that whereas the Russian team has one person to report to, Putin, the Ukrainian team has three people to address, one of whom represents the European Union Member State that wants the war to continue indefinitely.
My best advice to Zelensky is to get out while he can. A power struggle is ongoing among his colleagues, Zaluzhny and Budanov. His future does not look good if he clings to power.
Are Ukrainians looking for regime change? Probably not: they have been brainwashed for the past 12 years. What is needed is a time out, likely a period of military rule, when the population can learn the real state of their armed forces and real state of their economy.
My advice to Chancellor Merz at the close of this interview is that he should tune in to Russian television and he would find that the Russians are ready to wipe Germany off the face of the earth if this hostility continues. It might sober him up.
I enter this news wrap-up at minute 12 with a discussion of Ukraine’s latest announcement on exports of its military supplies, in particular in the Middle East. We move on to an item in the EU’s planned 20th package of sanctions against Russia: interception of Russian tankers at sea. The EU legal team is hard at work trying to justify what is in effect piracy as something acceptable under international law. As I say in this interview, von der Leyen and her minions are doing their best to bring Europe into open war with Russia at a time when the outcome is clear – turning Western Europe into a Gaza-like wasteland.
This morning I wrote about this interview on my Subdtack platform and now it is my pleasure to offer the link to the podcast here on Word Press. I do not mince words in the interview: Ursula von der Leyen and Kaja Kalas are leading the European Union to collapse at best and to destruction under Russian bombs at worst.
To what I say on this interview I can add a piquant further detail: this intended damage to the Hungarian economy is precisely introduced to cause economic harm before the coming general elections in Hungary later this spring. While the Financial Times told us two days ago that the Commission has decided not to say or do anything that would appear to influence the elections against Orban, the cut-off of Druzhba is precisely that.
This is a focused 2 minute discussion of the impact of Ukraine’s cutting delivery of Russian oil to Slovakia and Hungary via the Druzhba pipeline. A work-around is being put together with Croatia, so that the consequences may be less consequential than Kiev may have hoped.
My apologies for the poor sound quality on this podcast.
This early morning interview starting on minute 4.30 focuses on British and American approaches to the Ukraine negotiations, the split in the Ukrainian negotiating delegation over conceding the Donbas to Russia, the British and American positions on Iran, the meaning of joint Russian and Iranian naval exercises going on in the Arabian Gulf and Indian Ocean, and the relative weighting of Russian and Chinese assistance to Tehran.
This afternoon interview begins at minute 3.30 and deals with an evaluation of the results of trilateral Russian-Ukrainian-US negotiations yesterday and today in Geneva, the likelihood of a power struggle now going on in Kiev over abandonment of the Donbas, the ongoing meeting of Cuban Foreign Minister in Moscow and the prospects for Russian assistance to Cuba.
The widely read Russian news outlet Аргументы и факты (Arguments and Facts) which had a vast audience in print form during Soviet rule in Russia and continues in the present era to enjoy a mass readership as an online purveyor of news and opinion today has put out a leading article on Russia’s delegation to the next session of the trilateral US-Russian-Ukrainian peace talks scheduled to be held tomorrow and Wednesday in Geneva. They inform us that the Russian team will once again be headed by Vladimir Medinsky, former Minister of Culture, adviser on international policy to President Vladimir Putin and until the last two rounds of negotiations, former head of Team Russia at the talks.
As we know, in the last two rounds of talks held in Abu Dhabi, capital of the United Arab Emirates, the Russian negotiating team was headed by the chief of Russian Military Intelligence (GRU) General Kostyukov. Those talks were said to center on security issues, which as I have said in recent essays, were about the modalities of Ukrainian withdrawal from all of Donbas in keeping with Russian preconditions for a cease-fire. I interpret the re-appointment of Medinsky as a tip-off that the talks will now resume at a higher level of discussion, meaning the overall contours of the peace settlement where the historical perspective that Medinsky brings to the task is critical.
In another article a day or two earlier, Argumenty i Fakty explained to its audience the significance of the selection of Geneva after Zelensky’s refusal to go back to Abu Dhabi considering the UAE’s treachery, from his standpoint, in handing over the accused would-be-assassin of Russian general Alekseyev to Russian authorities for interrogation and trial in Moscow. AiF tell us that Geneva was selected because of Switzerland’s centuries old neutral status in the heart of Europe. They also, very correctly, hint that this neutrality has been compromised in recent years. Indeed, allow me to hazard a guess that the Swiss authorities were keen to be hosts to the talks to demonstrate a return to neutrality after some recent missteps in the course of the Russia-Ukraine war when they have pandered to the pro-Kiev authorities in Brussels.
I take pleasure in ending this brief note with a hats-off to Argumenty i Fakty for reporting on my more substantive podcasts and in particular for reporting on my latest conversation with Professor Glenn Diesen. Their respective article was entitled Зеленского предупредили о потере Одессы и Харькова(Zelensky has been warned about the loss of Odessa and Kharkov). The opening paragraph of this article tells us: Aмериканский специалист в области международных отношений Гилберт Доктороу высказал предположение, что до завершения боевых действий Украина рискует лишиться контроля над двумя ключевыми городами — Харьковом и Одессой. Translation: “An American specialist in the field of international relations Gilbert Doctorow has suggested that before the military actions end Ukraine risks the loss of control over two key cities – Kharkov and Odessa.”
If I were Zelensky or some member of his regime, I might rightly ask, paraphrasing Stalin with respect to the Pope: and how many divisions does Doctorow command?
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Yes, indeed, NATO Secretary General speaking in the context of the ongoing Munich Security Conference has gleefully declared that Russia is experiencing “crazy losses” of 65,000 soldiers killed or wounded in the past two months and that the Russian economy is reeling from a one-third loss of oil export revenues. These words are meant to prod Conference attendees to believe in a possible Ukrainian victory in the war and to maintain solid materiel and financial support to Kiev.
If only words could win wars, Zelensky and Co. would be carried aloft by proud patriots down the streets of Kiev.
Reality tells any neutral observer that Rutte’s figures are ‘crazy’ in the sense that they are totally fabricated in the febrile word shops of Kiev and have no substance to them.
Promotional offer for new one-year paid subscriptions to my alternative web platform gilbertdoctorow.substack.com where I post analytical articles not shown on Word Press You will be eligible to receive a free of charge paperback copy of the historical novel on the Russian emigration of the 1970s, ‘Nadine’s Story’ by Larisa Zalesova. Subscribers must identify themselves by email to gsdoctorow@gmail.com to avail themselves of this offer. Information about the book is available on the various country websites of Amazon.
NewsX World (India) morning interview : a potpourri of issues relating to the Russia-Ukraine war
This six-minute interview which begins at minute 4 on the podcast covers a number of different issues, some of which have arisen from discussions ongoing in the Munich Security Conference. We discuss British Prime Minister Starmer’s views on how Europe should bulk up its defensive capabilities while remaining in close association with the United States. We discuss the time frame needed for Europe to rearm and how the Russians may react to such a threatening development. We discuss Emmanuel Macron’s supposed agreement with German Chancellor Merz on a shared nuclear umbrella, which might just be in violation of the treaty on non-proliferation of nuclear weapons to which both are signatories.
Promotional offer for new one-year paid subscriptions to gilbertdoctorow.substack.com, the web platform where I publish analytical essays which are not posted on Word Press You will be eligible to receive a free of charge paperback copy of th historical novel on the Russian emigration of the 1970s, ‘Nadine’s Story’ by Larisa Zalesova. Subscribers must identify themselves by email to gsdoctorow@gmail.com to avail themselves of this offer. Information about the book is available on the various country websites of Amazon.
Gilbert Doctorow 