Transcript of Legitimate Targets interview: 26 April

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https://inosmi.ru/20250425/soglashenie-272760070.html

Legitimate Targets: 0:00
Welcome back to “Legitimate Targets”, everybody. I hope you’re all having a great day. There are some big shakeups ongoing with these US-Russia peace talks over the NATO proxy war in Ukraine. And I’m really not that surprised. I, well, we’ll get into everything and what’s going on. But things are not going as swimmingly as President Trump initially assumed they would in his plan for a 24-hour peace deal.

So joining me today to break this all down is a very accomplished Russian expert, Gilbert Doctorow. He’s an independent political analyst based in Brussels. He’s got a PhD in history, I believe Russian history in specific from Columbia University and a 25-year career business focus on Russia and Eastern Europe. You can find his books on Amazon, you can find his substack online, which includes a lot of his transcribed conversations and interviews.

And also I’ve seen him on many of our good friends’ shows like the Duran and many other geopolitical shows online. So without further ado, Gilbert Doctorow, thank you so much for joining me today. How are you?

Gilbert Doctorow, PhD: 1:19
I’m very well, thanks. And thanks so much for the invitation.

LT:
Of course, it’s great honor to have you here. My first question for you is … we just got news that Trump is planning to roll out the official final proposal for the Ukraine peace deal, as the media is calling it. Who knows if that’s true. But he is only in this peace deal, supposedly rumored to be suggesting a de jure Russian annexation or claim over Crimea, nothing about the Donbass. So what do you think about this deal?

Doctorow: 1:59
I think that Trump has already understood that there will be no deal. And he wants to extricate himself from this. He has, in his statements of the past week, he said and reiterated this was Biden’s war, not his war. His objective was to stop the war.

But I think it’s fairly clear that he hasn’t had much success in bringing the parties together. And even his latest comments a day or two ago, that this week would be definitive and the two sides will agree. This is just a smokescreen. The reality that I see is that Trump is going to walk away from this, which is probably the smartest thing he can do, because there’s no way that the irreconcilable positions can be reconciled. And he is taking up time and energy of his top people on a hopeless mission.

2:57
He doesn’t say that, of course; it’s obvious. But I think the fact that Rubio has cancelled his participation in the meeting of the Brits and I think the Germans and the Kiev representatives in London today is indicative that this is coming to closure and will be acknowledged as unworkable. Why do I say that and why isn’t Rubio coming? Because Zelensky has issued a statement that he, under no circumstances, will recognize Crimea as Russian. This comes against the context of a change situation, particularly called out by yesterday’s “Financial Times”.

They were the most insistent on reporting that Vladimir Putin has dropped his maximum demands and has agreed to stop the Russian advance in Ukraine, to freeze it at the present line of confrontation, and not to pursue what is in the Russian constitution now, the full acquisition of the four oblasts of Eastern Ukraine that Russia has made part of the Russian Federation following referenda there. This refusal by Zelensky to make any compromise, any step back at the very moment when Putin has made a very significant step back and which have moved, which proves the sincerity of Russia’s comments, that they’re not looking for territory. They’re looking for a security arrangement that will … bring them in from the cold.

4:59
That is the end of NATO expansion and the demilitarization, the defanging of the Kiev regime. These are their objectives, above all, not adding one more village or another village to the territory of the Russian Federation.

LT:
I will say right before we went live, I saw that Peskov came out and said that that report in the “Financial Times” was fake news, which begs the question then, if the media for the past three years has been telling us that Russia is about to go all the way to London, they’re about to invade all the way across Europe, what does it mean now that the media is putting out news to try and get the sides to come together and stop the bloodshed and stop the losses for Ukraine.

Doctorow: 5:54
I’m not sure that the “Financial Times” front page article was favorable to Russia as such. They were– and I’m not sure that Peskov is telling the truth. I think I rather doubt it. But why should he? These– if such a move, such a compromise were being entertained by the Russians, it certainly was behind closed doors.

How it leaked out and “Financial Times” got it is a separate question. But that Peskov denied it, well, why not? It isn’t an official position. It hasn’t been officially announced. Therefore, they can say it’s fake news. But I don’t believe it was fake news.

LT: 6:31
Well, at this point, I think it would go to show that, like you said, they’re willing to do anything to try and bring common sense back to the table. And even still, Zelensky is not willing to allow for even Crimea to be, quote unquote, liberated or officially recognized [as] Russia. But I do have to ask you, you know, you were talking about how Trump’s going to essentially wash his hands of this, which I think is good.

I think that’s the correct move. But if the US is still supplying intelligence and maybe other things to Ukraine, who knows? I mean, iha this become Trump’s war now, or do you think there’s going to be a complete cessation of US support?

Doctorow: 7:16
I think Trump is feeling his way, because he’s walking through a minefield. He has got the hawks on Capitol Hill, which includes most of his own party at least, and the whole of the Democratic Party, who want to see the war continue, who are not enthusiastic about his rapprochement or détente with Russia.

That is not one of their priorities. Nonetheless, he is intent on pursuing a détente with Russia, for reasons that came out quite evidently in the last two weeks with respect to Iran. I was invited yesterday on Press TV Iran to comment on the final ratification of the 20-year long-term comprehensive cooperation between the two countries, because for Iran it was very important, very significant. For me, the importance of this, looking at it as a Russian observer, is that it showed to Washington how useful the Russians and Mr. Putin in particular can be in guiding their very difficult negotiations with Tehran, difficult, partly made difficult because of Trump himself and his extravagant claims of what he hoped to achieve in talks with Tehran.

8:40
But here you have a situation a bit like 2013 when Putin pulled the chestnuts out of the fire for Obama over the Syrian weapons, chemical weapons, and their eventual destruction on an American naval vessel. Obama didn’t have the depth of thinking or the political maneuver room to make use of that very big assistance he received from Putin in sparing him the need to attack Syria.

In this case with Donald Trump, Steve Witkoff has obviously appreciated fully the value of advice from the Russians in dealing with the Iranians. How to find a solution that will shut up all of the warlocks on Capitol Hill and in Tel Aviv, and yet will not encroach on the sovereignty and the dignity of Iran, which is an essential precondition for their reaching any agreement with the United States. I think also it’s conceivable the Russians will be active in the process of verification that whatever restrictions are made on the Iranian nuclear program will be carried out faithfully.

10:10
My point though is not about Iran as such. It is the usefulness of Russia in a very delicate and important diplomatic challenge that Trump has partly made for himself. This is a good signal why Russia can be of great value if the relations with the United States are somehow normalized and are removed from the context of the Ukraine-Russia war. This is where I think Trump is headed.

Now to answer your question, well, nobody has an answer to this question. I’ve asked myself this as well. What is Trump going to do about the, not just about the materiel, war materiel, still in the pipeline and being delivered to Ukraine, but what is he going to do about the intelligence, which the United States, critical intelligence, which the United States has been providing to Ukraine for its battlefield operations. As you say, if he were to continue this, then it becomes Trump’s war. There’s no way he can evade that. He and the United States will remain co-belligerents.

11:21
The question of what a co-belligerent means has been raised by the very irresponsible comments to the press, to his own Bundestag by the incoming chancellor in Germany, Merz. His idea [is] doing what the Americans have been doing and that the British and the French have been doing, supplying long-range missiles to Ukraine, doing the targeting for them. But the Germans have a weapon which is probably more dangerous for the Russians because they have no experience encountering it. So at least for an initial period, it could be a valuable asset to Ukraine. And Merz is proceeding on this, or says he will proceed on this.

12:19
And the Russians object vehemently and leave us to believe that they would strike against military assets within Germany, NATO membership or no NATO membership. So the situation around the war remains dangerous for all of us, not just for the combatants. The possibility of escalation into a general European war has not been totally removed, even if Mr. Trump’s hints that the United States will not provide Article 5 coverage to Europe have been repeatedly made.

LT: 13:08
Well, I mean, that was what I was thinking this morning, the thorn in the side that is Europe and the UK. I saw a report the Russians are claiming that the EU and the UK want to establish a naval blockade around Russia, which to that I say you and what navy. But really, how much of a thorn in the side is the EU in establishing a lasting peace, bringing an end to this? And do you think that without the United States, the EU and the UK can provide any sort of a filling of the void for Ukraine in their in their proxy conflict against Russia?

Doctorow: 13:50
Well, I’ve seen various military estimates of how long the Ukrainians can maintain the battlefield lines if the United States stops providing assistance, both intelligence and material assistance.

These vary; it could be several months, it could be a year, or it could be a week. Nobody knows for sure. There’s a big debate among experts and I don’t claim to be a military expert, But I do watch closely what they’re saying. And I see a lot of contradictions. Nobody knows for sure.

14:21
One thing is clear, that [in] reporting that you see in many of the YouTube interview programs by some credible people, they have tended to exaggerate the weakness of the Ukrainians and to overestimate the readiness of the Russians to make an all-out assault and to end the war quickly. Mr. Putin is not for that. He does not want to increase greatly the level of casualties, which has a very political sensitivity within Russia. As for Ukraine, I’ve seen reports from bloggers in Russia, or even statements from Russian soldiers in the field being interviewed by state television, indicating that the Ukrainians, despite all the discussion on how futile their recruitment efforts are, are adding young and well-trained soldiers to their battle formations.

15:32
They have not folded, they have not run away from the battlefield, they have taken enormous losses. As for example, those remaining straggling soldiers that are just across the border inside Russian Federation in Kursk and have refused to surrender. They’re being battered. And the Ukrainian losses in the Kursk adventure exceeds 75,000 dead and mutilated soldiers, which is unbelievable considering that these were among the best-trained and best-equipped units in the Ukrainian army.

16:14
Nonetheless, there is no collapse of the front lines. The Russians are advancing, it’s true, but incrementally. We heard a long time ago that Pekrovsk was under, was to be taken. Pekrovsk, or Krasnoyarsk, as the Russians call it, is an important logistics hub, which is said to be a key supplier of all the military materiel to the Ukrainian forces on the line. But it hasn’t been taken yet. The Russians are moving, as I’ve said, with great caution. The reporting that you see again on all these wonderful, often very, I say almost lurid in their, the titles they give the interviews that are appearing on YouTube, they suggest that the Ukrainians are a dollar short of ammunition; they don’t have enough artillery shells, it’s true.

17:15
But the war has evolved. The main threat the Russian forces face in Donbas is not artillery xxx counter fire. It is drones. For drones you don’t need hundreds of thousands of troops. You need a few hundred of well-trained computer programmers, gamers.

These people with latent talent are abundant in Ukraine, just as they are in Russia. And the Ukrainians have been very effectively fielding various reconnaissance and kamikaze drones, which make the Russians very cautious about massing their troops and staging anything resembling an all-out assault on the Ukrainian front.

LT: 18:05
Well, everything that you’re saying is, I think, a hundred percent correct. There’s no other reason why the pace has been as, you know, compared to the start of the conflict, it’s been as slow as it is now. Because I think both sides have been able to really improve their capabilities of drone warfare and other new sorts of warfare. And it’s, you know, you see the maps, they are only extending just several hundred meters. And that’s a huge victory for Russia at this point. It takes a lot of work to get that nowadays.

But moving aside from the front lines, if in fact the front lines were to materialize and there’d be a peace deal like what Peskov may or may not have hinted at today along the current front lines, or if the conflict drags on and the US is not party to it, do you think that there could be a dropping of US sanctions on Russia? Do you think we could see businesses coming back to Russia? I mean, some of these sanctions from the US have been here since 2014, at the start of the Maidan event. So do you think that’s something Trump would flirt with?

Doctorow: 19:31
Actually, the sanctions go back even earlier. Some go back to 2008, but mostly it was a severe package of sanctions imposed in the Magnitsky Act of 2012, about this supposed suppression of human rights and violations of the Russian prison system and so forth.

That was a very heavy set of sanctions. 2014 also was quite serious, as you say. It was serious enough, I looked at my notes recently, my notes from visiting Russia in 2014 in the autumn after the sanctions were imposed. And I can tell you right now, there was severe impact on the Russian economy in 2014, resulting from those sanctions. Indeed, it took eight years for Russia to build up a resilience to survive America’s eventual “sanctions from hell” that Victoria Nuland’s team put together, which they did successfully, but it didn’t happen at once.

20:36
Where do we go? What was the outcome? What can be the outcome if the American attempts at negotiated settlement fail? And incidentally, why would President Putin even entertain the idea of giving up the territory that is legally within the frameworks of the four oblasts that were incorporated into Russia, even if they actually weren’t held completely?

The logic is that Russia would prefer a legally agreed settlement. That will put an end to any discussion of violence, of terrorist attacks coming out of Ukraine. It would put an end to the European sanctions as well as American sanctions. And so for Russia, there is a lot to be gained by a piece of paper with signatures on it, even if I know so many … observers, so many people who may be watching this program have their doubts. “Oh, why should the Russians sign a paper when the United States does not have a commitment to anything for more than a single presidential term?”

21:57
These are all true, but there is a world out there, and the Russians will certainly build into any agreement provisions that protect them from violation. By that I mean the Russians will not accept any West European troops on Ukrainian territory or military infrastructure on Ukrainian territory. Under those circumstances, they have a long lead time before any kind of threat could emerge on the territory of rump Ukraine towards the Russian Federation. So whether Mr. Trump’s word is worth anything, the Russians can secure their own protection by the wording of the agreement and imposing what’s essentially a capitulation on Ukraine, doing that legally.

22:52
If they cannot succeed, if the Europeans continue to prop up Mr. Zelensky, and to motivate him to resist the settlements that the United States is proposing, then, of course, the Russians have their own decision to make: when they will walk away from this conflict, how much of Ukraine do they have to capture to be confident that the whole effort was worth it? I imagine the Dnieper River as a dividing line tells us where they will stop, where they don’t see any further gain for themselves by proceeding. And of course, the threats that they can make to the West European warmongers that any presence of personnel or equipment in Ukraine will be instantly destroyed by Russian bombs, missiles, and so forth. I think the Europeans, even Macron or Starmer, they understand who’s who and who has the power over that territory. So I don’t believe that they will violate the Russian prohibition on entering Ukraine.

LT: 24:19
My last question for you, Mr. Doctorow. A few weeks ago we had Zelensky come out and say, “Oh, you know, I want to do this 30 days ceasefire and hopefully we can get negotiations out of this. We can get some sort of a more lasting peace.” If these reports are true, about halting the front lines as they currently are, who do you think is in Zelensky’s ear pressuring him right now? I mean, is it Starmer? Is it the EU? Is it– who is pressuring him to continue on when this is literally what he asked for just a few weeks ago, maybe two weeks ago. And what do you think their end game is here? Because I don’t see how this could end well for them.

25:09
Well, the question of violations of the ceasefire, which is what Mr. Putin used the 30-hour ceasefire, Easter ceasefire, to exhibit, to explain the violations, the 4,000 or however many violations that they say the Ukrainians committed during this period. That was one side of the issue. But frankly speaking, it’s a lesser side. The Russians are more concerned about something else.

If they were to allow a 30-day unrestricted ceasefire, it would be used by the Western powers supporting Ukraine to move in vast amounts of personnel and equipment to prop up the regime. And they will also have a chance to rotate their military units, which the Russian constant artillery bombardment has made virtually impossible.

So the Russian advance, the Russian advantage on the battlefield, will be given away for nothing. And that is the issue, not whether the Ukrainians are going to lob some more artillery at Donetsk oblast residential areas. That’s the least of it. That’s the easiest to demonstrate.

26:42
The re-equipment of the Ukrainian army will not be easily demonstrable. It’ll all be done at night, in hiding, under forests. But the results will be to change the battlefield position, which is now very favorable to the Russians, to one which will be more balanced or perhaps favorable to the Ukrainians. That would be a very foolish thing. It sounds good, 30 days as a down payment on a peace, but you can be sure that Mr. Zelensky had no intentions of making a peace that resembles compromises or resembles an acknowledgement of who has won the war. And that is what– this refusal to accept the loss of Crimea is the perfect example. There is no flexibility. This regime remains radical, Russia-hating and unreal.

27:36
And the backers, Starmer– you asked who’s behind this. Unquestionably, Starmer is the lead, because the Brits from the very beginning, going back to 2014, have been the most anti-Russian, the most vicious in supporting a regime that they knew would fight to the death against the Russians. And that remains the case. Mr. Macron is in the game only because he as this vain man, superficial, empty chameleon, has seized this as his opportunity to move ahead of Germany as the defender of Europe. In the past, going back to the twin locomotives of the EU, Germany and France, the French had the diplomacy, foreign affairs portfolio, and the Germans had the economic portfolio.

28:35
Now the Germans are vying for the foreign affairs-military leadership of Europe. And Mr. Macron is very keen not to let the Germans run away with that as well.

LT:
Well, hopefully, next time we meet and speak, it’ll be under better circumstances and there will be a peace. But given how things are going, I don’t think that’s going to be anytime soon. So Gilbert Doctorow, thank you so much for joining me today. Where should people follow along with your work and stay up to date with everything that you are publishing?

Doctorow: 29:13
Well, I’m very hopeful that they will go to my Substack platform, because that is my primary platform. I am delighted to be on a couple of rather well-viewed weekly interview programs. I’m still more delighted that those, that this one in particular is, four hours after transmission in the States, finds itself in a perfect Russian translation voiceover on the RuTube.ru internet site.

29:46
So the Russians are also watching this, but my primary audience, of course, not Russia. It is the world at large. And I find a great satisfaction that there are so many people out there who are following, looking for information and views in the alternative media, which the mainstream generally does not provide. I don’t want to say never provides, it does. Even the “Financial Times”, Russia-hating as they are in their editorial positions, does occasionally provide some useful and true information about the Russian situation. But the alternative media is of course a better source.

LT:
Well thank you so much for joining me, and I really appreciate your work. So hopefully we can speak again soon.

Doctorow: 30:32
Well, thank you.