‘Judging Freedom,’ 21 May edition: Trump/Putin: Who Has the Upper Hand?

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‘Judging Freedom,’ 21 May edition: Trump/Putin: Who Has the Upper Hand?

Today’s discussion with Judge Andrew Napolitan touched upon several different major developments in international relations over the past week, beginning with the Russia-Ukraine peace negotiations in Istanbul last Friday and the related phone call between the American and Russian presidents on Monday.

I brought to the discussion the optimism that Russian political commentators have expressed on the Vladimir Solovyov talk show yesterday: they are positively impressed by Trump’s success in keeping the European leaders out of the game, by reducing the negotiations to the two sides at war, whereas over the past three years Ukraine had been repeatedly trying to surround itself with as many of the world’s powers as possible thereby using diplomacy to defeat the Russians when a peace is drawn up.

Yes, the Europeans have backed off, which is all to the good. They are anticipating Trump’s announcement that he and the USA remove themselves from the conflict and leave it to the Europeans to carry on if they will.  Indeed, we may expect the Europeans to do just and claim to replace the USA as supplier of money and arms to Ukraine. But that will be done just to buy time while they collectively write a new narrative that allows them also to leave Ukraine to its fate, which will be capitulation in a few months’ time.

Other topics included the first baby steps of Britain and Europe to apply sanctions on Israel for its ongoing genocide in Gaza and what we have all learned from the six days of air war between India and Pakistan.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2025

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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.

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