This morning’s interview with News X world in two segments
NewsX World: United States Signals withdrawal from World Health Organization
This segment of my interview starts at minute 4 and deals with the tripartite US-Ukrainian-Russian talks going on today in Abu Dhabi. I say here that the talks are at a strictly technical level and are led for the Russians by an admiral who runs the administration of their Joint Chiefs of Staff, to talk about security issues.
However, this afternoon’s update from the Russian news agency Vedomosti indicates that much more important issues are now under discussion in Abu Dhabi centered on a proposal to provide 800 billion dollars in aid to Ukraine in exchange for Kiev’s dropping all claims to the Donbas and to getting a peace keeping force from abroad to provide security after the peace. This is all very sketchy but is absolutely fascinating. It is not far from my proposal a year ago that the Russian frozen assets worth 300 billion be offered to Ukraine in exchange for their ceding territory to Russia. We all await further details on news of Zelensky’s reaction to the proposal. We also await Russia’s reaction to the notion of any foreign peace keepers being allowed into Ukraine.
NewsX World: French Navy Intercepts Tanker
This segment deals with news of the French capture of a Russian shadow fleet tanker in the Mediterranean, which might be called piracy and is normally a casus belli, should Russia wish to open a declaration of war on France.
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.
View all posts by gilbertdoctorow
Gilbert Doctorow 