Transcript submitted by a reader

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09TIrNrAZIA

Prof. Glenn Diesen: 0:00
Hi everyone and welcome. We are joined again by Gilbert Doctorow, historian, international affairs analyst, and also author of many books such as the “War Diaries – the Russia-Ukraine War”, [for] which I will add a link in the description. So yeah, welcome back to the program.

Gilbert Doctorow, PhD:
Yeah, very good to speak to you again.

Diesen:
So one of the more recent news is that Trump says he’s very angry with Putin. He says they have a nice conversation, but then in the evening he goes on bombing Ukraine. And as always, it’s some uncertainty in terms of the difference between the noise and the action. Either he’s seeking to manage opposition at home and in Europe, or he’s lacking in strategic focus and being, you know, swinging a bit back and forth. It’s, I haven’t been able to solve this riddle, if I can be honest. It’s, it’s very, it seems like very erratic behavior often.

1:11
So I was wondering if you can, well, try to share your perspective and shed some light on what you think is happening here, because it doesn’t seem to make much sense, even his argument or even the way he’s going back and forth.

Doctorow:
Well, this is one instance of very important international news where the leading, or the best, most widely seen experts on independent media, on various YouTube channels, are agreed more or less on the facts, and are completely in disagreement over the interpretation. We won’t have a clear indication of what the interpretation is, until we know what the content of his arm shipments to Ukraine [is]. So far we only know about Patriots. There is speculation that’s partly encouraged by his reported discussion with Zelensky over long-range missiles. Can he reach Moscow, can he reach Petersburg?

2:38
And of course, this fired up a lot of speculation about Trump’s possibly giving this important offensive weaponry to Ukraine. We don’t know anything though. That is all– I consider what he’s doing is a continuation of what we’ve seen in the past several months on various international developments.

This is political theater. And he is playing it for all it’s worth. He gets in front of the television cameras daily. He’s on international news. There’s only one person making the news these days, and his name is Donald Trump. So in that sense, the narcissist Trump can be very happy.

3:19
But is there anything more to it than that? Is he, as one extreme interpretation, a hazard, that is by Scott Ritter, is he an idiot? Are the people around him all idiots? Is the Congress populated by idiots? Well, I personally find that a very poor start for serious analysis of most anything, to assume that your opponents or the leading figures of the day are idiots.

I prefer to consider what is behind what seemed to be strange or ineffectual actions. Can it be something else going on? One person who has taken that approach, who has a lot of respect in alternative media, and not only, is Colonel Douglas Macgregor, who was saying that Trump adopted the least-bad solution to the pressure he’s been receiving from Congress and from Europe to respond to Putin’s very aggressive and very destructive new attacks, aerial attacks on Ukraine. So that was a kind of middle position. I take a position that goes a little bit further than Colonel Macgregor on the political side.

4:45
And that is that Trump knew very well what he was doing. He was saying what he said about arms deliveries, about new sanctions and secondary tariffs on Russia, precisely to silence his critics, to give satisfaction to the most, the loudest-talking member of the Republican group in Congress, in the Senate, Lindsey Graham. Graham could take pride that the bill that he is steering through the Senate now has the support of Trump, who on his own initiative has stated to the public that he will be adopting the key point here of secondary tariffs at a hundred percent.

Well, that’s one thing, silence the critics. I can tell you that my recent appearances on various video programs has been picked up by the Russians. And they pick up precisely this point from my message, which to my mind is the least important part of my message, that he was silencing his critics. No, for me the most important thing is the 50 days. The fact that he has given President Putin 50 days is indicative that he has little or no intention of continuing the war, of making Biden’s war his own war, but instead is giving Mr. Putin time to finish up the job, in the same way that he instructed Netanyahu early in his presidency to get on with it, do whatever dastardly things you have to do in Gaza, but let’s be done with it and move on. That’s what he was saying to my way of thinking, to Vladimir Putin.

5:41
But none of us will know what really has happened. Has he joined the new cons? Has he made common cause with them? Or is he duping them, as I believe, with these words about sanctions and arms shootings, and intends to go for his detente? The proof will be what is in that package of weapons being shipped.

Diesen: 7:07
Yeah, the 50 days. I was thinking a bit about this as well. It could be a delaying tactic in order to not have to pick a side or make any big decisions because again, he wants to normalize relations with the Russians, but he doesn’t want to alienate too many in his own camp. It could also, as you said, allow the Russians to finish off what they’re doing. Well it could also be an effort to negotiate, to put some pressures, a deadline. So it can be interpreted in many ways.

But this is something that confused the Europeans a bit as well. Why do we have to wait 50 days for these sanctions? And his response was simply, well, 50 days isn’t that much. Maybe it comes earlier. But I’m often inclined to lean in the direction that there is incompetence or as you said, the stupidity, but on the other hand, he does from, yeah, from the past decades, he’s always talked about the importance of strategic ambiguity when you negotiate.

And he does like to think of himself as a negotiator. So if you, if you’re … playing with [a] too-open hand, it’s very difficult to … get the deals you want. So again, this is something his own administration says as well. “We won’t let anyone know exactly what we’re thinking or what we’re doing.” This is what he was always criticizing Biden for as well.

8:45
So if it works or not, putting that aside, nonetheless, I think we can conclusively say that this is something he believes in, this strategic ambiguity. So I do see the argument there, that ambiguity allows him to get some room for maneuver to do other things. And the pressure, as you said, has been mounting, given that the Russian strikes last night on Kharkov are becoming much more brutal in nature, that is both the quantity and the targeting. So one can see why there will have to be some reaction. But I guess your argument though, is that his response to this is to talk big, but it’s somewhat muted because it all depends, I guess, on the weapons he’s sending.

9:41
And I’m not sure if I’m understanding this correctly, but to what extent are the Americans sending weapons, or to what extent are they actually selling them? Because it seems as if he’s selling weapons to the Europeans, and the Europeans can give it to Ukraine, and somehow this has to happen under the umbrella of NATO for some reason?

Doctorow: 10:03
That’s a distinction without a difference. The question that I had in my mind is: is he just going to ship more of the same, meaning more tanks, more Bradleys, more artillery shells, so much as they have them, which certainly must have been in the pipeline. Let’s come back to this question, is this Biden’s war or Trump’s war?

What he said about the ship was authorized under Biden. This is not new appropriations from Congress. So in that sense, I think it is not proper to speak about these shipments making it Trump’s war. Now, if indeed, it is materiel that was authorized by Biden, then it is no cause for worry, because there’s nothing that will threaten the Russians, or will change or will escalate the war. However, if new items are being put in, and particularly offensive weapons, long-range missiles, like ATACMS, which were never shipped, if they are now in the mix, then it’s a very different readout of what Trump is doing. And he would be going beyond the irresponsibility button to a new level that takes us to World War III.

11:28
The Russians have made it plain by their latest revised nuclear doctrine that if they are hit by such weapons– this was either, it was originally discussed with respect to ATACMS and with respect to Taurus– if they are hit with this, they can respond with nuclear arms. And I find it incredible that Trump’s team would not take this into account and would authorize ATACMS or something that could reach far into Russia. So I believe that we’re on the plane of empty rhetoric, shipping things which everyone knows will be of no use to the Ukrainians, because the tanks and the Bradleys will just be hidden in the forest since if they put them in the open space, they’ll be destroyed at once.

Just as the Russians are not using their superiority in tanks on the ground. They are also hiding them in the forest and shooting out from under cover. And they’re using the tanks just as can, more precise can, with maybe 8-10 kilometer range.

12:44
The war has changed. And I don’t see my peers taking that into account properly. What we are witnessing now is massive air attack, not just that came into the head of Putin or his general staff. “Well, let’s try this.”

No, it’s precisely because what they were doing up to this point has reached the point, the stage where it’s no longer productive. The Russians, to advance deep into Ukraine now, would have to take enormous losses because of the drone, the omnipresent Ukrainian drones on the battlefield. Therefore, they have gone to aerial bombardment. Now, once you’re in aerial bombardment and missile strikes, it’s only a half step to using those Oreshniks and getting the damn thing over with. If they take out, if they decapitate Kiev, which is entirely within their possibilities, then a lot of lives will be saved at all sides.

13:42
Now, this comes within the 50 days. It’s entirely possible to finish off Ukraine within 50 days if they decapitate the country with the missiles they have ready. My question is, is Mr. Putin going to rise to that challenge? I don’t know. Nobody knows. And so we may be stuck with still stalling and stalling. As regards aerial attack, it doesn’t have a time limitation the way ground assalts do. Because of seasonality, there is a negligible factor in the devastation that is being brought. So if Putin responds both to the challenge, finish it up, and to the opportunity, now that he’s not going to be escalating, he’s already in the next stage of an aerial rather than ground war, we may see the end of this.

14:41
And I think that Trump could find this very satisfactory. Then the United States and Russia can put their heads together and say, “Well, what are we going to do to put Ukraine back together again?” Along the lines of Russia’s desirata of what they want as their end game. And Europe would be sidelined unless they invite them in on the same conditions. But let’s be constructive. Let’s talk about an investment fund. Let’s talk about a neutral Ukraine. And we’re talking about a rump Ukraine. That could be the basis for moving on to detente. It’s all there. Am I right, am I wrong? We will know in a few weeks, depending on the content of the military package.

15:24
Yeah, that’s what I thought. Now I saw the weapons would be important because, well, if the, well, there’s some flaws in the, in the whole optimism, at least we see now in Europe. Because well, the Europeans, do they have the money?

And do the Americans have the weapons to sell them? And do the Ukrainians have the human resources to operate them? I was wondering if you see it likely in terms of the Tomahawks being sent because this is something that you suggested that would trigger great concern among the Russians. Indeed, having Tomahawks and other missiles in Ukraine was one of the reasons for the invasion to begin with.

But how worried should they be though? Because usually they have to be launched from, you know, warships or strategic bombers. To … what extent– I guess would make sense. Again, I’m never sure if this is a lack of [logic], flawed logic or if it’s a strategic ambiguity, but what kind of weapons would be crossing the line?

Doctorow: 16:40
Well, ATACMS to begin with. No one was talking about Tomahawks in the past. They were speaking about these precisely ground-launched missiles using the already existing HIMARS launchers. The United States shipped a lot of HIMARS, and the launchers arre there. And the same launchers can be used on the ground to launch the ATACMS. And that’s why there was great concern in Russia, because they are– the limitation on the Storm Shadow and the SCALP from France and also Taurus is that they are air-launched. And you have to have planes that are adapted to those particular missiles, and you have to have planes and pilots, and you have to have airfields, which the Russians have done a pretty good job of savaging. So if they were, as you say, the Tomahawks, the version exists, it can be ground launched, it’s quite exotic.

17:40
If these were to be supplied, then we’re heading into the unknown. I can’t imagine that Trump could agree to that, because it would be a level of escalation that takes us just to the brink of nuclear war.

Diesen:
So what can we expect then from the Russians in the next 50 days? You used the word “decapitating” strike. Do you think they can try to go in for finishing off Ukraine? Because again, we’ve spoken in the past about the danger of underestimating the resilience of Ukraine. That is, they do keep fighting on. I thought things would have begun to collapse militarily as well as politically a long time ago, but here they are. They’re still putting up a pretty good fight. But given the huge intensity now, increasing intensity from the Russian side, in attacking targets across Ukraine, do you think they are going for, if not knocking out the military, then going for the political leadership or something to put an end to this war?

Because in the war of attrition, you do exhaust the adversary, but the Ukrainians appear quite exhausted now. At least an attempt by the Russians to go for this over the next 50 days. Or if this is as you suggest, Trump’s purpose might be to give the Russians 50 days to get this done with, whatever they want to do and then end the war. Is this what they might spend their 50 days on?

Doctorow:
There’s one issue here that has to be addressed, and that is the nature of Mr. Putin. Not just that he’s very cautious, but that he approaches everything from a lawyer’s perspective, being a trained lawyer. And that has its up side and its down side. In the given case, I cannot see him giving orders for a decapitating strike under the terms of the Special Military Operation. That would be illegal, as he would determine it.

19:50
However, Mr. Zelensky should be careful about what he wishes for. If he receives any offensive weapons, which he then uses and strikes within the Russian Federation at what they consider to be strategic assets, then Mr. Putin would declare war. That would be considered an act of war. He declares war, and then it can decapitate Ukraine, in the context, only in the context of a declared war, from the perspective of Mr. Putin’s mentality. So there’s the qualification on how the 50 days could be used. I don’t think that Donald Trump is aware of that feature in Putin’s behavior. Certainly Mr. Trump himself doesn’t care a whit for law, what’s written even in the constitution. So it could not occur to him that Mr. Putin would. And that is exactly the case. There has to be a declaration of war for the Ukrainians to receive their decapitating strike.

Diesen: 21:00
I also want to get your opinion on an item in the news, which was that Trump had allegedly asked Zelensky if he’s able to strike Moscow or St. Petersburg, so Putin would feel the pain. And then later on he was asked, I think it was on the tarmac, the same question. And he said, “Oh, no, no, I don’t want him to Moscow.” Do you have any thoughts around this back and forth?

Doctorow:
He was feeding the jackals. And the jackals picked it up. They picked up this piece of rotting flesh very nicely. By here I mean the BBC. They have gone into overdrive on how Mr. Trump is fed up with Putin. He’s now aligned with the haws in Congress and and so forth. I don’t believe that for a minute. But again, this is my my best guess. It is not founded on anything concrete, because we just discussed what the missing pieces to the puzzle are, which will decide whether the puzzle is being assembled, the jigsaw puzzle is being assembled properly or wrongly.

22:11
The discussion was piquant, he knew it would attract the press. It did, of course; as I say it’s all over the BBC today. That’s just what they wanted to hear, that is giving Zelensky hopes that he can strike Moscow and St. Petersburg.

Diesen:
But the, yeah, you referred to the, give them hope to the, to the Europeans and the hawks within the United States as well as Zelensky. But if Trump wanted to end this war and he knows that Russia considers this to be an existential threat and it won’t move much on its key demands — wouldn’t Trump need to mount more pressure on the Ukrainians and Europeans as opposed to, I guess, throwing them some red meat and, well, making them feel more comfortable with this leadership and the possibility of continuing this war instead?

Doctorow: 23:11
Again, we’re in the realm of political theater. And I don’t believe the seriousness of what he has tossed out to the press. As I’ve said, he despises the press and he’ll say anything, that he thinks will make them look like fools.

Diesen:
And, I guess the last back and forth I noticed of Trump was the arms deliveries. It was reported that, I think it was Pete Hegseth that halted arms deliveries to Ukraine. Again, with the engagement with the media, he was first asked, well, he was, he first stated that he wasn’t sure who had halted the arms deliveries. And when he was asked, “Don’t you know what’s happening in your own administration?” He said, “Well, I will be the first one to know. Indeed, I would have ordered it.” Except, you know, he didn’t. So how do you make sense of this?

Doctorow: 24:13
Well, there isn’t any sense to make of it. He’s contradicting himself. And again, it is another expression of his contempt for the press. He’ll say anything to them. He doesn’t take them seriously, with good reason. He is treated very badly by Fox News, by CNN, he’s treated with contempt by them and he returns the coin. So I wouldn’t follow this too closely. Don’t look for logic in what he says with a microphone in front of him. I follow what his feet are doing and particularly I place emphasis on 50 days, which undermines everything else. As you said, he could impose these sanctions tomorrow. He didn’t do that. And so I don’t believe he ever will.

Diesen: 25:11
Okay, so if you put the American side of this war aside to conclude him more or less pursuing strategic ambiguity. We won’t really know yet if he’s appeasing the hawks, the neocons, or if he’s joined them, but we should know based on the weapons which are delivered. Again, the Tomahawks or any long range missiles. This is kind of the red lines.

But if we shift over to the Europeans, what is the strategy of Europe? Are they hoping that any of these weapons would turn the tide or, or is it just to pull America further into this, to make it a long war? What is– it’s very hard to read the Europeans, and here one gets the impression sometimes that there’s no one behind the wheel.

Doctorow: 26:07
Oh, there are people behind the wheel, but I think they’re driving a different vehicle, and they’re concerned with a different road. The road that interests them is power and retaining it. They have put themselves in very fragile position by backing to the hilt a losing cause. And for them now to move the discussion from Ukraine to our own defense and to building our military industry and to how we deal with filling out the numbers of our men and women at arms — that changes the discussion completely.

And it’s all about their retaining power. Because if there is this big threat from the East, then the logic is we are the leaders, like as Ursula von der Leyen was saying, trying to defend herself against charges of fraud and abuse of power over vaccines. And how does she defend herself? Well, “We are now facing a very important threat from Russia, and we need strong leadership”, meaning herself. That’s what it’s all about, is keeping their hands on power at all costs, whether it serves the national interest or not.

27:30
National interest, not to mention Ukraine’s interest, don’t count. The spoils of power, what it’s all about. And here in Europe, in most of Europe, with exceptions, France is an exception because the way it structures its governments differently. But most of the European countries have coalition governments. And the whole game of a coalition government is dividing the spoils of power. So that is the center of attention of everybody at the top in Europe today. Not Ukraine, not Mr. Trump, not tariffs, but keeping power.

Diesen: 28:12
So the initial or the main argument for the past three-plus years– in terms of boycotting all diplomacy, rejecting negotiations and instead just pumping weapons into the war– the argument was, “Well, we need to put the Ukrainians in a better position. We’ll negotiate later once the Ukrainians can negotiate from a position of strength.”

Does anyone actually believe this in Europe now? I mean, your position there in Brussels, because it does seem as if it’s becoming harder to deny that the war is shifting more and more in the favor of Russia. That is the Ukrainians having more and more problems building up. The Russians keep strengthening in the rear.

29:07
And also, again, in a war of attrition, you should look at the ratio of casualties. But the West, we tend to focus excessively on the territorial shifts. But even this is starting to intensify. We see now the semi-encirclement of Pokrovsk, which would be a strategic disaster, opening up the road all the way to the Dnieper and of course, Constanivka, which would then begin to seal off the entire Donetsk region. So there’s a desperation in there, isn’t there? I mean, so what exactly do they hope to achieve here?

Doctorow: 29:51
Let’s divide up the West, because the United States is running on its own course. And in the question of how the war is proceeding, the United States is much more open than Western Europe journalism. A little bit seeps in here, in the press, but it’s really in “New York Times” and the British press. I think the “Financial Times” also has articles which run completely counter to the editorial position of newspaper.

Journalists are reporting what’s going on. “New York Times”, they are every few days speaking about Ukrainian retreats or losses and the Russian advances. No question about it. They’re preparing the public for Ukrainian defeat.

30:38
The most important indication of that was what appeared on Monday in the “New York Times”. They had a front-page article on the crimes that the Ukrainians committed during their occupation of Kursk oblost. This was immediately denounced by Kiev as dissemination of vile propaganda. The “New York Times”, for the first time in the whole war, had an article devoted strictly to the war crimes that the Ukrainians are committing. Now that tells you they’re preparing the public for the Ukrainian defeat and they will find many reasons why they should have lost the war.

I say the game is moving on, the competition now is not about the fate of Ukraine. It’s about the future of the present-day leaders in Europe, who have committed so much of their personal prestige and political power to winning a war that they’re losing. And so they’re diverting attention to, well 2029, how we have to be prepared for Russian invasion and so forth. They’re changing the subject, because they lost this subject.

Diesen: 31:54
Well, the use of the media to exercise narrative control and prepare the public for a defeat in Ukraine — I was thinking the same when I saw the gradual shift in the media coverage in the United States. And of course, this “New York Times” article was quite important as well. The fact that you had an American journalist from the “New York Times”, I think she was already, well, the journalist was accompanying Ahmad through Kursk.

I mean, the fact that this was being done and the conclusion on the coverage was the Ukrainian war crimes. This is something unthinkable two, three years ago, when the Ukrainians could do no wrong and every person even with a SWAT sticker had to be, the first instinct was always to whitewash it. But in Europe though, I do not see this at all, especially in, well, I’m located in Scandinavia, and here the war propaganda is just going full steam ahead, hardly any changes. And indeed to suggest that Ukraine can’t win the war is denounced as Russian propaganda, trying to reduce public support for what we call “helping Ukraine”, which is pushing a war which the Ukrainians themselves want an end to.

33:21
But of all the Europeans, for many people, well, if you would have said this four years ago, that Germany would position themselves as the main country to essentially take over the fight against Russia now that America is pulling back — this would have been very much unthinkable a few years ago, but here we are. How are you reading the German position? Because it’s not simply Merz; this is something deeper in German society, isn’t it?

Doctorow: 33:53
It covers the whole political spectrum. I believe this started with the Alternative fur Deutschland, when they were the first to speak up, well this goes back five years or more, the first to speak up and say, “Hey, we are not responsible for the sins of our grandparents. We are new people, we are new people, and we have to look after our sovereignty.”

That was Avdei. And it’s covered now the whole spectrum of German political life, where they do not take responsibility for the crimes that Germany committed across Europe, not just in the destruction of Jewry.

They believe that they are morally clean, and they follow European values, and they can get up on a soft box and preach to, well, particularly the Russians, who are the _recidivists_ and who have to be properly punished for their violation of European values. So there is the real threat that this is across the whole German spectrum. They willfully are forgetting who they are. And they have changed the role. They openly changed the role.

35:17
The role changed under the German leadership going back 10 years. Merkel was responsible for changing the role, but she did not want to name Germany. Germany did not have a foreign policy, according to Merkel. The foreign policy was made in Brussels, very convenient. And who made it in Brussels? Germans, since they dominated the parliament and the commission.

So de facto, Germany was the dominant force in European diplomacy and in world policy. But this was not acknowledged by the German leadership in Berlin. They hid behind the apron of Brussels. Now they’re coming out from behind the apron and saying, “Yes, we are going to be Europe’s dominant defender.” As if this is natural.

It’s not natural. It was– the world for this was prepared by the gradual collapse of France and its authority. Not just the economic weakness of France, which was established decades ago compared to Germany, but its political weakness, a succession of disastrous presidents. And Mr. Macron is the latest uncrowned king under the French constitution, who defies the French political circles by holding onto power when he has maybe a 20 percent approval rating. The French are politically weak. The Germans have used that to move out in front, to muscle the French aside. Mr. Macron is making a desperate effort, his announcement on Bastille Day, that they are, “Oh, we are also raising our military budgets and to be big defenders.”

37:14
And as soon as the Germans start talking about possibly getting nuclear weapons, well, that is the absolute end of any French claims to being Europe’s defenders. They could hide behind the fact that they and the Brits were the only European countries with nuclear arms. If the Germans now aspire to do that too, then the moment of truth has arrived, and everything that the Germans aspired to in World War II, they now will be realizing, which is something that should give us pause.

Diesen: 37:46
Well, the German shift or return to militarism, it appears to have, well, it’s not exactly that reason. That is, yes, throughout the Cold War, they had this very cautious idea that, you know, learned from history, they’re not going to engage in wars any more.

But after the Cold War, in 1999, the attack on Yugoslavia, that is to wrestle away Kosovo, you saw the logic in the German argument shifting. So in the past, their history of genocide was a reason for why they had to be more constrained. And suddenly over Kosovo, the argument was, well, because of our history with genocide, we have a special responsibility to prevent it other places. So instead of their genocidal history being a reason for constraint, it was now a reason for taking action.

And you see similar rhetoric in Gaza, that is, as if they owed the Jewish population a debt, which is very fair enough after the Holocaust, but this is translated into unconditional support for Israel in effectively making the Palestinians pay for the crimes of the Germans by supporting the genocide there.

39:05
And also during the Kursk operation, when you had German generals appearing on TV, you know, with smiles on their face, being excited as they were speaking about how this was humiliating for the Russians. This was an important part of World War II and almost like a redo of World War II, as they saw German tanks roll into Russia. It’s very unsettling. But besides how the Russians are looking at this, how would the Europeans react?

I mean, you mentioned the French. Certainly the French do not want to be pushed aside. They kind of had a division of labor. The Germans were the economic force, the French were the military and that kind of creates some balance of power within the European Union. Now that you know Germany is going to acquire weapons of mass destruction and nuclear weapons, how comfortable are really the Europeans with this? I think it was Thatcher already in her time, [who] warned that the German unification could bring about the Fourth Reich. I mean, it’s not to argue that we overcome this historical concern. It would be an exaggeration, wouldn’t it?

Doctorow: 40:21
Well, it wasn’t just a Thatcher. Miserand also, he said, “I’ve been liking Germany so much, we want to see two of them.” That concern about Germany existed. And as to Germany’s coming out, so to speak, over Kosovo, actually that was, I think, precipitated by American action.

The whole crisis in the Yugoslav Civil War, was, had a defining moment, and that was the attacks on Sarajevo, the marketplace, I think this was 1996, correct me, and Germany could not bring itself to re-enter Yugoslavia, again, considering the history of Germany’s devastating wars on Yugoslavia during World War II, or attacks and destruction in Yugoslavia in World War II. The Americans moved in, the Americans took charge, and then that relieved the Germans to do what comes naturally. And to go back to bossing people around in these fringe parts of Europe.

41:46
So America had its own role in relieving Germany of its constraints and its hesitation, by bringing it into a coalition of NATO that were doing what Germany was afraid to do, because that had been a dividing line before World War I. What was– Serbia triggered World War I, and Germany did not want to get into that region again.

Well, it is, and it is in a lot of other places where it shouldn’t be. And I have now in mind Mr. Merz’s very proud establishment of the German presence in the Baltics to “protect the Eastern flank”. So the way NATO had protected Germany during the First Cold War. The German position, is there a militarism? I don’t know. I put my finger to the wind. I don’t think so. There is, again, opportunism for the sake of political power in the hands of Mr. Merz and the people around him.

42:57
I’m not sure that that is founded on a militaristic feeling or enthusiasm in the German nation. I rather doubt it. Whether this develops, we’ll see.

Diesen: 43:12
Yeah, I think the Bosnian market attack must have been in ’94 because [Dayton] came in ’95 and then Bosnia was finished. But I was wondering though, the one thing that the Russians are looking at when they look towards Germany is the Taurus missiles. As we know, Mertz used to advocate for them.

Now there seems to be some discussions that will let Ukraine build something similar to the Taurus missile, which the whole thing seems to be dubious as if they’re looking for a cover to supply the missiles. Did you think that some version of the Taurus missile will be supplied or already has been supplied? And if so, what do you expect the Russian response to be? Because my impression is that of all the European countries, a lot of the resentment now is directed towards Germany. And given that they’re competing with the British for animosity, it’s kind of impressive how the Germans have moved up the ranks in terms of being seen as an adversary, if not an enemy then of Russia?

44:23
[We’ll have] the number one enemy of Russia. When Mr. Soloviyov on his famous, on his well-known programs directly calls Mr. Merz a Nazi several times. And not as a joke, but as a dead serious accusation, I take that as being a word coming from the Kremlin, certainly Mr. Medvedev would make similar statements.

So they have earned the position of Russia’s enemy number one. As to the Taurus, I think that Mr. Putin would be in a very tough spot if the Taurus is actually used by the Ukrainians, because that is openly crossing his most important red line, that he has discussed in interviews with Pavel Zarubinuk, that had then been shown repeatedly on Russian television and in the West, saying that these weapons cannot properly be controlled by the Ukrainians themselves and implicate as co-belligerents those who have supplied the weapons like Taurus to Ukraine.

45:34
The same is true, of course, of ATACMS. Even if the Ukrainians are properly instructed on how, what button to push or when, the coding of the path, flight path, the decisions on targeting are all taken by, and the information necessary from satellite intelligence is coming from the United States. And so for Putin to accept this, I think he might as well just give up and stop the war and be overthrown, because that’s what it would mean. It’s incredible.

It’s impossible that he could hold on to power if he did not follow through on his threats to the United States, to Germany for attacks coming via these long-range missiles. And by the way, I firmly believe that some Taurus are already in Kiev, going back several months. Whenever the announcement is made that “in [not long], a month or two, we will ship”, it means they already are there.

Diesen: 46:47
So, well, by the way, I agree with that assessment. I also think this would be the final straw that it would make it impossible for Russia not to attack. People keep saying, oh, why would they risk this? But, well, certainly Germany is willing to risk the war. So it would be too high cost, I think, for the Russians to do nothing. But what exactly could they do? They would be, you know, you have different targets, which would indicate different levels of escalation.

Rather than attacking German military bases, wouldn’t it make, do you see it as more likely to attack German, I guess, industrial facilities where these weapons are actually being made? Or what do you see as, well, again, we can’t get into President Putin’s head, but what do you see as likely or possible targets for the Russians to retaliate against Germany.

Doctorow: 47:51
I think we have to try to get into his head in one respect, and I continue the point I made earlier. The man has a legalistic frame of mind. I think we got a hint how this will play out in a recent statement by Lavrov that if these Taurus are implemented, if their use is authorized from Ukraine and attacks on Russia, then Russia will break all the relations with Germany.

Now, what does that mean? That’s what you do when you’re declaring war. So essentially, again, I don’t believe that Putin will attack anybody without a declaration of war. And I think that that’s what would happen. He would declare a war on Germany and then he would strike.

48:44
And what he strikes, a military base or these production sites, is a secondary consideration. I don’t think this has been properly factored into the recommendations that Karaganov made two years ago. He was not looking at Putin’s way of thinking. “Yes, we have to do this, we take them seriously, our red lines have to be taken seriously, we have to use a tactical nuclear weapon somewhere in Western Europe, blah blah.”

49:14
But that is utterly out of character and out of the professional mindset of one Vladimir Putin. So I take very closely the words of Lavrov about breaking relations. Similarly, you’ll notice that when I think about Mr.– why the Russian stock market went up 4 percent after Trump made his announcement to the press in the White House together with Putin: because there was nothing about confiscating the frozen assets. That surely is what drove the money people in Moscow, because the concern is that for the relative small amount of frozen assets in the States, this would be a signal to Europe to attack the 250 billion euros in assets that are sitting in EuroClear here in Belgium. That didn’t happen because you confiscate assets in state of war. It’s another way of declaring war and would be interpreted that way by the Russians.

Diesen: 50:28
Well, Thank you for your time. I think, you know, this is a very important perspective, especially when you’re discussing an actor such as Donald Trump and well, his administration now acting deliberately with strategic ambiguity, then I guess we’re all vulnerable to our own biases. We might see what we want to see when he’s sending out all these very different signals. So I think what you brought up is, many people might have been missing some of these subtleties.

So yeah, this is, yeah, gives me something to think about. So thank you so much for your time.

Doctorow: 51:10
My pleasure. Bye bye.

One of the advantages of Andrew Napolitano’s channel ‘Judging Freedom’ is that he invites panelists who may agree on the facts relating to some major international development but can offer quite divergent interpretations of the statesmen making that news.

So it has been with respect to Donald Trump’s announcement yesterday that he is prepared to punish Vladimir Putin for disappointing his expectation that a peace with Ukraine would be concluded two months ago.

In his interview with the Judge, Scott Ritter said that the measures that Trump had announced are doomed to fail – both imposition of 100% secondary tariffs against Russia and those countries trading with Russia and renewed, expanded arms shipments to Ukraine via NATO’s European Member States. The Patriot anti-missile system will not be able to cope with Russia’s massive ongoing air strikes across Ukraine. This factual part of Ritter’s assessment is accepted by a great many analysts in independent media, myself included. But then there was Ritter’s explanation of why these ineffectual punishments were announced by Trump: because the President, the key members of his administration and the whole of Congress are just “idiots.’

Another panelist on ‘Judging Freedom’ yesterday, Colonel Douglas Macgregor, described Trump’s announced plans as the least bad measures he could introduce in response to demands from his critics inside Congress and in the broader political establishment for action to turn back the Russian offensive and buy time for the Kiev regime.

I am aligned with Macgregor in looking for logic in Trump’s actions, though I go several steps further than Macgregor has done. To be specific, I stress the timeline for imposition of the 100% secondary tariffs.  Fifty days! That just happens to cover what remains of summer 2025 while a major Russian offensive is underway. And, like so many of Trump’s deadlines we may assume that it will be extended if necessary.

In the meantime, Trump has bought off the most dangerous critic within his own party, Senator Lindsey Graham, who is obliged to say that his pressure for sanctions on Russia has paid off even if he may be disgruntled that it is not going into effect tomorrow.  Moreover, critics of Trump within Europe also are left speechless, now that officially Washington is resuming arms shipments to Ukraine and is cooperating on their plans to supply advanced weapons systems to Kiev including the Patriot from their own arsenals while scheduling replacements produced for them in the USA against payment.

My read-out is that in effect Trump is saying to Vladimir Putin: ‘just get on with it. Finish up this war in the coming 50 days and we will be friends!”  This is, I suggest, a repetition of what Trump told Netanyahu about his Gaza war on Hamas: “Do what you like but be fast about it!”

If Vladimir Putin can summon the decisiveness that so far he has not shown in this war, and proceed to bomb the hell out of Ukraine, up to and including a decapitation strike on the Zelensky neo-Nazi gang in Kiev using those wonderful Oreshnik hypersonic missiles that Russia boasts, then the European continent will enjoy peace once again and the hysteria over rearmament led by Germany can be reined in. 

It bears mention that the moneyed classes in Moscow were very satisfied with Trump’s ‘surprise’ message. The BBC yesterday reported that the Moscow stock exchange rose 4% on the news.

Since Macgregor reports from information provided to him by friends in Washington that the latest behind closed doors talks between U.S. and Russian officials remain cordial, we may assume that Trump remains on track to pursue détente with Russia and hopes that the Kremlin will do what has to be done expeditiously and effectively. These carrots may just have more sway with Vladimir Putin than the sticks that Trump identified publicly yesterday.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2025

https://odysee.com/@RTBalkan:1/intervju-gilber-doktorou-eu-nato-rusija:e

I doubt that many members of the Community are aware of the existence of this Belgrade-based operation of RT. Allow me then to share my experience with them as interviewee a week ago.

The 28-minute chat covered a lot of ground.  It opened with examination of the rancorous deterioration of relations between Moscow and Baku, with particular attention to which outsiders may be aggravating the situation for their own purposes. Here I speak of the French as possible meddlers, given their interests in creating difficulties for the Russians in the Caucasus by stirring EU ambitions among the Armenian leadership and the concurrent patching up of relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan at the expense of Russian interests in the region.  However, on reconsideration, looking at Paris’s strained relations with Azerbaijan’s closest ally, Turkey, it seems less likely that the French have a role in Russia’s problems with Azerbaijan today.  Indeed, it is more likely that Turkey itself is pouring oil on the fires of discord, since it serves their own purposes to reduce Russia’s presence in the Caucasus and raise their own.

We moved on to other key issues of the day, in particular the Russia-Ukraine war and the new aggressiveness of Moscow in staging massive aerial attacks on Ukrainian cities. From there we moved to the questions surrounding European rearmament and the NATO summit’s decision to raise the military budgets of all Member States to 5% of GDP by 2035. We also talked a good deal about Trump’s efforts to extricate the USA from the Ukraine war to better free its hands to pursue policies in the Middle East and against China.

Best wishes to the Serbian speakers among you.

‘Judging Freedom’: Understanding the Russian Way of War

Today’s discussion with Judge Andrew Napolitano had two central issues. The first is captured by the title given to the interview above. The second concerns the vote of no confidence proceedings now going on in the European Parliament which, if successful, would remove Ursula von der Leyen from office.

As I stated here the Russians have seriously intensified their ongoing aerial attacks on Ukraine, with latest figures of more than 700 drones and missiles fired at Ukrainian cities each day and the expectation that this will rise to 1,000 per day shortly. Moreover, they are using more than 1,000 heavy guided bombs each day as well, creating enormous destruction of Ukrainian fortified positions.

Meanwhile, the Russian ground forces are capturing more and more settlements in the Donetsk oblast, as well as in the Ukrainian oblasts of Kharkiv and Zaporozhie.

Nonetheless, it would be a mistake to assume that Ukrainian resistance will crumble in the immediate future. The best proof of the resilience and deadly skills of the Ukrainian army was the killing of Russia’s most decorated warrior, Lt General Gudkov on the front lines in the past week.  Gudkov is the officer whom we all saw on Judging Freedom a few months ago when Vladimir Putin spoke to sailors and officers inside a Russian submarine and announced Gudkov’s promotion to senior officer of all Russian marines. Just days ago, Putin was giving Gudkov’s widow an unprecedented second medal of Hero of the Russian Federation. The state funeral for Gudkov was covered on national television.

The point is that Gudkov died from an artillery counter-strike by Ukrainians near the Russian guns which initiated the long-range duel. The Ukrainians clearly had the equipment, the trained personnel and the will to respond effectively to Russian attack.

Otherwise, latest news from Ukraine indicates that they are now deploying optic fiber controlled drones similar to what the Russians introduced and are using so effectively for several months now. These state of the art attack weapons are impervious to electronic warfare jamming or to distortion of gps signals for guidance.

And so I insist once again that the Ukraine war will end because of the political collapse of Kiev, not due to the collapse of the front lines as such.

The second issue, namely the censure proceedings against von der Leyen is fascinating to follow and thanks to relevant videos now posted on the internet the Community can come to its own conclusions. My point is that the ‘omerta,’ the silence about the abuses of power in the European Institutions imposed and enforced by Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has now been broken and we all are witnesses to the rottenness in the organs governing the 450 million citizens of the EU Member States.

Video of the full 49-minute discussion on the website of the European Parliament:

The most dramatic single contribution to the debate, by Fabrice Leggeri, MEP from Marine Le Pen’s party which Judge Napolitano showed in our interview:

The vote on the motion of censure of von der Leyen comes tomorrow, 10 July.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2025

Transcript submitted by a reader

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOBVJPJr2Lo

WION: 0:01
Trump and Zelenskyy, they met last week. They seemed to have a good meeting on the sidelines of the NATO summit. And then what happens? The US president goes back home, and within days you hear that the US has halted key weapons supplies to Ukraine, a move that has shocked Kiev, to say the least, and left Ukraine in dire need as the Russian forces continue their advance into Ukraine. The White House said that this decision follows a routine capability review of its military needs.

Now, if it’s a routine review, then why wasn’t it accounted for before, or informed to Kiev in advance? If it’s a routine review, then why is there no specific timeline for the resumption of military aid to Ukraine? A lot of questions here. I’m Shivan Chanana and to discuss this further with me on “Game Plan” is Dr. Gilbert Doctorow, international affairs analyst, author and historian. Doctor, always a pleasure speaking with you. The last time US halted military aid to Ukraine was after that Trump-Zelensky Oval Office fallout. This time there was no fallout. There was a cordial meeting, and yet the same has happened. What happened suddenly?

Doctorow: 1:04
It’s truly difficult to give definitive answers to this very legitimate question you’re posing, because so much is going on that is behind closed doors. Perhaps we will know in 50 years, but I think we will not be around in 50 years. At least I won’t. And we have to make a decision today on the conduct of the war, the conduct of foreign policy by Donald Trump.

The point that has to be made first is that Trump is operating in a hostile political environment. Hostile domestically, Congress is not with him on a rapprochement with Russia. Congress is hostile to Russia. Europe wants the war to continue. For Europe, the Ukrainian war presents Russia as the bogeyman, as the hostile enemy, and justifies further funding of NATO and justifies the very existence of the European Union, which has become a war project instead of a peace project under von der Leyen.

2:07
Now, specifically, what do I have in mind? Let us recall that when Biden pushed through his massive aid, military aid, to Kiev, that would be in the period following his departure from office, there were remarks that this would be Trump-proof. But we didn’t know exactly what that meant, and we don’t know today exactly what it meant. But there’s reason to believe that this worked against Trump’s initial wish to stop arms deliveries from the day after he took office.

2:45
We will remember that, you mentioned the halt that was recent. There was a halt from the first days that he came into office. And then it was reversed, and he continued supplies. And many of my peers in what we call the independent media or alternative media in the United States and in Europe have been saying, “Ah, Trump, how can Trump present himself as a peacemaker when he’s continuing to supply arms to Ukraine?” I would maintain here, for the sake of argument, that he was continuing the arms deliveries because his legal team could not find a way to get around the obstacles that were presented in the Biden orders.

3:29
They finally did that, and now we’ve seen the result. The timing is a separate issue, which, of course, you are interested in, I will respond to “Why now?” But it took some time for the Trump legal team to work its way through the American legislation and find means to stop the supply. And do note, they have not stopped it categorically. They stopped it temporarily. That is part of the ruse, that is part of the trick that the Trump team is using now to frustrate the restrictions on its options that were put in the Biden law.

WION: 4:10
Doctor, Now as for reports these paused shipments, they include items which are vital to Ukraine’s air defense and frontline operations, both of which are key arteries to their defenses against Russian aggression at this point. Is this arm-twisting Kiev into peace talks? And as you mentioned and briefly, you know, why is it happening as of now? And there is no date to when this will resume, so is it an open-ended military halt?

Doctorow: 4:42
It’s an open-ended military halt which is not called that. It’s called a “suspension”. And that certainly is a legal trick that is relevant in relations with Congress and the courts in the United States. We have to pay attention to that. Now, you mentioned defensive. But this halt is on both defensive and offensive weapons. The defensive side are the interceptors, Patriots, and other equipment which the United States has provided to Ukraine, but much of which it withdrew at the outset of the 12-day Israeli-Iran war to take to the Middle East to safeguard American bases in the Gulf states.

5:28
So not only is the United States not supplying further Patriots as requested, or should we say demanded by Zelensky in his last meeting with Trump here in The Hague, but it has reduced what little they had before the Iran-Israeli war. That’s the defensive side. On the offensive side, they have cut back on deliveries of precision missiles. This we can assume takes in the various short- to medium-range missiles which the United States supplied earlier. And we may assume it has cut back on artillery shells, which are of vital importance to Ukrainians on the front lines.

6:20
So this is very important. And to whom is this a signal? Well, yes, of course to Kiev, but I’d say also a signal to the European Union and NATO that the United States is withdrawing from this war.

WION:
That’s a very strong signal if that’s exactly how the European Union also perceives it, it is going to be a message with a thousand words. At this point also, Doctor … Russia has declared that they have taken over Luhansk. Luhansk has fallen to the Russian government at this point. That’s what they’re claiming. And in the midst of this, to halt military aid to Ukraine, is it just really bad timing for Ukraine or strategic timing for the U.S.? And after, Luhansk, is Sumy next?

Doctorow:
Well, let’s take a look at the Luhansk story, Luhansk, Lugansk, which is the Ukrainian or Russian pronunciation of these oblasts. There are two oblasts that constitute the core of Russia’s move into what was once Ukraine. This is Donbas. There is Donetsk and Lugansk. From the very beginning, Russia’s occupation or possession of Lugansk was relatively high.

Seventy-five, 80 percent, perhaps, was held by Russian forces or Russian-friendly forces, because after all It was the local militias that held the territory, not the Russian army, when this war started. And in Donetsk it was less than 50 percent. Maybe 40 percent was held by Russia-friendly forces. The reasons are clear. There was very heavy fortification, building defensive concrete bunkers from which the Ukrainians could send their artillery shells or missiles into Donetsk.

8:15
That was very difficult to overcome. And even after two and a half years of war, it was still marginal, with a town that settlements 10, 15 kilometers away from Donetsk city, which is the capital of the province or region of the same name, were held by Ukrainians from which they were daily firing artillery shells into residential neighborhoods. Now, in Lugansk, the advance was slow, from a very high level to begin with. And this conquest of all of it is three percent. Let’s be clear about that. It was the final three percent of the Lugansk oblast that was taken in the last several days by Russian forces.

9:03
Donetsk, where are they now? The Russians are not staging a massive assault. They are go slow, pushing here, pushing there, wherever they detect a weak spot, because the Ukrainians really are undermanned to hold a 1,200-kilometer-long front with equal force and strength. So the Russians have been feeling for weak points and striking there, but making progress every day. And their interest is, first of all, to remove from the field the Ukrainian soldiers, by killing them or wounding them so they’re taken away, to reduce the size of the Ukrainian defenses.

9:47
That has been their primary objective. Taking territory is a result of the first. They have been making progress, and they are concentrating their efforts on a couple of … one could call them, logistics hubs, which supply the Ukrainian front lines. First and foremost is the city of Pakrovsk. Pakrovsk is the Ukrainian name. The Russians know the same town as Krasnoyarsk. So you hear both terms in daily news, depending on what the source was, Russian or Ukrainian. The Russians are not storming the city. That type of behavior, which was typical in the first year of the war, is no longer practiced because it’s very expensive in loss of life on the offensive side, on the attacking side. But they are destroying it systematically by bombardment, artillery, and drones.

10:39
They will capture Pakrovsk, which will greatly weaken the Ukrainian forces along the line, because that’s where their supplies have been coming from and food. Then further afield, a little bit away from Pakrovsk, there are the towns of Kramatorsk and Slaviansk. These were the towns of great importance, iconic importance, in the start of the DAPAC in 2014, when these two oblasts rebelled against the newly installed regime in Kiev following a coup d’état. This is in February 2014. These two towns, or particularly Slaviansk, was held by a very small militia force against a much larger Ukrainian army force.

11:31
And to take it to something that will resonate with American viewers was kind of Alamo of Ukraine. Alamo was a last stand, a last, known in American history for patriotic self-sacrifice. And that’s what was going on in Slaviansk for 85 days in 2014. And so to be retaken by Russian forces is significant, because from there it’s a clear plain straight to the Dnieper River. And that is the east-west divide 50-50 between West Ukraine, which is where the ultra-nationalists come from, and the East Ukraine, which was always heavily populated, majority populated by Russian speakers.

WION: 12:19
Understood. Thanks so much Dr. Gilbert for encapsulating all that information. You’ve really taken the trajectory right from 2014, Crimea to now and what Russia may plan to do next. But as of what Trump has done or what the US is doing with Ukraine, that is anyone’s guess at this point. There’s a lot happening behind closed doors, which one will need to wait and watch. Perhaps sometime from now, the truth is going to come out.

As of now, one knows for sure that there is a lot of backdoor negotiation which is going on, results of which we are seeing in these headlines. Kiev is left scratching their head, they are trying to figure out what to do next when US has halted their military aid and Russia is definitely advancing. With a friend like the US and a foe like Russia, what kind of options does Ukraine have?

13:04
We will be, you know, tracking all these developments closely right here on “Game Plan”. That was Gilbert Doctorow joining me on the show. Thank you so much, Doctor.