It was a pleasure to be invited by Press TV to comment on the negotiations in Riyadh to end the Ukraine war where the key word was “trust”. As I point out, what is happening now between the Trump administration and the Kremlin is an effort to restore trust by a variety of immediate measures, starting with restoration of the respective embassies to full functionality. This also has direct bearing on the future of Iran’s relations with Washington and with the West more generally. Under Joe Biden, the level of mutual trust between the two superpowers had continued its descent from the days of the Bush Jr. administration to the point of zero, just short of full severance of diplomatic relations. Now the task is first to restore mutual trust and then to proceed to solving specific complex tasks, including resolution of the war in and over Ukraine. Do the American negotiators appear to be credible? Are they capable of reaching durable agreements?
Press TV, Iran interview: are Trump’s Russia negotiators trustworthy or just more U.S. card cheats in the tradition going back to George Bush, Sr.?
Published by gilbertdoctorow
Gilbert Doctorow's latest book, "War Diaries. The Russia-Ukraine War, 2022-2023" is a unique contribution to literature on the war thanks to the author's reports on the Russian home front written during his periodic visits to St Petersburg at a time when Russia no longer issued visas and nearly all Western journalists had left the country. Doctorow's two-volume "Memoirs of a Russianist" published in 2020 also constitutes a category of its own, consisting largely of diary entries rather than reminiscences written decades later.. Volume 2 focuses on the community of 50,000 expatriate managers working and living in Moscow during the 1990s, about which none of his peers has yet to write. Gilbert Doctorow is a professional Russia watcher and actor in Russian affairs going back to 1965. He is a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College (1967), a past Fulbright scholar, and holder of a Ph.D. with honors in history from Columbia University (1975). After completing his studies, Mr. Doctorow pursued a business career focused on the USSR and Eastern Europe. For twenty-five years he worked for US and European multinationals in marketing and general management with regional responsibility. From 1998-2002, Doctorow served as the Chairman of the Russian Booker Literary Prize in Moscow. During the 2010-2011 academic year, he was a Visiting scholar of the Harriman Institute, Columbia University. Mr. Doctorow is a long-time resident of Brussels. View all posts by gilbertdoctorow
Gilbert Doctorow 