Author: 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.

Conversation with Professor Glenn Diesen, 9 January 2026: Russia’s Oreshnik Strike in Warning to NATO

This afternoon’s chat with Professor Diesen presented our best efforts to make sense of the torrent of breaking news this past seven days. Much of this news was generated by Donald Trump and related to his attack on Venezuela, his threats to take Greenland by force and American piracy on the high seas involving the capture of a Russian-flagged oil tanker traveling just south of Iceland. But in the last 24 hours, Vladimir Putin stole Trump’s thunder by a dramatic strike on critical energy infrastructure of Ukraine, reportedly the country’s largest gas storage facility, using its Oreshnik hypersonic missile. Not only did Russia destroy a facility representing half of Ukraine’s natural gas storage but this was done in the neighborhood of Lvov, in the very West of the country, just 70 km from the Polish border, thereby sending an unmistakable message to NATO countries about their vulnerability to this unstoppable Russian armament.

The conversation moved from this essentially new development to the long-standing issues o where the war is headed, what kind of outcome may we expect and in what time period, whether there will be any further Trump brokered peace talks and much more.

Throughout I insisted on Trump’s inscrutability and use of prevarication to keep us all confounded. And I took note of Putin’s long-awaited decisive action to put the fear of God into Europeans by demonstrating that Russia has not only the wherewithal but also the will to defend its interests.

A very Indian panel discussion for your perusal on News X

Trump Greenlights ‘Russia Sanctions Bill’ | More Tariff Trouble For India?

I was honored yesterday evening to participate in a very Indian panel discussion which opens with Indian advertising that you will certainly not find on BBC, CNN or other global broadcasters. As for the discussion itself, note that I appear to be the only non-Indian expert.

The topic was one of great concern to the Indian government and business community, namely the bill presently before the U.S. Senate granting the President the powers to impose secondary tariffs of up to 500% on countries which continue to buy Russian oil. This bill enjoys bipartisan support and is sponsored by the viciously anti-Russian Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and his Democratic peer and fellow Russia-hater Senator Richard Blumenthal from Connecticut. I add parenthetically that I take special interest in these sponsors because Blumenthal just happens to be a classmate of mine from Harvard College, 1967.

We each had just a few minutes to make present our evaluations of the likely fall-out from the 500% tariffs when the bill comes into law, as it inevitably will given that 82 of the Senators have previously expressed their support, making it veto-proof. The subject became news when President Trump came out yesterday saying he will sign the bill, which is a concession to the realities of politics on The Hill.

You will see that all the Indian experts were figuring the angles for India and for the USA coming out of the new tariffs: how this would add greatly to inflation for American consumers on the one hand and how it would harm Indian exports in areas until now not affected by Trump’s tariffs like pharmaceuticals. Regrettably, I limited my remarks to how the new tariffs would founder on the rocks of Chinese opposition. After all, Trump’s early attempts to impose 150% tariffs on China months ago fell through when the Chinese struck back and said they would freeze all sales of rare earth metals to the USA, in effect bringing US industrial production, especially in electronics and military hardware to an abrupt halt. Trump backed down and the imposition of high tariffs on China so far is in a suspended state, which is where it will likely remain to the end of Trump’s term in office.

Regrettably, what I did not broach is the question of how such tariffs would affect Russia and change dramatically how the war in Ukraine is being conducted.

If indeed, Washington succeeds in forcing Russia’s major export markets to stop buying Russian oil and does great harm to Russia’s economy, we will not have to wait to see this damage impair the war effort. On the contrary, we may anticipate that Russia will proceed to do in Ukraine what some argue it should have done a couple of years ago, namely to smash Kiev and Lvov to bits, putting a dramatic end to the statehood of Ukraine and ending the war here and now. I can add based on today’s latest news, which I discussed with News X World this morning, that the message of such an escalatory path has just been given by Moscow to Kiev, London, Paris, Berlin and Washington by the use of an Oreshnik hypersonic missile in a midnight attack on Kiev. I await further news on this very important development to see what destruction actually resulted from the Oreshnik attack, which is only the second use of this missile in the Ukrainian campaign after an initial experimental strike on a hardened underground military production site in Dnipro in 2024.

Transcript of Press TV (Iran) interview of 5 January 2026: WWIII is coming whether we like it or not

https://www.urmedium.net/c/presstv/135647

Transcript submitted by reader Th Hottingen

PressTV:

Joining us from Brussels for more analysis on this story is Mr. Gilbert Doctorow, independent international affairs journalist. Thank you very much Mister Doctorow as always for joining us during this hour top headlines.

Let’s go to start off with the situation with Colombia directly. Donald Trump even called the Colombian President a sick man along with his threat. What do you think according what we have seen so far, do you believe Donald Trump will make a move towards Colombia and how prepared do you believe [President] Petro is?

Gilbert Doctorow:

Oh, I think it’s entirely possible. But let’s keep in mind that what has happened this past weekend has changed international politics, has changed the outlook for peace in the world. We are now in the antechamber of World War III.

What Mister Trump has done is exactly what Hitler did after he signed with Chamberlain a ‘peace-in-our-time’ appeasement agreement. Mr. Trump is behaving like a world dictator.

And this is a message that is of great importance not just to viewers who are interested in following the latest small of developments in Latin America, but to others in Moscow, in Beijing, and also in Teheran.

The United States is a rogue state, and not by my accusation but by pride in that term. This was the term that one of the major thinkers of the NeoCon ideology, Robert Kagan, the husband of Victoria Nuland, put into his books and lectures, going back to 2008 when he was adviser to Mister John McCain.

This is warmongering, this is taking pride in destroying the sovereignty of a country.

So the message that came out of this weekend is a major one for those who value the sovereignty. Bolivia is a small case. Moscow, Beijing and Iran are big potential cases.

PressTV:

And Dr. Doctorow, I would have to ask you also about the protests we have seen in Venezuela; we have also seen leaders around the world who have been calling for President Maduro, for his wife to be released immediately, and the protesters on the ground in Caracas in other cities across Venezuela have promised that they will be getting their legitimate president back. What do you see as the fate of President Maduro at the moment?

Gilbert Doctorow:

I think his fate is miserable. His chance of being released is not much bigger than that of the President of Panama, Noriega, who was captured in a similar manner by George H. Bush, the father of the Bush [George W. or Bush 2] who invaded Iraq, in 1989.

These demonstrations can give heart and encourage well many people who are dismayed by what has happened. They will have no impact, whatsoever. The only thing that America understands is brutal force.

PressTV:

And Mr. Doctorow my last question is to the United States itself. You called it a rogue state. You talked about Donald Trump. When it comes to everything, specifically what you said over the weekend, over the last few years, I mean, just since specifically Donald Trump has taken his second term. There is no international law, we know this, nothing applies to the US. Is there any thing basically in the world that can stand up to this hegemony, this impunity being carried out by the US. And let’s not forget their Western allies.

Gilbert Doctorow:

Yes, there is of course. And that’s forces come together. The Chinese have been very reluctant to enter into a military allience with Russia. I hope they will reconsider that and understand that without a unified position – not just at the United Nations but off the shores of the United States – without a unified military positon each of them is subject to the same fate as Venezuela.

Let’s remember, one week ago there was a drone attack on the country-side residence of Vladimir Putin where his wife and three sons live, by the way. And Mr. Trump immediately said, ‘oh, terrible, terrible’. Yesterday Mr. Trump said: ‘It never happened’. And I think I know why. Because the CIA was part of the plot to kill Putin.

Let’s talk about that openly. I think you and Iran has faced this issue squarely. You know what I’m talking about. And it stands today as valid as it was two years ago when you lost your primeminister.

The United States is a rogue state. And the rest of the world will save itself not by demonstrations in the street but by showing military muscle and preparedness to use that muscle at the risk of entering World War III. Because World War III is coming whether we like it or not.

PressTV:

One more as always I like to thank you very much. Dr. Gilbert Doctorow, independent international affairs journalist joining us from Bussels.

‘Judging Freedom’ edition of 7 January 2026: Trump’s Maduro “Kidnapping” Is an Impeachable Crime

‘Judging Freedom’ edition of 7 January 2026: Trump’s Maduro “Kidnapping” Is an Impeachable Crime

This session with Judge Andrew Napolitano was a sad start to the New Year, as he stated at both the beginning and end of our conversation. We are in a new world order created by what I call here Trump’s latest deal with the devil to raise his sagging popularity ratings at this critical time when the USA enters the season of midterm elections.

Whereas at the very start of his new term a year ago Trump made some very promising, even daring appointments, as for example Tulsi Gabbard to Director of National Intelligence, and whereas there were some wonderful actions to curb the Deep State, as for example, the virtual shut-down of US AID, the agency which had directed illicit funds to local NGOs and other actors engaging in regime change abroad, it appears that Trump has reversed course and has agreed to work with the power ministries for the sake of pumping up his political capital. Nota bene, that this political capital was surely depleted not just by Trump’s failure to achieve a genuine peace in Gaza, not to mention still less success in ending the Russia-Ukraine War, but most recently depleted when he issued the new National Security Strategy document that upended all of US foreign policy priorities since 1949 and must have raised a hullaballoo on Capitol Hill and within the Republican Party establishment.

The net result is that the CIA, State Department and War Department are now once again running the show, setting the targets for foreign and military policy and executing that policy in ways that are simply astonishing and take your breath away, as happened this past weekend in the U.S. attack on Caracas and kidnapping of President Maduro. What we see again is the hubristic behavior of American officials that we have seen without end since Bush Jr. invaded Iraq in 2003. These people, like Pete Hegseth and Marco Rubio, are overconfident in U.S. capability to ‘run Venezuela’ not to mention run the world.

The only thing that can stop this juggernaut is the other two world superpowers, Russia and China. So far both are silent, which does not inspire confidence in where the world is headed.

Interview on this morning’s hourly news bulletin of NewsX World (India)

My appearance on this hourly bulletin begins at minute 2.55 and ends at minute 11.50

NewsX World is generally very good at keeping abreast of breaking news and quite often they are briefing me before we go on air about developments not yet reported by the Russians, by Western mainstream, not to mention Alternative Media. Today, however, they were misled by Macron, by Zalensky and by Mainstream into thinking that Washington has agreed to participate in the ‘peacekeeping mission’ being proposed by the Coalition of the Willing that met in Paris yesterday. Accordingly, I jumped in to point out that Politico this morning says that Witkoff and Kushner did not sign the Declaration of the Coalition yesterday; they were merely present as observers. This same point was made in the latest issue of Russia’s leading newspaper Gazeta.ru which may be considered as a Kremlin mouthpiece.

Also of interest in this interview was our discussion of Russian efforts to provide security to an oil tanker at sea that has re-flagged itself as Russian and is being pursued by American naval vessels. Here I see in the U.S. attack under way a prime example of the utterly irresponsible policies being implemented by the ‘power ministries’ in Washington now that Donald Trump has made his deal with these devils.

NewsX World multi-segment interview today

This interview opens with a discussion of the Coalition of the Willing summit in Paris, which has gathered 35 countries. Host Emmanuel Macron appears to be very satisfied, though surely the value of the exercise is nil. This gathering of losers is negotiating among themselves and have reached consensus on what is essentially a demand for Russian capitulation. Their insistence on a foreign peacekeeping force numbering perhaps 100,000 is an absolute nonstarter with the Russians. But then none of the participants wants the war to end.

Another segment dealt briefly with the latest Israeli violations of the ceasefire in Lebanon that have caused the deaths of hundreds.

We spoke briefly about House Speaker Johnson’s saying that the Trump intervention in Venezuela is NOT an act of regime change, just a measure to correct the behavior of the Venezuelan leadership. This play on words will fool no one and it only shows that American hubris is back with us. The, shall we say, naïve belief that the Venezuelans will accept American overlordship without any resistance will be shattered before long and then all hell will break loose, as it did in Iraq after the capture of Saddam Hussein.

The best segment, in my view, came last when we discussed the treatment of Maduro when he came to the courthouse hearing in chains and was paraded before reporters. As I pointed out, the US has plenty of experience with this particular kind of political theater. I trust the Community will enjoy my comparing Maduro’s court appearance to the way France’s leading candidate for the 2012 French presidential elections. Dominique Strauss-Kahn was dramatically taken off a flight departing NYC for Paris and taken in handcuffs to a Manhattan court, shown off to the reporters on the way, to ensure that his political fortunes were destroyed, all over a phony allegation of sexually abusing a hotel maid. The CIA and FBI staff have lively imaginations for mischief. The removal of Strauss-Kahn resulted in the election of the nitwit Francois Hollande and five wasted years for France.

My yesterday interview on Press TV (Iran): WWIII is coming whether we like it or not

https://www.urmedium.net/c/presstv/135647

The questioning opened with Donald Trump’s latest threats to Bolivia, but with the gracious acquiescence of the moderator we moved on to the bigger issue of the United States as a rogue state threatening the sovereignty of one and all. This rogue state can be stopped not by street demonstrators chanting ‘free Maduro’ but by creation of a Russia-China-Iran mutual defense alliance prepared to resist Washington’s aggression by force of arms.

Who is Hitler and who is Chamberlain today?

For the last 50 years at least, American hawks have time and again brought up a lesson from the past to justify their foreign and military policy predilections that amounted to war-mongering.

Every attempt to find accommodation, détente with America’s ideological adversaries was systematically denounced as “appeasement” in the tradition of Chamberlain seeking ‘peace in our time’ when dealing with the German Fuehrer, whose ambition was absolute political, economic, military domination in Europe.

Donald Trump’s absolutely shocking act of aggression this past weekend compels us to face a new reality: that the President of the United States is today the incarnation of Hitler with ambition on a world-wide scale.

I am not repeating here the cheap and empty political posturing of the Trump haters in America who have called him a fascist because he opposes their Green agenda, opposes their LGBTQ+ Rainbow parades and support for sex change operations among adolescents, and opposes other extreme Liberal values that amount to the destruction of the foundations of society in pursuit of I, Me, Me, I.

No, those complainers about Trump are abusing the notion of fascism to serve their own selfish hunger for political power at any price.

I am speaking about the notion of fascism writ large, as a program to destroy all those nations which do or could stand in the way of American global hegemony.

Trump has trampled on the sovereignty of Venezuela and makes no secret of plans to ‘run’ the country and extract enormous wealth for American corporations by setting them free to exploit Venezuelan oil. He has just renewed his claims to take possession of Greenland. He has threatened Iran with military intervention over the suppression of political disturbances that are a direct result of the country’s economic hardships under crippling U.S. sanctions that go back twenty years or more. Surely Cuba is also in his sights.

The operation in Caracas this past weekend is the template for what is to come. No big invasions, just a very carefully researched and executed decapitation strike that removes to American prisons the leaders of the countries on the Trump check-list.

And why bother adding to the prison detainees? In the past week the CIA targeted Vladimir Putin’s countryside residence with intent to murder. Minister of War Pete Hegseth in the past few days has threatened Putin with “we’re coming for you”.

*****

Given all of the foregoing, I am shocked that some colleagues continue to praise the moderation shown thus far by Russia and China in response to what Trump has done and said this past weekend. We are told that they appreciate the volatility, the narcissism, the oncoming dementia of the man in the Oval Office and are making their highest priority avoidance of a nuclear war by handling The Donald with kid gloves.

Dear friends, you are arguing the case for Chamberlain! And was not Hitler in 1938-39 understood to be mentally unbalanced, a madman if I may cut to the quick? The only argument that one might have made in defense of Chamberlain’s appeasement was the lack of preparedness for war of his country and its allies on the Continent. But that is manifestly not the case today, when we all understand that Russia’s conventional forces are more than a match for NATO in its shambolic present conditions, and that Russia’s nuclear triad, its strategic arsenal is years ahead of the USA at this moment. That will likely not be true 5 years from now, but it is true today. Accordingly, there is no logic to Russian pusillanimity, to its not threatening the USA with total destruction here and now if Washington does not pull in its horns and behave in accordance with the UN Charter.

Going back 5 years, I argued in an essay that Khrushchev was right to bang his shoe on the desk in the UN General Assembly. He was right to issue his famous threat to the capitalist world: “we will bury you.”

Khrushchev may have been boorish, but he was brave and he was ready to fight to the death if the U.S. side did not come to its senses. The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 was a test of courage on both sides the like of which I do not see today. The annihilation of tens of millions of people was a possibility, to be sure, but it was offset by readiness to enter into serious and decisive negotiations going to the root causes of the confrontation. After all, in the end, not only did the Russians pull their nuclear tipped missiles out of Cuba but the USA pulled into missiles out of Turkey and Italy.

*****

‘Progressive humanity’ is today reporting on the demonstrations being held in capitals around the world to protest against the imprisonment of Maduro and U.S. aggression.

Regrettably, the net result of these demos will be nil. The only powers on earth that can stop the insane Hitler-like course of the Trump administration today are China and Russia. If they twiddle their thumbs now then you can be sure that the possible war today will be replaced by a certain civilization ending war in five years’ time.

Hourly news bulletin on NewsX World: Trump’s denial that an attack on the Putin countryside residence ever happened

I appear in minutes 21 to 24 on this news bulletin. My main point was that the attack was likely programmed by the CIA and Britain’s MI6. I direct viewers to the longer interview that precedes me with an Indian commentator whose remarks on the scandalous kidnapping of Maduro are worth your time.

Time to impeach Trump

The attack on Venezuela and snatching of President Maduro puts an end to my flirtation with Trump. He has just trampled on the National Security Strategy that he rolled out 3 weeks ago. He has proven that the Neocons control the government and he is nothing more than a figurehead.

I call for his impeachment so as to install JD Vance and give him two-three years to do what has to be done, namely to purge the Pentagon, the CIA, State of the Neocons who constitute the decision makers and implementers in the ‘power ministries’. This accomplished, Vance could then hope to carry out the NSS and position the USA as a major world power among peers, rather than a hegemon and Cold Warrior.

For those in the Community who may be puzzled by my turning against Trump, I recommend that they read the first chapter in my 2019 collection of essays entitled A Belgian Perspective on International Affairs: “Time to Impeach Trump,” dated 21 September 2017, pp. 1-4. You may have overlooked this book because its title was explained only in the Foreword, p. xiii: the ‘Belgian’ in question was not a collective part of this small nation that one could disregard until its Prime Minister Bart De Wever stood up to Ursula von der Leyen and Chancellor Friedrich Merz a couple of weeks ago and saved the global financial markets from the catastrophe that would have followed confiscation of Russian state assets held in Belgium. The word ‘Belgian’ in the title stood for one person, me, who had become a naturalized Belgian. My call for impeachment was precipitated by Trump’s barbaric declarations before the UN General Assembly threatening to annihilate North Korea, a nation of 22 million people.

My coddling of Trump’s vile activities in some global hotspots since taking office again, in January 2025, in particular his enabling the Israeli genocide in Gaza, was based on the reasonable assumption that that was the price to pay for him to enjoy the political capital in the heavily pro-Zionist Congress and in the foreign policy establishment in Washington necessary to pass his domestic and foreign policy programs. The same logic persuaded me to remain silent about his attack on the Iranian nuclear facilities and his enabling Israeli strikes on Teheran and other purely civilian targets in their 12-day war.

But the recent months of Trump’s superintending so-called peace negotiations to end the war in Ukraine have shown that at best his efforts are incompetent and so are condemned to failure. Holding separate talks with each of the warring parties and agreeing with each side to their entirely contradictory peace plans shows that he is posturing and that nothing of use can come out of these talks. Moreover, no peace agreement that met the Russian demands of resolving the underlying reasons for the war, namely turning back NATO expansion to Russia’s borders and getting Washington to consider revising the security architecture in Europe, will get approval in Congress now that everyone has read about Trump’s hopes to overturn 76 years of American foreign policy priorities by the language of his NSS document.

Accordingly, I view without prejudice and on their merits Trump’s attack on Venezuela and the kidnapping of President Maduro and his wife to face trumped up charges of drug trafficking in the USA. And on their merits Trump has egregiously violated international law. Sad to say, he has not set a precedent, but is following a pattern of ‘rogue state’ behavior established by President George H.W. Bush when he invaded Panama in December 1989 and seized president Manuel Noriega. Noriega then spent years in U.S. detention and died there.

Let us remember that ‘rogue state behavior’ was precisely what one of the chief popularizers of Neocon ideology, Robert Kagan, husband of the notorious Victoria Nuland, urged upon the United States in books and speeches. That is to say, scorn for all legal constraints on how foreign policy is conducted for the sake of maintaining U.S. global domination.

The difference between what H.W. Bush did in 1989 and what Trump has just down now in Venezuela must be called out. Bush was just ‘kicking ass,’ as they say in the States. Trump is implementing a farther- reaching geopolitical objective of driving all foreign powers out of the Western Hemisphere, which he seeks to maintain as Washington’s exclusive hunting preserve. To be more specific, Trump has attacked not just Venezuela. He has attacked China which is a main export market for Venezuela; conversely, China is highly dependent on Venezuelan oil and an American take-over would surely cause economic harm to Beijing. In this regard, the warm-up exercise to yesterday’s snatch operation was the U.S. capture of two Venezuelan oil tankers, one of which was carrying oil destined for and already paid for by China.

Going back still further, this American attack on Venezuela is a continuation of the attack on China’s commercial activities in Latin America that we saw still earlier in 2025 when Trump brought pressure on Panama to remove the Chinese from their control over the Canal.

*****

What lessons can the world’s two other superpowers draw from Trump’s outrageous attack on Venezuela?

As for Russia, the message should be crystal clear to President Vladimir Putin that he does not and cannot have a partner in Donald Trump. Russia must proceed on its own path to resolve the Ukraine war, and as I have been saying in recent months, the sooner the war is ended, whether by a decapitation strike on Kiev and other decision-making centers, or by storming Kiev with ground forces, the better. Russia now has a window of opportunity that it should exploit without hesitation. If President Putin is unable to act decisively in this sense, then he should resign and pass the torch to someone in a younger generation who is level-headed, has proven experience at high levels of the government and is decisive, not wishy-washy.

As for China, this attack on Venezuela is de facto an attack on China. Generally, Chairman Xi is more decisive and has more resources to threaten the USA than does Putin and Russia. If ever there were a moment for China to resolve the Taiwan issue it is here and now. The Americans have just stolen Chinese oil and are attacking a major supplier to China. Xi will not straighten out relations with Washington now by remaining silent and failing to respond appropriately. Such reticence will only encourage further provocations and give Washington time to better prepare for armed conflict.