‘Judging Freedom’ edition of 19 November:  Why Russia Needs to Win Its War

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In the hour before this show, the news which I had received from the Indian broadcaster WION early in the morning that Steve Witkoff, Donald Trump’s emissary for the Ukraine war talks, was going to meet with Zelensky in Istanbul later today was superseded by news that the meeting was cancelled by Zelensky. Per WION, Witkoff planned to present America’s latest 20-point peace plan which had been substantially agreed to by Russia and so was likely to be very harsh on Ukraine.  Nonetheless, the dry residue of this news is that there have been highly secret talks between Team Trump and Team Putin to arrive at this peace plan, which was not considered possible by the great many experts in both mainstream and alternative media who despise and underappreciate the constancy of purpose of Donald Trump.  To my mind this secret backchannel finally explains the extraordinary efforts of Putin to ingratiate himself with Trump during his speech and Q&A at the Valdai Discussion Club annual meeting in Sochi two months ago. It also bears on the dispute between Deputy Foreign Minister Ryabkov and other officials close to Putin when Ryabkov said the time for diplomacy was over and the momentum of the Alaska summit was a spent force.

These and other key questions are, I believe, worth a listen.  I think in particular of the way that drone warfare has been the great equalizer in the Russia-Ukraine war over the past six months so that the kill ratio in favor of Russia during the artillery war phase of the conflict is now no longer relevant, and Russia is bleeding more than anyone says; or the way that regime change may come about in the coming week if Zelensky is offered a ‘golden handshake’ to resign

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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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