Transcript of conversation with Glenn Diesen

Transcript submitted by a reader

Prof. Glenn Diesen: 0:00
Good morning. I hope you’re all having a great day. Today I am joined by Dr. Gilbert Doktrow, an international affairs analyst and historian. It’s great to meet you.

Gilbert Doctorow, PhD:
Well, it’s a pleasure.

Diesen:
So I was just saying, I’m a fan of your work. I read your Substack and of course follow your interviews as well. And I really wanted to get your take on what’s happening in Europe now and also across the other side of the Atlantic, as we see now that the United States, well, seemingly is quite eager to end the war, which appears to be part of a larger scheme to reduce its presence in Europe and pivot to Asia. And if I’m not mistaken, a key counter-objective of the Europeans and the Zelensky seems to be to try to entangle the United States into their conflict.

So is it correct to say that getting the Americans to agree to security guarantees is the main approach forward or the main objective for the Europeans and Zelensky? I’m asking because Trump now just had a meeting with Macron, Starmer and of course also meeting Zelensky, and this appears to be the continuing pattern.

Doctorow: 1:20
Well, Trump is very hard to read. There are discrepancies from one day to another. What he’s saying either that Zelensky, as this came out in the press conference yesterday with Starmer, how can you meet with Zelensky on Friday when you just called him a dictator?

And then Trump says, oh, he’s a great guy. These flip-flops to intellectual people make Trump look like a buffoon, they make it look like he’s a lightweight, he’s– even some of my very competent and very worldly-wise colleagues in the alternative media were saying yesterday on a very renowned talk show that Trump is stepping on his own feet and that he will not achieve his objectives because of these reversals and discrepancies. However, what Trump is about is very difficult to understand. And when we try to understand, we’re sticking our necks out, because we could be very mistaken. In this discussion, I will do exactly that.

2:34
I’m going to stick my neck out, because otherwise I don’t see much reason to talk about it. Everyone has had a word, but they haven’t seen what I think I see, that this is a showman. This is a person, I’m speaking about Trump, who has a master feel for creating confusion in order to paralyze his enemies. One of our very well-known observers, former inspector in Iraq of nuclear weapons, was commenting yesterday that Trump doesn’t have any enemies in Europe who should make him worry, because Europe’s got nothing.

3:23
Well, things are not that simple from my perspective. And I think they’re not that simple from Trump’s perspective. If they were that simple, then Trump wouldn’t have received Starmer and Macron. Or he would have used it to trash them, which is what I almost expected when I heard such meetings were going to take place last week. They trashed Kaja Kallas. She flew to the States, and then she was told that Rubio has a very busy schedule and can’t see her.

They could have done that to Starmer. They could have done that to Macron. They didn’t. Why didn’t they? Because these people are dangerous. Now, they have friends on Capitol Hill. Macron was the first person since de Gaulle to be received by the joint houses of Congress, going back to the start of his first term. These are dangerous people who have a lot of friends among Republicans. Not every Republican is kneeling at Trump’s feet, particularly when the issues are, how do we get out of the Ukrainian situation? Or how do we renege on our obligations?

4:33
So Trump is facing very difficult challenges. And he is handling them from my perspective, brilliantly, not single-handedly, but by a team who have been choreographed, the whole sequence: a week ago, the call that Trump had with Putin, the speech that Hegseth made here in Brussels, Ukraine not returning to its original borders and not having a future in NATO; the speech by JD Vance explaining why the United States is not interested in backing up Europe if Europe is not interested in being democratic. These events, are a whole sequence that do not stop.

5:24
I just would like to say, I won’t ramble on. I’d like to bring this to a head right now. I do not listen to what Trump says. What Trump says is confusing, confusing intentionally. Not because his mind is confused, not at all. He knows what he wants.

But he is playing, he’s playing off Starmer, he’s playing off Macron, to sideline them while he’s hoping to complete the business with Russia over Ukraine, and then to present the Europeans and the Ukrainians with a fait accompli. Take it or leave it, because you can’t do anything about it. So that is what he’s doing. He’s disarming his enemies. And the fact that this is a correct reading of him comes from not what he said, but what he did.

6:13
On Monday of this week, we saw something, I don’t know, we haven’t seen it in 80 years. The United States voted with China and Russia against Europe. This is unbelievable. That is earthshaking. And it is proof that Trump is doing what he believes in.

And these are not arbitrary and accidental decisions. He slips into his conversations as he did with Starmer words which, if you were listening closely, tell you what he’s really about and not what he seems to be about when he’s very politely taking the invitation from King Charles from the hands of Starmer and giving him a big firm handshake and all of that. And he says in the middle of it that he’s known Trump for a long time and he doesn’t believe that Trump will betray his word. What more do you want?

7:07
If you want to listen. If you don’t want to listen, of course you didn’t hear it. This is why we are in very interesting times and very encouraging times. And I don’t think that I am falling for Trump. What I’m saying is based on very concrete and specific things that have happened in the last 10 days.

Diesen:
Well, I think you’re probably correct. I know that Jeffrey Sachs made the same comment in a conversation we had, where he pointed out that the noise of Trump has to be separated from his actions. And indeed, I think it can be helpful when looking at everything from this claim to Canada to ethnically cleansing Gaza. And none of this actually looks possible. It would be too crazy. But of course, it is interesting if you look at the noise he’s making what kind of a space it’s creating for maneuver.

7:59
And regarding you mentioned the Zelensky comments that is no longer a dictator. This is well, this is possibly part of Zelensky’s motivations as well, because Trump has gone along with Putin in terms of challenging his legitimacy. So if you challenge his legitimacy as a leader, the fact that Zelensky wants to sign these deals himself, it could suggest that he’s trying to regain his legitimacy with Trump. Now, if this is all he wants, it looks like a very cheap deal for Trump to be honest. But I saw the same with Macron and Starmer.

He was awfully vague on all the important issues which matters, primarily than security guarantees and He tried to send them away smiling, but they didn’t actually get anything. There was no promises. And of course, the United Nations things. I think this is as an action, This is very important. This is very historical, the fact that he didn’t want to name Russia as the only participant or only aggressor, the only one causing this conflict.

9:15
And this is something he also often repeats. This seems to be very important if you want to get a settlement to the conflict, because once you identify only Russia as the bad guy, it’s very difficult to have a proper compromise. But again, how do we know who he’s buttering up? Do you see his approach to Russia and the desire to end the war in Ukraine as genuine, or what is the ultimate objective here?

Doctorow:
No, I think it’s absolutely objective, and I’ve taken into account remarks that were made yesterday that this has to be done very quickly, because if it isn’t done quickly, it won’t be done at all.

Let’s unravel that “won’t be done at all”. What he means is that Russia will take all of Ukraine. That’s the obvious thing. If the negotiations go on, go on, because the Europeans are digging in their heels and trying to slow things down, the only thing that can happen is further loss of territory and probably to capture xxxxxx, which is definitely mentioned in Russian, by Russian experts, by Russian political actors as something they want very much. Of course, that would cut Ukraine off from the Black Sea. It would eliminate any threat to Russia’s presence in the Black Sea, that having some stretch that the British could use to install themselves wouldn’t exist any more.

10:41
Let’s go back to buttering up, and how he treated Macron versus Starmer. Starmer was of course a much more difficult, a much more serious threat to what he’s doing, because the British have been out in front as the, not as a lapdog as in the days of Tony Blair, but as the attack dog, they have been with MI6 among the plotters and implementers of some of the most violent and dangerous actions that have taken place in the last three years. By that I mean the Butcha case, which was used to force Europe to join America in the “sanctions from hell”. That’s of chemical attacks.

11:27
This is about the same time as Butcha, or just a few weeks before Buche, which were going to be laid at the door of Russia, just as MI6 had done this in Syria, putting such attacks at the door of Assad. The British have been vicious and very dangerous for world peace in their behavior in Ukraine. The attack of the Crimean bridge, this was all British-engineered. So I think that this is appreciated by Trump, and he had to find a way to neutralize Starmer. He did.

11:58
You’ll notice that the announcement that he’s putting into effect almost immediately, the 25 percent tariffs on everything in the EU, was made one day before Starmer came. It’s not an accident. And from the press conference, it was clear to me that the main thing that he and Trump were talking about over their working lunch was how Britain could avoid that fate and how a special deal could be cut as the Brits wanted from the time that they left the EU in the Brexit. They expected to have a special trade deal with the United States, which never happened because Biden, with his pro-Irish bias and distaste for everything British, didn’t give it to them. On the contrary, if we speak about emotions and personal influence on conduct of affairs, a Trump is a softy on England.

13:11
And so for him, it’s very convenient to divert the attention of the Brits from the settlements in Ukraine, which doesn’t bring any votes to Starmer, and instead to get him fully involved in the special trade deal, which would have a very big political boost to Starmer at home.

Diesen:
Yeah, so this is a switch more than just offer them the trade. Yeah, that’s an interesting observation. I didn’t really pick up on that, how much they escalated the tariff threats immediately before Starmer came. Of course, it’s good to have a character as well if you want to shift folks away from Ukraine. But they have two obstacles. One obviously are the Europeans who are now the main actor trying to prolong the war in Ukraine and avoid all negotiations, even diplomacy. But the second would be Zelensky, because of course, after Macron and Starmer, we now have today Zelensky in the United States, well, to sign this mineral deal. But obviously, there’s more going on here.

14:24
Zelensky’s main objective is also then to get some form of security guarantees, which could be used to pull the United States into the conflict. But how do you see Trump approaching Zelensky on this? Because, like you said, the British and the French can create problems for the United States, But does Ukraine have anything any more? Or can they just push Zelensky aside if he doesn’t fall in line? How do you read this situation?

14:56
I don’t think it’s a good moment to try to push Zelensky aside and to call elections at once, because we know who’s going to win: Zaluzhny. Zaluzhny is not one bit better than than Zelensky is on continuing versus ending the war, judging by his latest statements, his latest published statements in the past week. I forget, “The Spectator” where he published his remarks. And so the Ukrainians, I think, will just be left to the side for a while, before Trump and company decide what to do with them. But I think they will be presented with fait accompli, and they will have to accept it or face extermination.

Their situation is not pretty, but I’m not terribly concerned about the fate of one Mr. Zelensky. He has been a mass murderer. One million of his compatriots are in graves or are severely wounded and will never have normal lives. So all because of this war that he has perpetuated against all common sense, against all normal military doctrine.

Diesen: 16:10
You mentioned Britain’s very profound role in this whole conflict and you mentioned the Crimean bridge, Butcha, all of this. But of course, Britain was also pushing the hardest, I think, for these deep strikes into Russian territories, which again, if we would go to a nuclear exchange, this seems to be the path. But also, we saw that the British were quite central in undermining the Minsk agreement for those seven years as well. We can’t also forget that it was Boris Johnson who went on behalf of the US and the UK in 2022 to cancel the Istanbul agreement. So it does seem like the British have a huge role in this.

17:03
Even after the coup in Ukraine, as the “New York Times” reported, on the first day after the coup, the new intelligence chief of Ukraine, which again, approved by the US and UK, the first thing he did on the first day apparently was to call MI6 and CIA to have a trilateral covert partnership against Russia. So they have really been very much at the center of this. But again, for the British, this was always in partnership with the United States. So this, the fact that the Americans are turning back now, how will the British deal with this ultimately?

Because they have two options they can, one, they can try to preserve this special partnership by folding to the Americans and doing what they want, or alternatively, they can see this as taking on a new post-Brexit key role in Europe by trying to fill the shoes of United States, no matter how unlikely or unrealistic this would be. But would you have any predictions how the British are going to play this? Because they seem like they have a much more key role in this war than the French.

Doctorow: 18:11
Oh, they do. And as they’ve invested much more politically, as you say. Macron, let’s remember, he’s a chameleon. He has changed his views on whether or not we should approach the Kremlin, whether we should approach it with tanks, or approach it with an olive branch, repeatedly over the last two years. Whereas the British have been unswerving in their position about the need for Ukraine to win and Russia to lose.

I’m publishing my war diaries, as I call them, within the next four to six weeks. First is volume one covering 2022 to 2023, and then there’ll be, I hope the war comes to an end and I can put an end to this publication for the volume two this year still. And what I found coming through what I’ve written, of course, I’ve been mistaken, mistaken, mistaken, always calling the end of the war when nothing like that happened, like everyone else. All peers in particularly in the non-mainstream press have been calling “it will fall in two or three weeks”, that it was going to the wall. It’s all over.

19:30
But these sensationalist comments, I can understand. They attract viewers, and viewers attract sponsors to internet platforms. But that doesn’t make them valuable by themselves. I, of course, have made my mistakes. But what I found in my book, the leitmotif in my book, is writing history looking forward, as opposed to writing history looking backward.

But looking backward, things come up and appear to be very important, which weren’t important when we were looking forward. I was amazed at how I had missed the importance of the Istanbul agreements and of their being cancelled. Missed it. No, I wrote about it. But I was listening to Russian news and to Russian intellectual opinion makers. And they weren’t very happy with that. They thought they were getting more, that Putin was giving much too much to the Ukrainians. And so when it failed, I wasn’t particularly disturbed. Who could predict that one million people will die as a result of this? It was not in our thoughts.

20:47
There are other landmarks over the last three years, which similarly seem to be historic, but only retrospectively. They weren’t historic when they happened. So how things look going forward, I think that effectively, Starmer will be bought off by the trade deal, which is vastly more important to his political fortunes in Britain than anything else. Also with respect to the British and the continental powers, how they relate to Russia, the hostility that we see, the Danes are really over the top right now in their calling for vengeance against Russia. I mean, it may have something to do with one of the most important brands in the country having been stripped of Danish ownership in Carlsberg, Russia, which I think accounted at one point for 10% of the companies overall sales.

And now it’s in the hands of the people who actually built Baltica before the Danish came in. Anyway, that’s a separate issue, but there are reasons why the elites in these countries have been very hard on Russia, even harder than the States, that it’s not clear to many of the political commentators and majority political commentators, of course, in America. And they assume that America is the intellectual wellspring of everything neoconservative and so on, of everything that’s going on. But I hope you’ll agree with me that there’s a very strong neoconservative movement, was always, in Europe without the Americans.

22:32
And so it is they have their own reasons for their enmity for Russia. One is powerlessness; that doesn’t make people generous. They tend to resent and to hate others who are more powerful, more successful than they are. And Russia is vastly more powerful than any of these countries in Europe. They didn’t have to think about it, so long as there was the American backup.

But when the Russians moved into Ukraine, all of the Europeans understood that they are defenseless. And that made them very nervous and being nervous filled them with hatred. I’m not speaking about men in the street. People in the street have other things to worry about, and inflation and price of energy. These were things that bothered people in the street, which they did not connect to the Russian war.

23:30
But the people at the top who were running the show, of course, they were nervous, and they have reason to be. But of course, the war in Ukraine was stage-managed, incited by the United States. Britain had a very important executional role, implementing role, but it was not the source of this policy; that was the United States. And when the Russians finally reacted, after having been poked so many times, then Europe understood they had a dangerous neighbor. They were defenseless because they did _not_ have a dangerous neighbor. They weren’t stupid. They understood that there was no threat from the East. America created the threat from the East for its own reasons.

Diesen: 24:26
Yeah, I think this huge unpredictable threat or uncertainty at least from Russia has been always a key source in Europe for extreme hatred. I think a lot of it actually came after the Napoleonic wars because they had pushed the– well, it [sold] the rivalry between the British and the French and instead it put forward this huge Russia as a huge Eurasian land power which was beyond, I guess the strategic competitiveness of the British which was to control the seas. So it created this hatred which was a key theme throughout the 19th century. Indeed, since Cobden’s pamphlet in 1836 of Russophobia, how the irrational hatred of Russia had more or less consumed Britain to the extent they weren’t acting in their national interest any more. It’s always, again, for 200 years been a very central part of their thinking. But no, so it probably has a huge impact.

25:24
And well, regarding what you said, just comment on the Istanbul. I think the sabotage of the Istanbul agreement was one thing, but if it would have been replaced by something else, it wouldn’t have been so bad. But after sabotaging these negotiations, this is when NATO went out and said, also, we’re not going to negotiate with Russia. We’re not going to have diplomacy. We’re not even going to sit down to talk with them.

And the Ukrainians followed suit by passing this decree that it’s illegal to talk to the Russians. Now, if you see that the Russians are in a conflict for which they consider to be an existential threat, nobody wants to talk to them, then the only alternative is becomes a war of attrition. That is to bleed dry a Ukrainian army armed with hundreds of thousands of men armed to the teeth by NATO. It was destined, I guess, to be such a horrible bloodbath. I was curious, though, in this relationship between the way the Americans are trying to work the Europeans, because a key issue has been this focus on human rights and the freedom of speech.

26:37
As we know with the vice president Vance, in Munich, he commented that the Europeans were taking this authoritarian turn. That is, whenever there’s any dissent in Europe, there’s a tendency to simply denounce it as having evil intentions. So if the Hungarians oppose their far right, the Slovakians oppose it, their far right. When we deal with Moldova, it’s okay to rig an election because the alternative is seen as pro-Russian. The same logic attempting to, toppling, the government in Georgia or even in Romania, where not just the elections were annulled, but even detaining the presidential election winner, the police detaining him. I mean, we tend to get away with this because everything is always framed as being in the support of democracy or anti-democratic far-right, pro-Russian, whatever we want to say to delegitimize.

27:32
But I noticed Vance brought this up in front of Starmer as well, which if everything was about geopolitics, it seems almost very provocative to bring up the decline of free speech in the United Kingdom. Do you think this plays into the wider efforts to get the British on the side, to not oppose Trump’s efforts with Ukraine? Or is this more of a home base issue where Trump has taken this anti-woke pro-free speech position or it doesn’t have anything to do with Ukraine?

Doctorow: 28:12
I think it’s ideological warfare. They are turning the coat inside out. Just remember where the sanctions on Russia began. They didn’t begin in 2022. They didn’t begin in 2014. They began in [2008], in the aftermath of the Georgian war, in the aftermath of Vladimir Putin’s 2007 speech to Munich, when the United States scrambled to find an answer and to punish Russia and a logic for punishing Russia. And it was, as you say, a whole question of human rights.

That was the issue that was used to propel the Magnitsky Act in 2012 in the States to pass Congress and to impose on Russia very significant punishments, sanctions. And then that was followed shortly afterwards by an effort again by the same authors of the Magnitsky Act to have here in Europe a European Magnitsky Act. And what were they talking about? They were talking about violation of human rights, anti-democratic behavior. And so JD Vance and his speech was turning it back on them, turning it back on the Europeans.

29:43
We have these sanctions that originally were put and been built up against Russia, all because it supposedly did not honor human rights and free speech and all the other wonderful virtues. Now, you gentlemen are doing exactly the same thing. This was brilliant. But I say, I think you’re correct in identifying it as having primarily an American audience. It is an ideological battle within the United States.

And he took his spear and carried it to Munich. And he directed against people who well deserved it. It was brave. It was, again, earth-shaking here in Europe for them to be accused of what they rightly should be accused of, knowing as we do, as you certainly know already, the level of censorship here in Europe, which is considerably greater than the United States, has been at the worst moments in this Russia-Ukraine war.

30:51
Yeah, I know. It’s quite overwhelming, and it’s very strange because it’s not met with opposition, it’s almost met with applause because whenever we impose censorship that is shutting down media, crushing dissent, it’s always in the name of protecting democracy, in the name of saving people from disinformation. And yeah, so again, we have one legitimate position and if you deviate from it, it’s always some right-wing conspiracy almost. It’s very strange to see how the tolerance for opposition is gone. So geopolitics aside, I think it was healthy for Vance to push this forward and actually use such a forum to actually hold the Europeans a bit accountable to what’s happening. Of course, I don’t think the Europeans took the message though, because all the media effectively just explained that Vance is a MAGA, He’s a Christian fundamentalist, he’s maybe a Putinist, he’s taking China’s side over [Europe].

31:52
It’s all labels again, to just show how bad he is for criticizing us, but no one actually counters his arguments, because there was a lot of good sound arguments about the dangerous path we’re going down, which is obviously not in our interest either.

Doctorow:
Well, there are two things I want to call out. One is, I want to go back to where you started this discussion on China and the pivot to China. I don’t think that’s what’s really happening. I think again, this is rhetoric by Trump. I don’t think it’s policy by Trump. I expect to see a big three, maybe a big four, of a Yalta, a new Yalta. I say four because India would join it. We now see on May 9th the Russians have as their honored guests Xi from China and Modi. I would not be surprised if, again, if Trump has his way and things move swiftly, that Trump will also be there.

32:55
The four of them will be dealing with geopolitical solutions. So I don’t take at face value all of the remarks about a pivot against– the United States has to move its forces out so it can concentrate on China. This is a way of getting the forces out. But it isn’t the end game. The end game will be what they actually _do_ with China.

Now with the question of the ideological warfare, let’s remember what comes with this notion of defending human rights and these values, our shared values. The shared values of democracy are peace loving, because democracies are by definition peace loving. Don’t pay attention to the facts that the Democratic United States has been at war without a moment’s pause for the last 30 years. That doesn’t count. That’s reality. We’re not talking reality. We’re talking theory. We don’t want the facts to get in the way of our theory. And the theory is that democratic nations are by nature supported by the people. And they can afford to be peace-like, whereas autocratic or authoritarian regimes do not enjoy the support of their people.

34:11
And therefore, they have to keep their people in place and under their direct control by waging foreign wars. And that’s why they’re war-like. And here Vance is throwing this back in the face of Europe. The European peace project has actually become a European war project. Not just as an arbitrary accidental thing, but because they betrayed democratic values that are supposed to make Europe peace-like.

Diesen: 34:39
Yeah, no, I thought you brought up excellent points, but actually you’re walking into my last question here because what do you see as Russians’ intentions or approach going forward? Because as you said, if the war continues, they can take all of Ukraine, so they have an interest there. But on the other hand, this is also an historical opportunity to get a deal with the Americans to actually just get a, not just finishing this war permanently in Ukraine, to get a settlement which they agree upon so it won’t flare up again. It’s also an opportunity to deal with the European security architecture as we never had a mutually acceptable European security architecture after the Cold War. So there’s a lot of opportunities there as well.

35:27
But there’s also lack of trust, because we’ve had these resets in the past and the way Russia sees it they were stabbed in the back at their return. So how do you see Russia going? Did you see them preferring to delay settlements so they can get their territory or will they prioritize the political settlement? And also, what does America want from Russia? Because it’s a bit unclear.

It does appear that a key objective is to try to drive a wedge between Russia and China, but to what extent is this realistic? And can this also be seen in the context of Trump calling for this great-power dialogue that is talking about reducing nuclear weapons, slashing military budgets. I’m just trying to separate the noise from the actual objectives. And to what extent would the American objective be able to be harmonized with the Russian? That’s a big question.

Doctorow: 36:31
Again– In the cacophony that’s coming out of the Trump administration, it’s very hard to see what is his real objective and what are his talking points and what he’s using to confuse the people who stand in his way.

And I think, for example, one of the things, one of the ideas that has been thrown out for consideration is to cut the US military budget by 50%. Not by the 5% or 8% a year that was talked about, which was really just moving money from here to there for pet projects and removing projects that have failed. No, no, they actually cut it by 50%. And I think that is sincere. I think this is his objective.

Look, he had an epiphany moment. He was nearly killed. And I don’t think that that had no effect on the man’s understanding of what he can achieve in four years or should try to achieve. So I would give him credence. I would trust him to be sincere to end the war.

As for the Russians, no, of course, they don’t want to take all of Ukraine. That was never an issue. They want, as you just described, a political settlement and a new security architecture in Europe, which they can achieve with Trump. He’s already almost said it. He wants to pull troops out of … Europe. That changes dynamics here. The Europeans can step, can move, shift from foot to foot. Oh, we will have, we will invest in new armaments industry and we… wait a minute. That’s 10 years from now. We’re living today. And today Russia can overrun you, you know, in two or three weeks.

38:13
I think how long would Estonia last? A couple of hours? The reality today is the Europeans are defenseless by their own choice because they didn’t see anything to defend themselves against. And so once the United States pulls back, there have to be someone, either the existing people who will eat their own words and try to hold power by shifting policy to where it’s headed under US direction, or they’ll be removed. I think the first is more likely that people will not be thrown out, but they will change their positions and start to adopt realistic assessments. We’re living in very interesting times and I remain optimistic, but I don’t pay too much attention to words right now.

Diesen: 39:02
By the way, I think I misspoke with Russia taking all of Ukraine. I do think that’s a ridiculous proposition. They have no interest to go into Western Ukraine where no one will welcome them effectively. But walking up to the Dnieper, quite possible. And also it has to be pointed out that the four regions there next, that is Lugansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, they’re not controlling all the territories yet, which have now been brought into the constitution of Russia that this is, well, not their constitution, but that this is their territory.

So do they, I guess, do they see it’s favorable, I guess, to control these territories before they have a deal? Because for me, there’s many things which, there’s not that many things that can be negotiated. For example, no NATO. I think this is a key issue. This is either yes or no. So I think this is just non-negotiable. They can’t accept this. The issue of security guarantees, I don’t think the Russians could accept this either. They might have observers from non-European countries, but to have NATO soldiers being the peacekeepers along the Russian border in a proxy war that just fought with NATO, it doesn’t make any sense at all.

40:18
But in one area where it’s always been very uncertain is to what extent the Russians will be prepared to negotiate over the territories because they’re not controlling all the territories which they’re claiming, well, to claiming that belongs to Russia now. So do you see that there’s any scope there for negotiating over the administrative borders? I asked this in Moscow as well, but no one seems to be quite sure what, well, no one’s playing with open cards just yet.

But is this an area where there could be negotiation? Because this could be a problem if Russia demands, for example, to cross the Dnieper to have all the territory of Kherson and Zaporizhzhye. This would be very difficult for any Ukrainian government to accept. It would also be very difficult for Trump to make the Europeans and the Ukrainians approve. So it looks like it could be a deal breaker. Now if the Russians have more time to seize territories, it will be one thing, but do you think this will be an area where– administrate border that is, where Russia will be willing to negotiate?

Doctorow: 41:25
Well, Putin two days ago addressed this question directly, and he said that they expect to hold all the territory of the oblast as they originally were constituted and as they have been brought into the Russian Federation constitution.

Where are they? They have 98% or 100% of Lugansk. Lugansk always was the oblast that they had the greatest percentage of, but now it’s a hundred percent. Where are they in Donetsk, which was the most difficult case because it’s where the Ukrainians had spent eight years really building up fortifications that were almost insuperable and which were very expensive in manpower to take for the Russians.

The Russians had 50 percent of Donetsk going back two years ago. As a result of the advances in the last several months, they now at 75 percent. And the remaining 25 percent is really a sprint to the Dnieper. Once they take a couple of cities, which are now under, well, one is under siege and two will soon be under siege. The ones that are almost iconic, Kramatorsk and Slavyansk, which were the cradle of the Russian revolt, the Russian-speaking revolt against Kiev 2014, then it’s just flat land to the Dnieper. So if the war goes on for a couple more months, Russians could take almost the whole or all of Donetsk.

43:06
The other two, of course, the capital city of Kherson is on the right bank of the Dniepr. So that is a touchy situation. But the great part of the landmass of Kherson is under Russian control now. It will be difficult negotiations, of course, but I think the Russians will sacrifice something here if it means bringing in the revised security architecture.

And again, we all hear in Trump’s words what we want to hear. I heard that it was as much as accepted in December 2021 ultimatum that Ryabkov delivered to NATO and to Washington. It sounds to me that Trump’s accepted that. He said pulling out American troops from these post 1994 NATO expansion territories, former Warsaw Pact and the Baltics. He didn’t say all of NATO would be pulled out, because NATO also is Europeans. And the Germans, for example, had their advance state postings in the Baltics, but Americans would pull back and that is of decisive importance.

44:23
If he can concede that, and he did it, again, mixed in with other words, so you wouldn’t necessarily pay attention to it, unless you wanted to pick it out, as I did, It sounds like there is the making of a real comprehensive US-Russian agreement.

Diesen:
Yeah, something everyone actually, a peaceful settlement which would actually be focusing on positive-sum gain, which everyone would gain from, because I think the security architecture we built over the past 30 years was always premised on the– stability was premised on the perpetual weakness of Russia. Now I think that’s out of the window. We have to kind of return to the common sense that Russian security also have to be a consideration when you’re developing European security.

45:09
But anyways, I do wish the Europeans would appreciate that what Trump is doing is not capitulation or doing Russia any great favors because the Ukrainian army is collapsing. And as you said, this is happening at a time when the Donbas, they’re almost reaching the administrative border, like three kilometers away from from Zaporizhzhya. And when they reach this, there’s no more fortification lines. There’s no more industrial regions where you can use to set up defense. No more major cities. It’s going to be, as the Ukrainian army now collapses, there’s also open spaces. The deal I think which Ukraine and the Europeans will be presented with if we wait another six months is going to be a lot worse than what we’re seeing now. And there’s not much we can do any more. We lost the proxy war.

46:02
And I see the EU setting up this, preparing a tribunal for Putin. I saw it yesterday. It was very strange. Usually they do this after you win a war, not after you lose a war, but I guess this is where we are. Anyways, thank you so much for your time. Do you have any final comments you would like to make?

Doctorow: 46:21
No, I just think there’s reason for optimism. The Russians themselves are saying there’s no reason for euphoria. There’s a lot of work to be done, But they’re heading in the right direction. The most important thing which captured the imagination of Vladimir Putin and his entourage was the American understanding that the settlement in Ukraine has to be part of a very broad settlement of, a reestablishment of contacts, regular contacts between Russia and the United States by reinstating various programs that are of mutual interest. These programs, whether it’s arms limitation or it’s in space or other topics that are mutual interest. In this case, the new topic would be the Northern sea route.

47:08
The topics themselves have content and value, but the greater importance of these contacts is establishing regular flow of experts there and back. That is trust building. And a durable peace is possible, as Trump seems to understand, only when there is mutual trust. And as Starmer and Macron and all the other Europeans refuse to understand, you cannot have a durable peace with a sworn enemy.

Diesen:
Oh, and I think this is what’s the main source of optimism for the Russians as well. The fact, what they haven’t seen in decades, which is an American leader recognizing that Russia has security concerns. This is a big no-no in Europe. We can’t recognize that Russia has security interests and security concerns. Furthermore, recognizing that we have participated, that is NATO has participated in causing the conflict we’re currently in, instead of being a struggle between the force of good versus the new reincarnation of Hitler.

So I think this is something that, yeah, gives some reason for optimism. Anyways, sorry, I went a little bit over time there, so thank you so much, Gilbert Docterow.

Doctorow: 48:28
Well, thanks for the invitation, I enjoyed it.