‘Judging Freedom’ edition of 4 February: What Putin is telling Trump

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‘Judging Freedom’ edition of 4 February: What Putin is telling Trump

Today’s discussion focused on the way Trump and Putin have used their backchannel consisting of their personal envoys to do business with no leaks by subordinates in their respective foreign ministry and State Department. Consequently, we observers are left guessing what is the content of the negotiations in Abu Dhabi which are being described as ‘constructive’ when nothing more is being said. We are left clueless about any possible US-Russian talks over Iran.

As I mention, being in the pool of analysts invited onto various Indian and Iranian television programs that are later posted as podcasts, I receive some very interesting snippets of information that I find useful in developing my own speculation on what is going on between Moscow and Washington with respect not only to achieving peace in the Russia-Ukraine war but also in finding an off-ramp from his threatened attack on Iran that is face-saving for Trump.

I had shortly before the start of this interview received a couple of lines from News X World that they proposed to pitch to me for discussion starting just after the close of the Judging Freedom show.  The main point here is that Russians are speaking of possible removal of Iranian enriched uranium to some foreign country.   About this you will find nothing in Mainstream.  It matches perfectly what a journalist from an Iranian broadcaster told me several days ago when preparing me for an interview they propose to conduct tomorrow: namely than Iranian weapons grade uranium will be shipped to China.   Meanwhile, RT in an article yesterday mentioned that Putin and Trump are in discussion about Rosatom being put in charge of the Iranian civilian nuclear program for medicine and other purposes to ensure that the work stays within the agreed bounds.  All of this constitutes an off-ramp for Trump similar to the off-ramp which Putin made for Trump in 2013 over disposition of Syrian chemical weapons.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2026

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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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