In this hourly news bulletin, I come on at minute 3.45
Fresh from the highly supportive meeting with European leaders in Berlin a day earlier, Zelensky sets out before Dutch legislators his demand that the peace agreements also foresee condemnation of Russia’s aggression and thereby uphold the principles of international law.
As I characterize his speech, “[Zelensky] is satisfied that his view of the war is now being upheld by the Europeans, namely that Russia has lost the war, it should capitulate, it should pay reparations, it should punish its leaders, and so forth. This is the most remarkable propaganda that one could ever hear. The loser is declaring that the winner is…the losing side and must capitulate.”
The truly shocking feature of the speech is that it would appear that the Americans in Berlin on Monday, Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, did not object. Were there consistency in US policy, they should have risen from their seats and walked out. Instead, we are told at the start of this news bulletin, that the USA will participate in the plans to ensure Ukraine’s security which includes European boots on the ground. And that will never be accepted by the Russian side, as Trump knows very well.
I await further news from Washington on what Team Trump has actually agreed to. But the situation at this moment does not look good for anyone awaiting peace in the foreseeable future.
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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Gilbert Doctorow 