‘Dialogue Works’ edition of 28 August 2024: Kursk and U.S. preparations for a first, decapitating nuclear strike against Russia

In today’s 40-minute chat with host Nima Alkhorshid, we reviewed many of the issues I raised in my latest analytical article entitled “For Russia, recovering Kursk is no walk in the rose garden.”

I was particularly appreciative of the possibility to explain the methodological errors I perceive in most of my peers in the “dissident movement” opposing the Washington narrative who are most visible on youtube these days. I said this not for purposes of self-promotion, but to restore reason and balance to what has become a highly emotional interpretation of what is going on in the Russia-Ukraine war.

At issue is the use by my peers of backroom channels in Russia from retired or active military officers, from political scientists to produce here in the West what looks like impressive “scoops” but may in fact be something quite different: by this I mean that colleagues are likely being played by their Russian contacts to disseminate misleading or inaccurate information which makes the Russian military operations look like the proverbial walk in the rose garden, which makes the Ukrainians look like a depleted, rag tag force.  No, as one highly authoritative Russian military expert who is a member of the upper house of the bicameral Russian legislature explained on a Russian talk show two days ago, there is fierce fighting going on in Kursk, not just some ‘bombs away’ from Russian jets dropping glider bombs. “Fierce fighting” means there are heavy casualties on both sides, and the effort to expel the Ukrainians from Kursk will take some time.

All of the challenges for the Russians in Kursk are due to the role the United States has and is playing there. The USA is supplying real-time satellite reconnaissance and command and control assistance to the Ukrainians. Moreover, all of the equipment the Ukrainians are using was delivered by the USA precisely with this mission in mind. And the same Russian panelist on The Great Game says this preparation by the United States means that Russia’s enemy on the ground in Kursk is in better fighting form than the Russians.

And then there is the possible, maybe likely connection between the US-planned and driven invasion of Kursk and the positioning of two US aircraft carriers in the Eastern Mediterranean, where they can as easily launch a first nuclear strike against Russia as be used to intervene in an Israeli-Iran war, which is all we hear about in major Western media.

Nonetheless, the single biggest issue in this interview is where are the Russian experts in the West, who know the language and culture as well as I do?  We do not hear from them. The work of commenting on the war has been left to folks who are highly skilled geopolitical and military experts but who lack the in-depth area knowledge and the language skills essential if they were to test what information they are being given by their sources before passing it along to their viewers and readers.  

Yes, such Russian experts do exist. I am not alone in a vacuum.  There are several hundred if not thousands of them in the United States. Nearly all are serving as professors or instructors in universities, where they will be fired at once if they open their mouths and say what I say in public At my age that is not a problem, since I no longer have to work for a living. Others of them have jobs in think tanks, like RAND, where the very notion of resistance to the Washington narrative is heresy.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2024

Transcript of the interview followed by a translation into German (Andreas Mylaeus)

Transcript below by a reader

Nima R. Alkhorshid: 00:05
So nice to have you back, Gilbert, and let’s get started with your latest piece on Substack. You’re talking about, the title is “For Russia, Recovering Kursk is No Walk in the Rose Garden”. And what are you trying to picture for us from what’s going on in the Kursk region?

Gilbert Doctorow, PhD:
Well, the title I gave to the article and the content of the article are counterintuitive for people who have been following the alternative media in particular, because everyone, almost everyone of my peers is saying the same thing. And I understand them, because we do– the little that we see of reporting on Russian state news, shows the destruction of tank after tank, of armored carrier after armored carrier. It shows the Russian drones, the killer drones, Lancet. It shows the other weapons aboard the helicopters that are flown in, and they are destroying the Ukrainian forces.

1:18
We get the figures of those killed — last I heard was something like 6,600 Ukrainians have been killed or maimed so they’re no longer battle worthy, out of what was estimated to be 12,000 war fighters who went to Kursk in the beginning. These figures are very impressive, and it would make you tend to believe that the Russians have the upper hand in Kursk and that things are going great. And the Mr– we all were figuring out, and myself included, I don’t say I’m exceptional here.

We had been left in a fog of war at the start. What exactly was the mission of Ukraine in entering Kursk? We heard many different explanations. They all had some sort of rationale to them: that they were going to give the Russians a feel of what it’s like to be hit in a wartime, because the Russians were sitting too comfortably, that they’re going to take a piece of territory which they can then use to trade for some of Russia’s gains in the Donbas, and to force the Russians to enter into negotiations over a truce and possibly over a peace on more favorable terms for Ukraine.

02:32
These were talked about. Nobody talked about, but briefly, like for five minutes at the start, that the Ukrainians might just be going after the atomic power plant at Kursk. We’ll come back to that. The last thing that we all heard is that it was pretty much what I just said. Mr. Zelensky wanted to impose peace talks on the Russians in terms that would be more favorable to Ukraine. Well, I won’t go into the other speculations. There were many speculations. Well, maybe the Russians saw this coming and they let it happen so that blah, blah, blah, they could trap the Ukrainians.

3:17
But let’s not get into these games, because we have a lot of clever people who are trying to find explanations and attract audiences. The idea that the Russians might be having a really tough time here is absent from discussion, other than on the pages of the “New York Times” or the “Financial Times” or CNN and so forth, who of course are singing the praises of this brilliant, unexpected and glorious invasion of Russia by Ukrainians, who are showing that they really are a fighting force despite everything that’s been reported about their bad position in Donbass.

3:55
So, as I said, looking at the facts that have been in public media, I can understand where some of my– or many of my colleagues are in the optimistic expectation that it’ll all be over. In an interview that I had a week ago, I was asked, “Well, do you think it’ll all be wrapped up when we meet again, meaning tomorrow?” And I looked a bit perplexed, because the expectation was such a glorious Russian victory that the bits and pieces, shreds left of Ukrainian forces would all be mopped up by tomorrow. That clearly is not the case.

04:34
So, what is going on. and why have we particularly, my colleagues, been misled as I believe? I think the reason is some facts about what we’re basing ourselves on, and what we, the commentators that are in the public eye today, know about Russia in general, before we were given the microphone. And I’ll come straight to the point. And I don’t want this to be self-promoting in a way that would offend people. I am a Russia specialist. I have published my memoirs under the title Russianist, going back to my earliest experiences as a student of Russian in 1965, my first visit to Russia. And I’ve been doing this for some time. My colleagues are, many of them are very skilled analysts, analysts of warfare, analysts of geopolitics. They have served in intelligence agencies. And I understand that they bring a lot of competence to the task at hand.

05:42
But I repeat, they are not Russia specialists. And they use, largely, a material of which they’re very proud. And I understand their pride. They’re using sources which I am not using. They’re using back channels to Russian military men, political scientists, whom they have met on trips to Russia, and who they believe are feeding them scoops, really important information that they’re bringing to the attention of their listeners and readers as they publish their commentaries.

06:22
Here’s where I would draw a big distinction. I’m not using those, and I believe they are suspect, for reasons that my colleagues should devote a bit more attention to. When you say that you have heard from the commander Alla Udinov, this is a Chechen leader who was heading troops of the Akhmat division, it’s a fighting division of Chechnya, in the successful capture of Bakhmut and who is presently leading the Chechen unit that is fighting in Kursk to liberate Kursk. He’s an important, authoritative person, and I understand that those who have made his acquaintance among my peers are proud of that fact and take seriously what he’s telling them and want to deliver a scoop to their followers.

07:14
My question is the following. I’ve also heard Mr. Alla Udinov, not in private. I’ve heard him on television. During the whole operations to liberate Bakhmut, he was every day on the news and talk show program “60 Minutes”, which is moderated by a very serious guy, who’s a protege of the head of Russian state television news, Yevgeny Popov. and his wife Olga Skabeyeva. They interviewed Alla Udinov, and he was given prime time to say a few words about the day’s progress. I can tell you right now, that Mr … whatever his officer’s title is, Alla Udinov, has a good command of Russian and was very cagey. He never said on air anything that could be of much use to anybody, except the fact to show his face and his confidence that things were going well.

08:16
And I ask in all seriousness why my peers think that they will get from Mr. Alaudinov, behind closed doors, information that this professional soldier and real patriot of Russia is not likely to give to anyone, least of all to a foreigner, however sympathetic to the Russian cause they are. So why my friends aren’t doing this simple addition and subtraction, while they aren’t doing this triangulation, if I can go to a little bit higher math, to understand whom they’re talking to — I don’t understand that. So, the news that these back sources are giving is optimistic, just like the pictures that we get on Russian state television news of destruction of Ukrainian hardware or NATO advanced hardware is optimistic.

09:08
What you will not find on Russian state news regular programs is anything that can give you an idea of the state of play on the ground. Nothing. And if they have a map, and they show “We’re fighting around this, and we’re fighting around that, and we have 60% of this”, frankly speaking, unless you’re a military expert and have been in this game for a long time, you won’t have a clue of what they’re telling you. So the information is really pro forma. It isn’t substantive content that anyone could use to make an independent judgment on the state of this war.

09:43
Now, a very big exception to all of this, either emptiness on the Russian side or tendency to look optimistic was on another Russian program, which I follow very closely. This is “The Great Game”, which has two personalities of outstanding importance. One, Americans would know very well if they’re in politics, and that is Dmitry Symes, because Symes was an assistant to Richard Nixon. He was the heir to Nixon’s political legacy, and set up, originally in Nixon’s name, a research institute, a think tank in Washington, which eventually was renamed the National Interest. And he headed that until February 2022, when he understood that his position had become untenable, that he was too Russia friendly, and he picked up stakes and went back to Russia 50 years after having emigrated to the States as a kind of dissident.

10:46
Well, Dmitry Symes is a co-host of “The Great Game” and Vyacheslav Nikonov– who is a Duma member and a very moderate, very soft-spoken, very intelligent, well-informed Kremlin insider because he is the grandson of Molotov, one of the original Bolsheviks– Mr. Nikonov is also a host. There’s a third member who is of considerable importance. But my point that I want to make is that Mr. Klintsevich was invited to speak there and he was let– and they allowed him to speak rather extensively. This is possible only if they understood perfectly well what he was going to say and if what he said and was going to say had credibility and probably, as I insist, backing from the Kremlin, if not from Mr. Putin himself.

11:45
And what he said was, “Look guys this is a tough, tough battle that we’re engaged in, in Kursk, we are up against the best that NATO has to offer. They are lending to the Ukrainians their real-time command and control support, their real-time satellite reconnaissance. They are guiding every step on the ground, and they have their own people, Americans, French, and Poles taking part in the Kursk operation. Moreover, the equipment that’s being used was precisely prepared by Washington for this mission. It isn’t just the guys in Kiev went into the back lot, they went to the warehouse and pulled out what they had to throw against Kursk. Oh no, they had been armed by Washington for this mission.”

12:46
So, Mr. Klintsevich is saying, “We have a tough fight. We’re holding the line. We’re pushing them back. But there is fierce fighting going on. And don’t you forget it.” All right, that’s not all he said. That would be bad enough. That the– that this is not a PR stunt by Ukraine, that this was not a sudden impulsive act by Mr. Sierski, the general in charge of overall mission, or Mr. Zelensky. That this is a US-driven attack.

13:25
And Klintsevich went on, “Is it a self-standing operation? Or is there something else here?” Well, first, as I said, it was Klintsevich who made the statement that the original objective of the– I mean, they had several objectives, and so always was a reason or explanation for what they were doing available should they got things go awry for the Ukrainians. But the original objective was to take the Kursk nuclear power plant. That indeed, if they had seized it, would have been an invaluable asset to force the hands of the Russians into negotiations on terms more favorable to themselves than Mr. Putin’s take-it-or-leave-it final terms of June, which amounted to capitulation for the Ukrainians.

14:20
Well, they didn’t get very far. They got about 15 kilometers in; they would have had to go perhaps another 60 kilometers to reach the nuclear power plant, and the Russians threw everything at them to ensure that they never got further into Kursk Oblast. But they went– instead of going deep, they went lateral. Lateral was pretty easy to do, because lateral meant more thinly populated population areas, farmland, little homesteads, and very few soldiers. And no anti-tank lines of defense, nothing that made the summer offensive or counter-attack of Ukraine in 2023 such a dismal failure.

15:06
All right, so much for that, but that’s not the whole story. What Klintsevich says is that the seizure of territory, the incursion into Kursk is part of a bigger plan that is still ongoing. And the bigger plan is a wave of airstrikes against the heartland of Russia. This is what all the discussion going on still. Will Washington give the assent? Will Washington not give the assent to Zelensky to use the missiles and the multi-fire artillery equipment that NATO has delivered to Ukraine inside Russian territory, inside Kursk? Will they allow long-range attacks from the F-16s, which are now being made operational, to use the Scalp, the French missiles, or the British equivalent, which everyone knows better, the Storm Shadow missiles, to attack inside Russia?

16:19
The argument from Mr. Zelensky is: these will be used to neutralize the air bases from which Russia is now attacking with its glide bombs and the rest of it. Well, that argument by Zelensky is in fact specious, as Mr. Klintsevich said and as nobody else has said. He remarked that the Russians, by the way, moved all of their airplanes back from the border, back beyond 900 kilometers. So that nothing that the United States or Britain or France or Germany have delivered by way of high precision, long range missiles could ever touch the Russian air bases and airplanes that are now striking Ukraine. So, what would the Ukrainians do with this stuff if Washington said go ahead? Well, they would bomb Russian factories, Russian bridges, like the Kerch Bridge, that civilian infrastructure and military infrastructure in the heartland of Russia.

17:31
And what would that mean according to Mr. Klintsevich? It would mean the start of World War III, because that is a red line that Russia will not accept. Hitting infrastructure within the heartland of Russia would be intended to disrupt the war economy and to traumatize Russian civil society in the hope of a regime change. Mr. Putin and the Russian government will not tolerate that for one instant.

18:08
Now, what are they going to do? We hear a lot of talk. Again, my colleagues speak about, “Ah, will the Russians attack the stores of arms on the other side of the border in the NATO country, like Romania or Poland?” Hey guys, use your imagination a bit better. What will the Russians do? They’re going to hit Washington, DC. Don’t think two minutes about it. They’ve said it. If you’re listening, that’s what they’ve said. So here’s where I say, I think a lot of my colleagues are not really putting their thinking caps on, and they are being used to disseminate inaccurate information by Russian military sources because they’re not, again, using their critical faculty of who is telling them what and why. And with that, I rest my case.

Alkhorshid: 19:04
Yeah. In your opinion right now, Zelensky– usually that there is a difference between Zelensky and Sierski when it comes to this offensive on the Kursk region. Do you think, is there any sort of reality to this?

Doctorow:
Well, look, I have been quoted– by the way, yes, I’m also quoted by Russian media, and your program is quoted. things I’ve said on your program are then put up on the screen, little excerpts, on Russian newspapers or television. And there was a quote, when I or one of my peers is repeating what we have heard from them. So the intent on Russian television is to validate their own statements, because see, it’s a guy in the United States is saying this. Well, the guy in the United States is out saying this because you told him!

19:56
Just to be sure how this whole game works, let’s not be naive. Well I have been quoted two or three days ago and again in Russian newsprint, saying that yeah there’s a big division between Sierski and Zelensky, just what you’re asking me now. And well yeah, it was possible to believe that, but in light of what’s come up since, I don’t believe it They’re all working hand in glove. The argument that Zelensky was about to fire Sierski and that’s why he went on the Kursk offensive, something which I also picked up, I mean, nobody has a monopoly on the truth or on making mistakes. So I also picked that up. I now do not believe in that. I believe they’re acting hand in glove.

20:48
But what I– it just occurs to me that I failed to mention one other point in the argument of Mr. Klintsevich which everyone should consider, because it explains something that seemed rather mysterious and inexplicable three or four months ago when it happened. And that is the the use of drones by the Ukrainians to knock out one and then a second Russian early-warning radar stations in the south of Russia. Our analysts said, my fellow commentators said, “Hey, that doesn’t make too much sense, because after all, the Russian attacks on Ukraine have nothing whatever to do with these radar stations.”

21:38
Okay. Well, Mr. Klimtsevich more or less gave us a reason for why that was done and why we should be very, very worried about Russia’s counter-strikes when they think that they are being put in danger of destruction by the Americans. He brings into play another element in the current events that people do not connect with the Russian story. I was asked on various news programs, “Hey, what’s, can you– what’s what is common between the crisis in the Middle East and the Russian-Ukraine war?”

22:26
I said, well, what’s common is Russia. But I sort of missed a little nuance here. There are two aircraft carriers with their squadrons, their support details now in the Eastern Med. The story that we read in the main major media is that they’re there to shoot down any missiles that Iran may be firing, it may decide to fire, at Israel in their planned counter-attack for the murder of the Hamas leader in Tehran. They could be useful in case the whole situation between Israel and Lebanon, Israel and Houthis, Israel and Iran escalates out of control.

23:26
However, it also can be useful in something else. There are, I think, a hundred jets on those carriers together. Anyway, it’s a large number of planes. They all are nuclear capable. They can all be sent on a simultaneous attack on Russia. This is a decapitating attack on Russia. And if the Pentagon thinks that the Russians are ignorant of that possibility, then the Pentagon and Mr. Jake Sullivan and the mummy in the White House should think again, because the Russians have that on their radar screen.

24:07
Now what does this mean? If the Russians are speculating that the United States could at some point in follow-up to the Kursk offensive stage a preventive strike or stage a first nuclear strike on Russia to wipe out its nuclear forces and to decapitate the nation, then the Russians may well be preparing for a preventive strike on the United States today. We don’t see any of this in major media. The American public hasn’t a clue as to its vulnerability because of the extremely risky, unprovoked, and careless, ignorant policies coming from the head of its national security team, coming from the Pentagon, coming from Mr. Blinken’s State Department. Everyone’s concentrated on the election and how they’re going to get rid Trump, etc. And no one is paying attention to whether the country will survive the next idiotic provocation that the United States stages against Russia. So this is food for thought.

Alkhorshid: 25:34
What you’ve just mentioned about this aircraft carriers of the United States, it’s so important and it makes sense, because we have seen the same type of attitude on the part of the United States when it comes to those missiles in Romania. They were talking about “we are putting these missiles in Romania to take care of Iran” and we know that the main reason was Russia. I think we can totally understand what’s the concept behind this type of activities on the part of the United States.

Doctorow: 26:08
Yes, and it’s all below the radar screen. Nobody’s talking about it until Mr. Klintsevich raised it on “The Great Game”. I say a bravo to him. He was 20 years as an officer in the Soviet and then Russian armed forces. He wasn’t doing this job. He was in the parachutist group, which has to be the toughest as nails part of the Russian military. And when he speaks about the fierce fighting going on in Kursk, this is a guy who has seen bullets. He is otherwise given the title as the director of the Society of Russian Afghan War Veterans. He fought in the Afghan war. Hey, this guy has to be taken seriously as a, both as a politician, because he’s now in the upper chamber of the bicameral legislature. He’s a member of the steering committee, note, steering committee of the governing party of Russia, United Russia.

27:22
Therefore, I say– I don’t want to make him out to be the only source worth listening to. Of course not. I don’t speak of the possible methodological errors of my colleagues only to fall into a trap myself. But he is a man worth listening to, and the points were made on the most authoritative Russian political analysis show. So, for these reasons, and I said listening closely to what you hear on the main news programs in Russia, you hear the words that the fight that is going on is a fierce fight. Now, again, to put this into simple language that everyone understands, this means a lot of Russian soldiers are dying. Nobody talks about it. I didn’t expect that, frankly, because the Russians, by evacuating Kursk and the areas that were occupied, could be occupied, was making for itself a free fire zone in the whole territory. And they’ve been dropping everything imaginable to take out both equipment and personnel of the Ukrainian fighting force.

28:39
By the way, one other little detail which I skipped. Since we’ve all been saying, my colleagues have all been saying, that there’s no way to reinforce, to resupply the 10,000, 12,000 men who originally went into Kursk at the start of this operation, dot, dot, dot. Mr. Klintsevich says they’ve raised it from 12 to 20,000. I don’t know how they were sneaking through the holes. But remember, this is a 160 kilometer-long line. Moreover, simultaneously, these otherwise battered ragtag Ukrainian army that as you would imagine they are, if you read the Daily Press, they’re staging simultaneous cross border attacks in the two neighboring provinces or regions of Russia that have a common border with Ukraine. This is Bryansk in the north, closest to Belarus, and it’s Belgorod in between Bryansk and Kursk. They’re attacking there. So, the Ukrainian forces are not depleted to the extent that many people believed, myself included. Again, I was judging by what I heard in open sources, and until Mr. Klintsevich came forward and dropped his little bit of bad news, there was no reason to question that. Now there is.

30:18
So the Russians are facing very severe challenges. They don’t want to take their eyes off the ball, the ball being the Donbas front, where they’re concentrating their best forces, their best troops, their heaviest artillery and other equipment, but they are stalling for time in Kursk, because they cannot resolve it in one blow.

Alkhorshid: 30:47
The other concept would be: we know that behind all of this rhetoric coming out of the West when this conflict started, they were trying to say that Russia is trying to subsume all of Ukraine, but it seems that behind this rhetoric they were trying to make an Afghanistan-Iraq-like situation for Russia in Ukraine, which — can we say that it’s not possible for the West to create such a situation for Russia in Ukraine right now?

31:23
Well, when you listen closely to what’s being said in major media, you hear contradictory descriptions of Russia. Russia was either too big or too small, it’s too strong or too weak. And what is being said, you know, varies from day to day and which newspaper you’re listening to. The idea that we’ve heard is, “Oh, Russia is about to gobble up not just Ukraine. But Mr. Biden’s idea is they want to advance and take over the former Warsaw Pact countries, if not move their tanks straight to Portugal. So, that’s the Russia, the aggressor, Russia, the vicious country.” Other people are saying, “Hey, look, these guys can’t even take take back Kursk, Oblast. How do you imagine they’re going to gobble up the rest of Ukraine, let alone snap up Poland, the Baltics, and you name it?”

So we hear from day to day, this estimation of Russia, its intentions, its capabilities, rocking back and forth from the most amazing and monstrous aggressor to a kind of spoiler that really can’t do much. So let’s get it over with them.

Alkhorshid: 32:36
How do you find– because after this offensive, after this attack on the Kursk region, we’ve learned that Russians, the Putin administration, was talking about that there is no possibility of having any sort of peace talks with Kiev. And right now when you see Modi going to Kiev and trying to– it seems so strange in my mind. And why is he trying to do this, in your opinion?

Doctorow:
Well, for one thing, he would like to move ahead of China. I think he’s very– there’s a fierce personal competition between the leaders of … China and India, particularly on the Indian side. Much of the hope for investment and industrialization of India would be coming at the expense of China, we know that. So there is a rivalry at the level of leaders. And China set out its own peace plan. China is a great friend of Mr. Putin and has presented itself as an honest broker in the Ukraine-Russia war, in the same way that it successfully moderated the dispute between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

33:56
So I think Mr. Modi wants to do an end run around China and be very useful to both parties. Also, I think because he is doing so much to embrace Mr. Putin physically when they met in Moscow, which really unnerved Washington, as well as generally policy-wise. I think this is a token to Washington, saying, “Hey, look, I’m not such a bad guy. I can be helpful to you, useful to you whenever you’re ready to wind down the war in Ukraine and need help with an exit ramp.”

34:39
So, he’s being rather cagey. He’s a good politician, he survived a lot of things. He has no illusions about the United States. He’s not soft in the head. After all, Mr. Modi before he won his presidential election was personally sanctioned by the United States for his nationalism, his Hindu nationalism. And so, he’s felt the backhand of the United States on his skin. What he does is calculated to India’s national interests. And so it is with this visit to Kiev, he may have been somewhat useful in toning down Mr. Zelensky, but that’s– we’ll see in the days ahead.

Alkhorshid: 35:28
Yeah, and you’ve mentioned that Zelensky is getting so desperate, but do you think that Washington goes with the plan of giving him long-range missiles at the end of the day? Because that would be hugely in the same direction that the, this Russian analyst that you see, Klintsevich, was talking about, Klintsevich was talking about.

Doctorow:
Exactly. If the United States is indeed prepared to escalate just short of World War III, then they will give him the go-ahead. Because the Russians, as I said, Mr. Ryabkov is the really hard voice within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Mr. Lavrov has been quite tough-sounding in recent days, and yesterday included, but the real guy who is tough on the West is Mr. Ryabkov. And he’s come out saying, “Hey, look, watch out, watch out” to the West, to the United States in particular. So the Pentagon is watching out. Whether or not Mr. Blinken and Mr. Jake Sullivan are watching out is another question, how well they can calibrate what they want to let Mr. Zelensky do against the risk of the United States being directly unequivocally identified as a co-belligerent and having war declared on them by Russia.

36:56
Let’s remember Mr. Putin is a lawyer. He takes international law very seriously. And I suspect that moments before he launches an attack on the United States, he will officially declare war. So, I think that Sullivan and company have reason to watch out and not to give permission. But having said that, it’s a safe bet that the most feared U.S. missiles, the Johnson, These are the stealth missiles, the missiles which have a 500, 900 kilometer range, can be mounted on F-16s, two of them at a time, carry a big payload, and most important, are very difficult to detect. The Russians have not experience with that. If these missiles would now be used by F-16s operating in Ukrainian airspace to the limit that is safe for them to do, it could reach a lot of targets, as I said, primarily civilian and military infrastructure, not air bases, because the planes have been moved away. And that would be a casus belli for the Russians. Whether or not this particular point is appreciated by Mr. Sullivan, I don’t know.

Alkhorshid: 38:28
“New York Times” reported that Jake Sullivan is going to be in China talking to Xi and trying to convince him not to help Russia. And it seems that he is going to talk about new sanctions, new tariffs in order to convince them. Do you think with the current situation of the Biden administration and … they’re capable of putting pressure on China?

Doctorow:
Well, I think the Russians had a good term for that, what we have in the United States. They call it “the collective Biden”. So the collective Biden is really out of control. I don’t think– I mean, some of my colleagues are very good analysts, and I respect what they’re saying, that this collective Biden is not insane after all. But I’m not so sure about that. You can act in a sane or insane way depending on how well informed you are. And given that the people at the top of the United States do not put any credence in and they’re not even interested in what the Russians are saying, they are flying blind a lot of the time.

One more thing coming back to Mr. … the city spokesman on “The Great Game” show, is that he said, we still have a line of communication to open to the States in extremis. And he believes that if this decision– for example, goes forward to allow the Ukrainians to use the JASSM, to use the HIMARS, to use the other very damaging and dangerous precision strike equipment the United States has given them– if that goes ahead, then this back channel or red telephone would be used as a last warning to Collective Biden.

Alkhorshid: 40:48
Yeah. Just to wrap up this session, do you think that Europe– there is an interview JD Vance gave to the Bill O’Reilly show. He’s talking about that Europe must focus on Ukraine while the US priority is China. If I were European, I would think that this has two messages for Europe. The first would be Europe would be alone in supporting Ukraine if Trump wins. And the second part would be the conflict with China, which would be devastating for Europe. How do you think, what the Europeans are thinking of this type of comments coming out of the United States?

Doctorow: 41:41
Well, Europe is becoming more divided by the day. Mr. Scholz has more or less backed away from providing any further military or financial assistance to Ukraine. And Germany has been the single biggest donor over the course of this, for the last two years. Others, little countries, the Baltics, of course, they will give everything to Ukraine. The Poles are a little bit more hesitant for obvious reasons. They don’t want more refugees fleeing Ukraine and landing on their doorstep. They have quite enough agricultural workers from Ukraine in-country right now. The– Denmark, Belgium, yes, they’re now sending F-16s, or preparing to send them.

42:28
But there is a split in Europe. There’s a split within some very important countries. France is divided, still has no government, and it’s unlikely, I’d say, to have a government for a good long time. The viability of a united EU, not to mention united NATO, persisting in aiding Mr. Zelensky after a victory, say, by Trump, is very, very low to non-existent. I think that should Mr. Trump win the election on November 4th, we will see a draining away of the powers in those who have recently so comfortably reinstalled themselves at the head of European institutions, like Von der Leyen and like the outgoing Prime Minister of Estonia, who was now about to be anointed the Minister of Foreign Policy and Defence.

43:32
These people may keep their titles for a while, but all power will be drained away from them, and we’ll go to the 30 or 40 percent minority within the European Parliament that Mr. Orban has gathered under this title of Patriots for Europe. So I would not count on a united Europe in general, with or without a victory by Trump, although a victory by Trump makes it a certainty that Europe will crack.

Alkhorshid: 44:08
Yeah.Thank you so much for being with us today, great pleasure, Gilbert.

Doctorow:
Thank you so much for allowing me to share these unconventional views with your audience.

Ausgabe von „Dialogue Works“ vom 28. August 2024: Kursk und die Vorbereitungen der USA auf einen ersten, köpfenden Atomschlag gegen Russland

Im heutigen 40-minütigen Chat mit Gastgeber Nima Alkhorshid gingen wir auf viele der Themen ein, die ich in meinem jüngsten analytischen Artikel mit dem Titel „Für Russland ist die Wiedererlangung der Kursk kein Spaziergang im Rosengarten“ angesprochen habe.

Ich war besonders dankbar für die Möglichkeit, die methodischen Fehler zu erläutern, die ich bei den meisten meiner Kollegen in der „Dissidentenbewegung“, die sich gegen das Washingtoner Narrativ aussprechen und heutzutage vor allem auf Youtube zu sehen sind, feststelle. Ich sage das nicht, um mich selbst zu profilieren, sondern um Vernunft und Ausgewogenheit in das zu bringen, was zu einer höchst emotionalen Interpretation der Vorgänge im Russland-Ukraine-Krieg geworden ist.

Es geht darum, dass meine Kollegen Hinterzimmerkanäle in Russland nutzen, und zwar von pensionierten oder aktiven Militärs und von Politikwissenschaftlern, um hier im Westen etwas zu produzieren, was wie beeindruckende „Scoops“ aussieht, aber in Wirklichkeit etwas ganz anderes ist: Damit meine ich, dass die Kollegen wahrscheinlich von ihren russischen Kontakten dazu gebracht werden, irreführende oder ungenaue Informationen zu verbreiten, die die russischen Militäroperationen wie den sprichwörtlichen Spaziergang im Rosengarten und die Ukrainer wie eine dezimierte, zerlumpte Truppe aussehen lassen. Nein, wie ein hochrangiger russischer Militärexperte, der Mitglied des Oberhauses der russischen Zweikammer-Legislative ist, vor zwei Tagen in einer russischen Talkshow erklärte, finden in Kursk heftige Kämpfe statt, und nicht nur ein paar „Bomben weg“ von russischen Jets, die Gleitbomben abwerfen. „Heftige Kämpfe“ bedeutet, dass es auf beiden Seiten schwere Verluste gibt und dass die Bemühungen, die Ukrainer aus Kursk zu vertreiben, einige Zeit in Anspruch nehmen werden.

Alle Herausforderungen für die Russen in Kursk sind auf die Rolle zurückzuführen, die die Vereinigten Staaten dort gespielt haben und spielen. Die USA liefern den Ukrainern Echtzeit-Satellitenaufklärung und Unterstützung bei der Führung und Kontrolle. Außerdem wurde die gesamte Ausrüstung, die die Ukrainer verwenden, von den USA genau für diesen Einsatz geliefert. Und derselbe russische Diskussionsteilnehmer bei Das grosse Spiel sagt, dass diese Vorbereitung durch die Vereinigten Staaten bedeutet, dass Russlands Feind vor Ort in Kursk in besserer Kampfform ist als die Russen.

Und dann gibt es noch den möglichen, vielleicht sogar wahrscheinlichen Zusammenhang zwischen der von den USA geplanten und durchgeführten Invasion von Kursk und der Positionierung von zwei US-Flugzeugträgern im östlichen Mittelmeer, wo sie ebenso leicht einen nuklearen Erstschlag gegen Russland führen könnten wie sie in einen israelisch-iranischen Krieg eingreifen können, von dem wir in den großen westlichen Medien nur hören.

Das größte Problem in diesem Interview ist jedoch die Frage: Wo sind die russischen Experten im Westen, die die Sprache und Kultur so gut kennen wie ich? Wir hören nichts von ihnen. Die Arbeit, den Krieg zu kommentieren, wurde Leuten überlassen, die zwar hochqualifizierte geopolitische und militärische Experten sind, denen es aber an fundierten Ortskenntnissen und Sprachkenntnissen mangelt, die notwendig wären, um die Informationen, die sie von ihren Quellen erhalten, zu überprüfen, bevor sie sie an ihre Zuschauer und Leser weitergeben. Ja, solche Russlandexperten gibt es. Ich bin nicht allein in einem Vakuum. Es gibt mehrere Hundert, wenn nicht Tausende von ihnen in den Vereinigten Staaten. Fast alle sind als Professoren oder Dozenten an Universitäten tätig, wo sie sofort gefeuert werden, wenn sie den Mund aufmachen und öffentlich sagen, was ich sage. Andere von ihnen arbeiten in Denkfabriken wie RAND, wo schon der Gedanke an Widerstand gegen das Washingtoner Narrativ als Ketzerei gilt.