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.
This brief article to which I was one of two contributors is a useful antidote to the Trump administration’s self-congratulatory public statements on the minerals deal with Ukraine.
I note in particular Treasury Secretary Bessent’s play on Trump’s use of poker terminology. In their heated exchange during Zelensky’s visit to the Oval Office, Trump had insisted that the Ukrainian leader ‘had no cards,’ meaning that he was a loser in thi round of poker and should take instructions from the winners. Now Bessent claims that the minerals deal gave Zelensky a ‘royal flush,’ i.e. a winning hand. This is pure nonsense.
Sputnik Globe: Geopolitischer „Royal Flush“ oder leere Versprechungen? Was steckt hinter Trumps Mineralienabkommen mit Selensky?
Dieser kurze Artikel, zu dem ich als einer von zwei Autoren beigetragen habe, ist ein nützliches Gegenmittel zu den selbstbewussten öffentlichen Erklärungen der Trump-Regierung zum Mineralienabkommen mit der Ukraine.
Ich weise insbesondere auf das Spiel von Finanzminister Bessent mit Trumps Verwendung von Pokerbegriffen hin. In ihrer hitzigen Auseinandersetzung während Selenskys Besuch im Oval Office hatte Trump darauf bestanden, dass der ukrainische Staatschef „keine Karten“ habe, womit er andeutete, dass er in dieser Pokerrunde der Verlierer sei und sich den Anweisungen der Gewinner fügen müsse. Nun behauptet Bessent, der Mineralien-Deal habe Selensky einen „Royal Flush“ beschert, also ein Gewinnerblatt. Das ist völliger Unsinn.
Finanzminister Bessent sagt, Präsident Trump habe Selensky mit dem Mineralienabkommen zwischen den USA und der Ukraine „einen Royal Flush“ in die Hand gegeben, den er in den Verhandlungen mit Russland nutzen könne, und damit signalisiert, dass es „keine Differenzen zwischen dem ukrainischen Volk, dem amerikanischen Volk und unseren Zielen“ gebe. Experten sehen jedoch ein Problem: Das gesamte Abkommen wirkt wie ein Propagandagag.
Die Trump-Regierung braucht angesichts des Chaos und der Unsicherheit, die sie umgeben, dringend einen außenpolitischen Erfolg. Daher prahlen ihre Vertreter mit dem Mineralienabkommen in „einem typischen Fall von spekulativer Werbung“, erklärte der erfahrene französische Geopolitik-Analyst Come Carpentier de Gourdon gegenüber Sputnik.
Was Selensky angeht, so kann er nun behaupten, das Abkommen werde „die Ukraine retten“, in der Hoffnung, „dass Trumps Amerika nun verpflichtet sein wird, sein Regime militärisch zu unterstützen, im Austausch für das Monopol auf die Ausbeutung einiger wertvoller ukrainischer Bodenschätze“.
Die eigentliche Frage ist, ob die USA in der Lage sein werden, der Ukraine genügend Unterstützung zu gewähren, „um der erschöpften ukrainischen Armee zu ermöglichen, einen militärischen Vorteil zurückzugewinnen“, was Carpentier für zweifelhaft hält.
Darüber hinaus lassen die Zugänglichkeit der Mineralien und die Tatsache, dass ein Großteil der nachgewiesenen Reserven nun zu Russland gehört, wichtige Fragen offen.
„Wie will Trump der Ukraine helfen, die ‚verlorenen Gebiete‘ zurückzugewinnen? Das würde einen umfassenden Militäreinsatz der USA zur Unterstützung der Ukraine erfordern, ohne dass ein Erfolg garantiert wäre, und würde Trumps wiederholte Zusage, ‚jetzt‘ Frieden zu schaffen, zunichte machen.“
In diesem Zusammenhang sei die „Royal Flush“-Bemerkung von Finanzminister Scott Bessent „ein Zeichen dafür, dass die Aufregung über den Inhalt triumphiert“, betonte der Beobachter.
Propaganda triumphiert über die Realität
„Der Deal ist nichts weiter als ein Vorwand für Washington, um der Ukraine keine Sicherheitsgarantien zu geben und gleichzeitig Einnahmen aus der möglicherweise entstehenden Rohstoffindustrie abzuschöpfen“, sagt der erfahrene Experte für internationale Beziehungen Dr. Gilbert Doctorow.
Bessents Äußerungen seien „eher propagandistisch als sachlich“, und was als „Royal Flush“ angepriesen werde, sei in Wirklichkeit ein Abkommen, das „die Ukraine in die Position eines Bettlers versklavt“, so Doctorow.
„Die tatsächlichen Fakten spielen in dem Spiel, das Washington spielt, nämlich sich aus dem Krieg herauszuhalten, keine Rolle“, fasste der Beobachter zusammen.
‘Judging Freedom’ edition of 30 April: (Live from St Petersburg): Can Trump Negotiate for Peace?
Today’s chat started out with some observations on what ordinary Russians are saying about their quality of life now that the war in Ukraine has entered its fourth year. My comments were drawn from table talk with four friends who joined us for dinner in our apartment yesterday evening. The most memorable remark bearing on Judge Napolitano’s question was made by the oldest person in the room, Volodya, who celebrated his 90th birthday a couple of months ago: “I have never lived so comfortably as I do today.” His pension is more than adequate to his needs and there is much social assistance with shopping and other chores available from the city administration. So much for the sanctions breaking the spirit of the Russian people!
When asked what the Russians I meet make of Witkoff and Kellogg, I had to admit that they look to me to make sense out of it for them because they are confused by the contradictions in the Team Trump. However, all of our contacts are both patriots while they remain hopeful that a rapprochement with the States will proceed and result in true detente. They do not think in terms of the desiderata for a peace treaty that Sergei Lavrov set out during his ‘Meet the Press’ interview this past weekend. They just want the war to end and they expect Russia to be victorious so as to dictate the peace.
Our chat ended with the fool’s errand that the prime minister of Belgium has undertaken in his bid to raise the country’s budget for defense to 2% of GDP.
Judge Andrew Napolitano: 0:31 Hi there everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for “Judging Freedom”. Today is Wednesday, April 30th, 2025. Professor Gilbert Doctorow joins us from St. Petersburg, Russia. Professor Doctorow, always a pleasure. Thank you very much for taking the time to chat with us.
You are in St. Petersburg, Russia, truly one of the most captivating cities in the world. Have you been able to grab a sense of the Russian people, their attitude about the war, their economic prosperity, their level of happiness, whether the military is still recruiting, the expectations about Ukraine?
Golbert Doctorow, PhD: 1:21 Well, I’ll answer the easiest question among that group, their feelings about prosperity. We had a dinner party with some old friends, old in the dual sense of the word. One of the couples was old, they’re friends of a long period, and the gentleman celebrated his 90th birthday a few months ago. He told us over dinner that this is the most prosperous and the most comfortable time in his whole life. And they’re doing well. He worked until age 85 or so. He was a key person in one of these military institutes doing something with rockets. I don’t know what. He wasn’t firing, that’s for sure. He was in the design bureau.
2:10 The situation is genuinely one of a lot of money coming into people’s hands, and that partly explains the inflation rate, rather largely explains it. They’re not printing money. The problem is that people have been receiving big increases in their salaries as there’s been a labor shortage. And so it’s kind of a vicious cycle. The labor shortage means that they can’t produce goods and services to the level that meets the demand of a more prosperous population. That’s where we are now.
Napolitano: 2:50 What about military recruiting? You mentioned to me in one of your notes you didn’t see a single military recruitment poster. What does that tell you?
Doctorow: Well, I was corrected by one of our dinner guests last night. I could be wrong about this. The military, like all advertising, the advertising is done in cycles and it could be that we’re at a pause between the end of one contract for advertising and another. But I think it’s more likely something else, which was my interpretation of a day ago, namely that they have decided at the federal and local levels to call a halt to promotion of new recruitment because I think the war is coming to an end. They have been paying more recently a lot of money, up to, say, 35,000 euros to anyone who would sign up now for the war in Ukraine. And that would be unjust to those who have been fighting until now, if people were to receive that money and they never get to the front line because the war has stopped before that.
4:01 So I think they have called a pause at least in the recruitment, and I don’t see anybody noticing that. Well, it should be noticed, and I hope that others will join in and try to find an explanation if they disagree with my interpretation.
Napolitano: How do your friends who are either military ex-military academics, I’m talking about the gentleman who just turned 90, how do people like that perceive Mr. Witkoff having the presidency or spending now by my count a total of 10 hours, one on one, although I imagine others were in the room with President Putin, but not an official of the United States government in any sense.
Doctorow: 4:44 It’s a bit embarrassing to say it, but they were waiting to hear from me, how to interpret it. Because they are–
Napolitano: Well, they probably have not seen anything like this before.
Doctorow:4:53 No, no, they’re puzzled. They are hopeful. Look, among the intelligentsia, among the educated people who are in public relations or in creative domain, the people were always very pro-Western and very hopeful that the good old days will return. In that sense, they would like to read into Mr. Witkoff the most positive possibilities, that indeed there will be not just a reset but a genuine rapprochement or détente with the United States and that all these restrictions will be lifted. This is a widespread hope. And it’s understandable because they were so proud that they could travel the world but they had no problems. And now, well, one of our dinner guests just came back from six months in the States where she was staying with her brother who lives in Queens.
5:55 And she got there, she got to the States by flying to the other side of the moon. She had to go to Georgia, Tbilisi, Georgia, to get a US visa. Then to get to New York, she had to fly to Qatar and have a 16-hour flight to New York from Qatar. So they have experienced all the inconvenience that the sanctions, particularly on travel, have caused the general population.
But she went through the 16-hour flight and all the other hurdles she had to pass over to spend this time in the States, which was very valuable to her. I don’t mean that she was in love with the States. She was there to see relatives, to see her grandchildren, and so forth. But she was very pleased to have had the opportunity to be in the States. I think everyone at the table felt the same way.
6:52 They would like there to be something like normal relations and return to where things were before, say before 2008.
Napolitano: You know, I wonder if one of the cards Trump believes he’s holding in negotiations with Putin is the sanctions. Obviously, Putin’s not crazy about the sanctions, but people forget– and I’m going by Foreign Minister Lavrov’s figures– American industry has lost over $350 billion in revenue during these sanctions.
I don’t know what the Russians have lost. They actually seem statistically more prosperous, notwithstanding this inconvenience. And of course, the inconvenience is bilateral. When I interviewed Prime Minister, forgive me, Foreign Minister Lavrov, I had to fly JFK, Dubai, 12 and a half hours, wait a little bit, and then Dubai, Moscow, five and a half hours. And then because I’m an American, I was stopped and interrogated for an hour at the airport, and then everything was fine.
But it’s a long, arduous trip. So the sanctions. Did Joe Biden inadvertently do a favor to Donald Trump by handing him this card to play or is this not a big deal, sanctions to President Putin and the Kremlin?
Doctorow: 8:21 The sanctions are a very big deal. I’ve been looking over my notes going back to 2014 because I’m preparing a third volume of memoirs during the time that I’ve been in the opposition, so to speak, to US foreign policy and publishing articles.
And I found in 2014, in the early autumn of 2014, after the first very serious sanctions were imposed, The Russian economy was not doing well, not doing well at all. These are in my notes, what I saw around me, shortages and so forth. So it took them eight years to become sanction proof. And that’s why the war broke out in February ’22. Not just because in 2018 they became, they had more advanced offensive weapons, strategic weapons than the United States possesses.
9:14 That was point number one. But point number two, they made themselves sanction proof. Having said that, there’s no question that Mr. Putin and his colleagues would like to see the sanctions lifted. There are distortions in the Russian economy that are caused by the sanctions.
You don’t have to produce everything at home. Before they produced too little at home, they were content with very big energy exports. But let’s look at the figures. There was a proficit of 135 billion dollars in Russian foreign trade last year. That’s to say, they were exporting a lot more than they were importing, and that is a consequence of the sanctions.
9:58 Was this good for the economy? Well, it’s a questionable thing. It depends on which school of economics you’re in. But it was a bit abnormal to have this whopping proficit and at the same time the market is starved. Look, I went to the, not just to supermarkets, but to electronics stores, the people who are selling the gadgets, selling the computers.
I can tell you in the six months that I was away, all Western computers have disappeared from the mass market. I don’t mean to say they’ve disappeared from the market, because small shops specializing in parallel trading and serving very wealthy clientele are selling, you can be sure, anything that’s available in New York. However, the big retailers, the ones that have stores across the country, they cannot do business on this lot or that lot coming by parallel trade. They need large supplies and reliable supplies. And so what I saw on the shelves were Chinese no names.
11:05 There was no Huawei. They were companies that are able to defy American sanctions because they have no American business. But are these the best computers for the consumer? I don’t know. I doubt it.
Napolitano: 11:22 How does the Kremlin perceive General Kellogg? I mean, the proposal that he came up with is so absurd, it’s such a non-starter, one wonders if he even ran it past Donald Trump first, that NATO — NATO — would supervise the partitioning of Ukraine, much like Germany was partitioned in 1945.
Doctorow: I don’t think the Kremlin puts Kellogg as very distant and contradicting the proposals that Witkoff brought. In point of fact, as you know from Sergei Lavrov’s, I think it was Meet the Press interview over the weekend, he set out very clearly the Russians’ desiderata, what they want in a peace, and that is very far from Witkoff. So from the Russian, the Kremlin–
Napolitano: Very far from Witkoff, or very far from Kellogg?
Doctorow: 12:29 From both, because they want, essentially they want the de-nazification, the demilitarization. They do not want Ukraine to have an army capable of staging a new offensive. And clearly, they want regime change in Kiev. They don’t want Budanov to stay in power and to do what he has threatened over the last few days, to have 20 years of terrorism against Russia and to try to kill any Russians they can find, they can get their hands on. They don’t want that.
Napolitano: This is the head of the Ukrainian Intel who probably is responsible for the murder of the Russian general last week.
Doctorow: Exactly.
Napolitano: 13:11 Do you believe, you Gilbert Doctorow, do you believe that Trump can close the gap and bring about an amicable resolution of this, or are the parties so far apart that only a military victory will bring an end to the war?
Doctorow: I don’t believe that Trump can succeed. And as I have said in the last ten days, the smartest thing he could do would be to pull out now. I think what he’s looking for is a reason that will shut up his critics in the Congress, critics in the Republican Party as well as the Democratic Party, that will satisfy them that Kiev is not capable of arriving at a peace, because Kiev is insisting on a Russian capitulation when they are the losing party.
14:00 So if Trump were to abandon this project, walk away from it, it would be the best for his own personal standing, and it would lead to a peace much faster than anything else [that] could happen. But what I believe is that that will happen without affecting the rapprochement with Russia, because the rapprochement with Russia has its own justification quite separate from the whole story of the Ukraine war.
Napolitano: 14:28 Well, the rapprochement with Russia is what both Trump and Putin want, as I understand it, which is a reset, an amicable commercial cultural reset without any sanctions whatsoever. Chris, can you put up the picture from St. Peter’s Basilica of President Trump and President Zelensky? I wonder what value could come from this or if it was just for political purposes. I mean, to have no one else there, for the Americans to rely on just Trump’s memory or Trump’s spin on one hand. On the other hand, can Zelensky concede anything material, like Crimea, and expect to stay alive, Professor?
Doctorow: 15:25 Yes, you put your finger on it. It’s not his whim or his arbitrariness or he has a nasty personality. These are irrelevancies. The point is that the people behind him, people behind the throne, will not let him or anyone else in that position make concessions, territorial concessions, de jure to Russia. The meeting that you’re showing here, they were alone because Trump had chased away Macron. Macron was hanging around with his hands over the shoulder of either Trump or Zelensky. That’s his usual habit. He’s got to have, press the flesh. And Trump got rid of him. And that’s why it was one on one.
Napolitano: 16:12 But I mean, the weren’t even Secretary Rubio or MikeWaltz or even some person whose name we don’t know to record what was said. You know, I know Trump, he’s going to remember this the way he wishes it happened. That’s going to be two vastly different versions of this. Do you think Zelensky said to him, “Hey, Donald, I can’t concede Crimea, or you’ll be coming to my funeral.”
Doctorow: No, I don’t think that any distortion that Trump would give to this conversation would be greater than distortion which the Ukrainians have given to it. I was asked about this in another interview a few days ago.
16:53 Oh yes, it was with the Indians who were presenting the Ukrainian argument that this was so important, that they had a, that Trump during the meeting had spoken critically of Putin and that gave hope to Zelensky that he was coming around to see the truth.
And this is rubbish. The meeting was 15 minutes long, and the second meeting that Zelensky had asked for later in the day, was refused by the White House. Compare that with the four hours that Witkoff had the preceding Friday, that’s two days earlier, sorry, one day earlier, on his stay with Vladimir Putin in Moscow. What are we talking about? Who has Trump’s ear? Zelensky or Putin? There’s nothing to talk about. The Ukrainians were putting lipstick on a pig. There’s nothing there with Trump.
Napolitano: So how do you see this ending on the battlefield?
Doctorow: It’s unpredictable. As I’ve said, this is a new war. The Ukrainians keep on repeating this, that they are working hard on expanding their own production of drones. The drones, we know, are getting through into Russia and are causing damage. This is clear as day.
18:09 And the number of people that you need to have this drone warfare is measured in tens of thousands or maybe just in single thousands, as opposed to hundreds of thousands of soldiers on the front line. So it serves the Ukrainians very well as a kind of leveler for the weaker side against the Russians, to have this drone war so prominent. Nonetheless, the Russians are advancing every day. That’s also clear.
Napolitano: Right.
Doctorow: 18:38 So how long will it take? I think that the psychological issue, that when Trump turns his back on Ukraine, I think the Ukrainians will fold, not because they have to, but because they will have lost their, their elan, their spirit.
Napolitano: 18:55 Let’s switch focus for a moment. If Donald Trump turns off the spigot, will the Europeans attempt to replace it?
Doctorow: They will, but they can’t. How much– everyone talks about, “Oh yes, and Trump is there to sell arms to the Europeans.” Is he really? I think this is also a misreading. He already turned down the request of Zelensky to buy, what was it, 50 billion dollars of patriots. He turned that down. I don’t know how he will respond to European requests to buy American equipment to supply to Ukraine. I would not take it for granted that he will acquiesce in that. So the ability of Europeans without American equipment to keep Ukraine afloat is very, very limited.
Napolitano: 19:49 What are the Belgians doing?
Doctorow: The Belgians are doing very stupid things. We have a Flemish nationalist prime minister who has been a force behind the throne of Belgian governments for the last 10 years. He didn’t rush to become a prime minister because a person who made his career talking about breaking up the monarchy was not an ideal candidate to be the king’s prime minister. However, they finally found terms to make this acceptable. And in February, he became the prime minister, after eight months were spent trying to put together a coalition that would have a majority in the parliament.
20:33 He succeeded. But what he’s been doing with respect to Ukraine and defense is a fool’s errand. He– the French speaking newspaper, Le Soir, the main newspaper for half the population, came out with a two-page, three-page article, last Thursday, I believe, in which they set out the ideas of De Wever, how he’s going to raise the Belgian contribution to defense to two percent, raise it to two percent. Just keep in mind that Belgium is the home of the NATO headquarters, and it is together with Spain at the bottom of the pile in its contributions to defense.
21:16 How was he going to do it? By theft, by theft and deception, and this is not my interpretation, it comes out perfectly clear from what “Le Soir” was saying. That is, they will take 500 million dollars, stealing it from Russia. These are the, this is the interest on the 200 billion or whatever in Russian state assets that are frozen in Euroclear, which is a European-wide organization that has its headquarters in Belgium. So the money is in Belgium, and the Belgians are saying that they will steal that money to raise the three and a half billion that’s short in the budget, to bring their general finances of defense up to two percent.
Napolitano: 21:57 Is this part of the von der Leyen, Mertz, Starmer, Macron coalition of the willing? What a poor choice of words given recent history. But anyway, is this part of the whole thing?
Doctorow: It is part of it. And just keep in mind that two to three weeks ago, Wever and his minister of defense and commerce, Theo Franken, visited Kiev together with the heads of the Belgian arms suppliers and manufacturers. And the prime minister committed to making a one-billion-euro contribution to Ukraine this year in military supplies.
22:42 They’ve also said that they’re ready to join the coalition of the willing to enforce any ceasefire. This is utter madness, because the money isn’t there, and only can be taken from social welfare, where it will destabilize the government.
Napolitano: 23:01 Unbelievable. Professor Doctorow, enjoy your time in St. Petersburg. We look forward to chatting with you again. Thank you very much for all your incredible first-person insight. Extremely helpful. And to me and to our audience, fascinating. All the best to you. We’ll see you next week.
Doctorow: Thanks. Bye bye.
Napolitano: Bye bye. And coming up later today at 12:30 from Shanghai, Pepe Escobar; from Brussels, Professor Glenn Diesen; from somewhere in the bowels of Washington, D.C., Max Blumenthal; and from good old Virginia, Phil Giraldi.
The 24 April edition of Belgium’s main French-speaking daily newspaper, Le Soir, had on its front page and on most of pages 2 and 3 an article entitled “Defense. Billions promised…but not financed.”
Reading through this fairly transparent account of Prime Minister Bart De Wever’s ideas on how to raise the funds needed, I was reminded of the old Italian joke about the family recipe for making a sponge cake. It opens with “steal a dozen eggs.”
Indeed, De Wever’s proposals amount to 1) stealing 1.2 billion euros in interest on the 200 billion in Russian state assets frozen in Euroclear, headquartered in Belgium and 2) falsifying the bookkeeping entries to say that the investments of several hundred million in renovation and improvements to bridges and other logistics infrastructure count as defense spending since they facilitate the movement of foreign (American) forces landing in Europe on their way eastward. Since these tricks cover only part of the missing billions of euros to raise Belgian military spending in 2025 to the mandatory NATO figure of 2% of GDP or 3.5 billion, the newspaper asks where will the rest come from? Moreover, a total of 5 billion has to be raised up to the year 2029.
Part of the new expenses will be to cover the purchase of F-35s. Those who say that the main beneficiary will be the U.S. military industrial complex have to look more closely- those planes will be built in Italy. Fully European fighter planes are a possibility but in the more distant future, meaning ten or twenty years hence.
In general the De Wever government is committed to making the biggest investment in defense in 40 years. They believe that this sends a signal to the international community, per the newspaper. What they do not say is that these new budgets are being set in the context of a flagrant contradiction: Belgium is home to NATO headquarters. The new NATO buildings near the Zaventem airport cost well more than a billion euros when opened several years ago. Yet Belgium has ranked at the bottom of the list, alongside Spain, in terms of its defense spending as a percentage of GDP. One wonders how they will cope with imposition of a 3% minimum contribution as is now being discussed by other NATO member states.
As for the ongoing war in Ukraine, De Wever and his minister of defense Theo Francken visited Kiev several weeks ago and pledged a one billion euro military contribution this year. How that will be financed is still less clear. But the prime minister has no difficulty making utterly irresponsible statements: this same Soir article tells us that “ Belgium is ready to participate in a possible coalition of the willing in Ukraine if the negotiations for a cease-fire come to conclusion in the days or weeks ahead.”
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Soir does not say it, but the only possible source for financing the rise in military budgets is at the expense of social welfare, and that is politically very dangerous.
The reality is that Belgium has done much better than neighbors France and Germany in maintaining standards of excellent medical care and higher education, all of which are either free or priced at nominal levels to the population. It has maintained labor peace through application of the automatic adjustment of salaries in keeping with inflation. The question is at what risk to political stability can the De Wever government now attack these costly benefits for the sake of meeting NATO targets.
Belgiens Pläne, sein Militärbudget auf 2 % des BIP zu erhöhen: ein sinnloses Unterfangen
Die Ausgabe der wichtigsten französischsprachigen Tageszeitung Belgiens, Le Soir, vom 24. April enthielt auf ihrer Titelseite und auf den meisten Seiten 2 und 3 einen Artikel mit dem Titel „Verteidigung. Milliarden versprochen … aber nicht finanziert“.
Beim Lesen dieses recht transparenten Berichts über die Ideen von Premierminister Bart De Wever zur Beschaffung der erforderlichen Mittel musste ich an den alten italienischen Witz über das Familienrezept für einen Biskuitkuchen denken. Er beginnt mit „Man stiehlt ein Dutzend Eier“.
Tatsächlich laufen De Wevers Vorschläge darauf hinaus, 1) 1,2 Milliarden Euro an Zinsen für die 200 Milliarden Euro an russischen Staatsvermögen zu stehlen, die bei Euroclear mit Sitz in Belgien eingefroren sind, und 2) die Buchhaltung so zu fälschen, dass die Investitionen in Höhe von mehreren hundert Millionen Euro für die Renovierung und Verbesserung von Brücken und anderer logistischer Infrastruktur als Verteidigungsausgaben gelten, da sie den Transport ausländischer (amerikanischer) Streitkräfte, die in Europa landen und weiter nach Osten vorrücken, erleichtern. Da diese Tricks nur einen Teil der fehlenden Milliarden Euro abdecken, um die belgischen Militärausgaben bis 2025 auf die von der NATO vorgeschriebenen 2 % des BIP oder 3,5 Milliarden Euro anzuheben, fragt die Zeitung, woher der Rest kommen soll. Darüber hinaus müssen bis zum Jahr 2029 insgesamt 5 Milliarden Euro aufgebracht werden.
Ein Teil der neuen Ausgaben wird für den Kauf von F-35-Kampfflugzeugen verwendet werden. Diejenigen, die behaupten, dass der Hauptnutznießer der militärisch-industrielle Komplex der USA sein wird, müssen genauer hinschauen – diese Flugzeuge werden in Italien gebaut werden. Vollständig europäische Kampfflugzeuge sind eine Möglichkeit, aber erst in ferner Zukunft, also in zehn oder zwanzig Jahren.
Generell hat sich die Regierung De Wever dazu verpflichtet, die größten Investitionen in die Verteidigung seit 40 Jahren zu tätigen. Sie glaubt, dass dies ein Signal an die internationale Gemeinschaft sendet, so die Zeitung. Was sie nicht sagt, ist, dass diese neuen Budgets vor dem Hintergrund eines eklatanten Widerspruchs festgelegt werden: Belgien ist Sitz des NATO-Hauptquartiers. Die neuen NATO-Gebäude in der Nähe des Flughafens Zaventem kosteten bei ihrer Eröffnung vor einigen Jahren weit über eine Milliarde Euro. Dennoch liegt Belgien zusammen mit Spanien am Ende der Liste, was die Verteidigungsausgaben im Verhältnis zum BIP angeht. Man fragt sich, wie das Land mit der Einführung eines Mindestbeitrags von 3 % zurechtkommen wird, der derzeit von anderen NATO-Mitgliedstaaten diskutiert wird.
Was den anhaltenden Krieg in der Ukraine betrifft, so haben De Wever und sein Verteidigungsminister Theo Francken vor einigen Wochen Kiew besucht und für dieses Jahr einen Militärbeitrag in Höhe von einer Milliarde Euro zugesagt. Wie das finanziert werden soll, ist noch unklarer. Aber der Premierminister hat keine Schwierigkeiten, völlig unverantwortliche Aussagen zu machen: In demselben Artikel in Soir heißt es, dass „Belgien bereit ist, sich an einer möglichen Koalition der Willigen in der Ukraine zu beteiligen, wenn die Verhandlungen über einen Waffenstillstand in den kommenden Tagen oder Wochen zu einem Abschluss kommen“.
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Soir sagt es nicht, aber die einzige mögliche Quelle für die Finanzierung der Erhöhung der Militärbudgets geht zu Lasten der Sozialleistungen, und das ist politisch sehr gefährlich.
Tatsächlich hat Belgien im Vergleich zu seinen Nachbarn Frankreich und Deutschland viel besser bei der Aufrechterhaltung eines hervorragenden Gesundheitswesens und eines hohen Bildungsniveaus abgeschnitten, die für die Bevölkerung entweder kostenlos oder zu symbolischen Preisen angeboten werden. Durch die automatische Anpassung der Löhne an die Inflation wurde der soziale Frieden gewahrt. Die Frage ist, mit welchem Risiko für die politische Stabilität die Regierung De Wever nun diese kostspieligen Sozialleistungen angreifen kann, um die NATO-Ziele zu erreichen.
In this report, I present a potpourri of impressions from this first trip back to Russia since last November. Some of these comments are about real changes in what I see around me. Others are simply first observations of sides to life that I did not experience on my most recent visits.
Given that the primary focus of our Community of subscribers is international relations, I open this report with the observation that the previously ubiquitous army recruitment posters have disappeared!
There is not a single poster in public transport, meaning the city subways, trams, busses and bus stops, where they were still legion just 5 months ago.
How do we explain this?
One could imagine that the authorities, both local and federal; expect the war to end either in a negotiated settlement or in Ukrainian capitulation on the battlefield rather soon and they have decided that it is senseless to continuing paying out as much as 35,000 euros to new sign-ons when there will be no war to fight when they complete their basic training.
As usual, I am surprised that none of our journalists, either in mainstream or in alternative media have caught this remarkable cessation of recruiting when just a few months ago the Financial Times and other media belatedly reported on how well new recruits were being paid for their signature on the Special Military Operation contract.
Another clearly new development is labor shortages everywhere. Public transport, retailers, service companies – all have signs offering training and jobs to any and all. In supermarkets of various retail chains, I see that only one of several cash registers are being manned and the electronic device for your credit card has on its face the number to call if you want to inquire about employment opportunities.
Without a doubt the labor shortage is a factor in the 10 per cent inflation rate. Money in people’s pockets is simply rising faster than goods and services are being made available.
So far, this rising prosperity is not really visible when you drive cross country as I did in Friday’s 290 km drive by taxi from Pskov to Petersburg. The road is greatly improved compared to what it was just a few years ago. The asphalt is in good condition. In part, this old north-south route called the Kiev Highway has been upgraded from two lanes to four. But the dilapidated little wooden houses by the roadside are shabby as ever until you come within 50 km of Petersburg where the new country residences of urban wealthy first appear. It also seems that many of the poorer dwellings farther out are empty. This sad reality contrasts with the orderly and comfortable dwellings in the little Estonian towns in the south of that country stretching from Tartu to the Russian border that I passed through on my way here.
Speaking of transportation, I am obliged to say a word or two about the important investments that Russian State Railways have made in the rolling stock and other infrastructure of commuter train traffic.
Going back a dozen years or more, the commuter trains, or ‘elektrichki’ as they are known, could have been used to film the opening scenes of Dostoevsky’s novel The Idiot, in which the hero, Prince Myshkin is seen traveling in a third class rail wagon – seated on hard wooden benches and with no heating in winter. In a first wave of modernization here in Petersburg six or eight years ago the wooden benches of the rail cars were replaced by individual plastic and metal seats. Now, as I noted yesterday on our trip from the Petersburg city center to our outlying borough of Pushkin/Tsarskoye Selo, the seats have improved upholstery and are reasonably comfortable. They are not as sleek as our commuter trains in Belgium, but they have absolutely no graffiti on them, whereas most every local and many international trains in Belgium are hideously painted over by vandals.
But let us look at the acid test of modernizing management: public toilets. I was stunned yesterday to visit the gents’ room inside the complex of the Moscow Railway Station by the intercity ticketing office and to find that by cleanliness; up to date toilet fixtures, the presence of liquid soap in the dispensers and working hand dryers the facility was as good as you would find in a 4-star hotel, if the staff there were to let you in off the street to answer the call of nature. And – the railway toilets were free of charge. No need to fumble through your pockets to find the right change or to try to crawl under the bar to sneak in without paying. I say ‘bravo’ to the РЖД.
As for intercity trains, the demand for the high speed trains between Moscow and Petersburg is high, expecially in this holiday period. The Russians have long weekends around May 1 (European Labor Day) and around May 9 (Victory in Europe Day) and many are using this to make the ‘bridge,’ take vacation and to get away.
Getting away makes special sense if you consider the ongoing preparations for the Big Parade on the 9th which can spoil your travel around the city now already, two weeks before the event. Twice yesterday we were stuck in our taxi for 20-30 minutes at a time when the policy halted all traffic in rehearsal for procedures on the 9th. At the same time, when I wanted to order a taxi after finishing the meeting I had in town, the phone app for taxis (Yandex) was inoperative since the police were playing games with the satellite GPS signals and indicating false addresses to the taxi drivers.
What was most surprising to me is that while we were all stuck and waiting for the red light at the crossroads before us to turn green, there was not a single car honking its horn. Not one car tried to mount the grass road divider and turn around. In a word, the patience around me was a revelation. My Russia from the 1990s was a chaotic place where no one followed the rules of the road. The heroes of the day then were the ‘dzhigits’ (Central Asian folklore) who systematically ran red lights.
Now it appears that is history. But then again it is worth noting that today you are safe as a pedestrian entering the zebra crossings whereas in the ’90s you were fair game for the hotshots who would bear down on pedestrians to see them scurrying off the road like chickens.
Since I already mentioned my forthcoming trip to Moscow this weekend to spend a couple of days with old friends from the journalist and academic world, I can add a word about what I learned making my botel booking on the Yandex Travel website. After the departure from the Russian market of booking.com and other online Western travel agents, Yandex has taken the lead role in Russia. It is as dominant in this domain as it is in taxi services or in its search engine business.
Comparing the offers from the many, many stand-alone hotels on Yandex in the 3-5 star categories and looking closely at customer comments, it became clear to me that there is negligible price difference between the stand-alones and the several hotels that carry the name of international hotel chains like Movenpick or Novotel or Ibis. But there evidently is a big difference in managerial competence if you judge by the very condemnatory comments of people who stayed in the no-names versus those who stayed in the hotels flying the colors of international chains. Import substitution in this domain has its limitations.
In diesem Bericht präsentiere ich Ihnen eine bunte Mischung von Eindrücken von meiner ersten Reise nach Russland seit November letzten Jahres. Einige dieser Kommentare beziehen sich auf reale Veränderungen, die ich in meiner Umgebung wahrgenommen habe. Andere sind lediglich erste Beobachtungen von Aspekten des Lebens, die mir bei meinen letzten Besuchen nicht aufgefallen sind.
Da der Schwerpunkt unserer Community auf internationalen Beziehungen liegt, möchte ich diesen Bericht mit der Beobachtung beginnen, dass die zuvor allgegenwärtigen Plakate zur Rekrutierung für die Armee verschwunden sind!
In den öffentlichen Verkehrsmitteln, also in der U-Bahn, den Straßenbahnen, Bussen und an Bushaltestellen, wo sie noch vor fünf Monaten zuhauf zu sehen waren, gibt es kein einziges Plakat mehr.
Wie lässt sich das erklären?
Man könnte sich vorstellen, dass die lokalen und föderalen Behörden davon ausgehen, dass der Krieg entweder durch eine Verhandlungslösung oder durch die Kapitulation der Ukraine auf dem Schlachtfeld bald beendet sein wird, und dass sie beschlossen haben, dass es sinnlos ist, weiterhin bis zu 35.000 Euro an neue Rekruten zu zahlen, wenn es nach Abschluss ihrer Grundausbildung keinen Krieg mehr zu führen gibt.
Wie üblich bin ich überrascht, dass keiner unserer Journalisten, weder in den Mainstream- noch in den alternativen Medien, diese bemerkenswerte Einstellung der Rekrutierung bemerkt hat, obwohl erst vor wenigen Monaten die Financial Times und andere Medien verspätet darüber berichteten, wie gut neue Rekruten für ihre Unterschrift unter den Vertrag für die „Sonderoperation“ bezahlt wurden.
Eine weitere eindeutig neue Entwicklung ist der überall herrschende Arbeitskräftemangel. Öffentliche Verkehrsbetriebe, Einzelhändler, Dienstleistungsunternehmen – alle bieten Schulungen und Arbeitsplätze für jedermann an. In Supermärkten verschiedener Einzelhandelsketten sehe ich, dass nur eine von mehreren Kassen besetzt ist und auf dem elektronischen Gerät für Kreditkarten die Telefonnummer steht, unter der man sich über Beschäftigungsmöglichkeiten erkundigen kann.
Zweifellos ist der Arbeitskräftemangel ein Faktor für die Inflationsrate von 10 Prozent. Das Geld in den Taschen der Menschen steigt einfach schneller als das Angebot an Waren und Dienstleistungen.
Bislang ist dieser wachsende Wohlstand nicht wirklich sichtbar, wenn man wie ich am Freitag mit dem Taxi die 290 km von Pskow nach Petersburg gefahren ist. Die Straße ist im Vergleich zu vor einigen Jahren deutlich verbessert worden. Der Asphalt ist in gutem Zustand. Teilweise wurde diese alte Nord-Süd-Verbindung, die als Kiewer Autobahn bezeichnet wird, von zwei auf vier Fahrspuren ausgebaut. Aber die baufälligen kleinen Holzhäuser am Straßenrand sind nach wie vor heruntergekommen, bis man 50 km vor Petersburg kommt, wo die neuen Landhäuser der städtischen Wohlhabenden zum ersten Mal in Sicht kommen. Es scheint auch, dass viele der ärmeren Häuser weiter draußen leer stehen. Diese traurige Realität steht im Kontrast zu den ordentlichen und komfortablen Häusern in den kleinen estnischen Städten im Süden des Landes, die sich von Tartu bis zur russischen Grenze erstrecken und die ich auf meinem Weg hierher durchquert habe.
Was den Verkehr angeht, muss ich ein paar Worte zu den bedeutenden Investitionen sagen, die die Russische Staatsbahn in den Fahrzeugpark und andere Infrastrukturen des Nahverkehrs getätigt hat.
Vor mehr als zehn Jahren hätten die Nahverkehrszüge, die sogenannten „Elektritschki“, als Kulisse für die Eröffnungsszenen von Dostojewskis Roman „Der Idiot“ dienen können, in denen der Held, Fürst Myschkin, in einem Zug der dritten Klasse reist – auf harten Holzbänken sitzend und ohne Heizung im Winter. In einer ersten Modernisierungswelle hier in Petersburg vor sechs oder acht Jahren wurden die Holzbänke in den Waggons durch einzelne Plastik- und Metallsitze ersetzt. Jetzt, wie ich gestern auf unserer Fahrt vom Stadtzentrum Petersburgs in unseren Vorort Puschkin/Zarskoje Selo festgestellt habe, sind die Sitze besser gepolstert und recht bequem. Sie sind nicht so elegant wie unsere Nahverkehrszüge in Belgien, aber sie sind völlig frei von Graffiti, während fast alle lokalen und viele internationale Züge in Belgien von Vandalen mit hässlichen Sprühfarben verunstaltet sind.
Aber kommen wir zum Härtetest für die Modernisierung des Managements: den öffentlichen Toiletten. Ich war gestern verblüfft, als ich die Herrentoilette im Komplex des Moskauer Bahnhofs neben dem Intercity-Fahrkartenschalter besuchte und feststellte, dass die Anlage in puncto Sauberkeit, moderner Toilettenausstattung, Vorhandensein von Flüssigseife in den Spendern und funktionierenden Händetrocknern so gut war wie in einem 4-Sterne-Hotel, wenn das Personal einen von der Straße hereinlassen würde, um der Natur zu folgen. Und – die Toiletten im Bahnhof waren kostenlos. Man musste nicht in den Taschen nach Kleingeld suchen oder versuchen, unter der Stange hindurchzukriechen, um sich ohne zu bezahlen hineinzuschleichen. Ich sage „Bravo“ zur РЖД [für die deutschen Leser: Российские железные дороги (Russische Eisenbahnen)].
Was die Intercity-Züge angeht, so ist die Nachfrage nach Hochgeschwindigkeitszügen zwischen Moskau und St. Petersburg besonders in dieser Urlaubszeit sehr hoch. Die Russen haben um den 1. Mai (europäischer Tag der Arbeit) und um den 9. Mai (Tag des Sieges in Europa) lange Wochenenden, und viele nutzen diese Zeit, um eine Brücke zu schlagen, Urlaub zu machen und dem Alltag zu entfliehen.
Eine Reise ist besonders sinnvoll, wenn man bedenkt, dass die Vorbereitungen für die große Parade am 9. Mai bereits laufen und schon jetzt, zwei Wochen vor dem Ereignis, den Stadtverkehr beeinträchtigen. Gestern saßen wir zweimal 20 bis 30 Minuten lang in unserem Taxi fest, weil der Verkehr wegen Proben für den 9. Mai gesperrt war. Als ich nach einem Termin in der Stadt ein Taxi bestellen wollte, funktionierte die Taxi-App (Yandex) nicht, da die Polizei mit den GPS-Signalen spielte und den Taxifahrern falsche Adressen anzeigte.
Am meisten überraschte mich, dass, während wir alle feststeckten und darauf warteten, dass die Ampel an der Kreuzung vor uns auf Grün sprang, kein einziges Auto hupt. Kein einziges Auto versuchte, auf den Grünstreifen zu fahren und zu wenden. Mit einem Wort: Die Geduld um mich herum war eine Offenbarung. Mein Russland der 1990er Jahre war ein chaotischer Ort, an dem sich niemand an die Verkehrsregeln hielt. Die Helden des Tages waren damals die „Dschigits“ (aus der zentralasiatischen Folklore), die systematisch rote Ampeln überfuhren.
Nun scheint das Geschichte zu sein. Aber es ist dennoch erwähnenswert, dass man heute als Fußgänger an Zebrastreifen sicher ist, während man in den 90er Jahren Freiwild für die Draufgänger war, die Fußgänger anfuhren, um sie wie Hühner von der Straße zu jagen.
Da ich bereits meine bevorstehende Reise nach Moskau erwähnt habe, wo ich dieses Wochenende ein paar Tage mit alten Freunden aus der Welt des Journalismus und der Wissenschaft verbringen werde, kann ich noch etwas zu meinen Erfahrungen bei der Buchung meines Hotels auf der Website von Yandex Travel hinzufügen. Nach dem Rückzug von booking.com und anderen westlichen Online-Reisebüros aus dem russischen Markt hat Yandex die Führungsrolle in Russland übernommen. Das Unternehmen ist in diesem Bereich ebenso dominant wie im Taxigeschäft oder im Suchmaschinenbereich.
Als ich die Angebote der vielen, vielen Einzelhotels in der 3- bis 5-Sterne-Kategorie auf Yandex verglichen und mir die Kundenkommentare genauer angesehen habe, wurde mir klar, dass es kaum Preisunterschiede zwischen den Einzelhotels und den Hotels gibt, die zu internationalen Hotelketten wie Mövenpick, Novotel oder Ibis gehören. Aber es gibt offensichtlich einen großen Unterschied in der Managementkompetenz, wenn man die sehr vernichtenden Kommentare der Gäste, die in den No-Name-Hotels übernachtet haben, mit denen der Gäste vergleicht, die in den Hotels internationaler Ketten übernachtet haben. Die Importsubstitution in diesem Bereich hat ihre Grenzen.
Yesterday afternoon’s interview with News X focused on the fake news coming from Kiev: that Zelensky’s 15 minutes chat with Donald Trump in Rome signified a change in relations with the American President, who allegedly now is favoring Ukraine over Russia in any peace settlement.
As they say, Zelensky was putting lipstick on a pig. They fail to mention that a second meeting with Trump after the funeral was refused by the White House: They fail to compare the 15 minutes Zelensky was accorded with the 3 hours that Trump’s personal emissary Steve Witkoff spent with President Vladimir Putin in Moscow the day before, on Friday.
As of last night, Russian state television remains cautiously optimistic that a full detente with the United States is possible, regardless of whether the Trump-brokered peace talks between Russia and Ukraine succeed or fail.
NewsX: 0:00 Donald Trump’s standing amongst Ukrainians is poor, but a shift has come after his meeting with President Zelensky during Pope Francis’ funeral in Rome. Trump has posted doubts about Vladimir Putin’s sincerity, writing, “It makes me think that maybe he doesn’t want to stop the war, just tapping me along.” Quote unquote. Well, the meeting was brief but meaningful. Photos show Trump and Zelensky leaning in, speaking as equals, a stark contrast to their disastrous February encounter.
Some Ukrainians saw hope. “Maybe Trump finally understands Putin can’t be trusted”, said Ole Karas, a volunteer gathering donations in Kiev. Trump’s skepticism follows Russia’s latest missile attack that killed 12 and injured nearly 90 in Kiev, deepening Ukraine’s distrust of Moscow’s intentions. Despite Trump’s earlier push for Ukraine to accept a lopsided peace deal, Saturday’s tone suggested he may rethink forcing concessions on Kiev. Meanwhile, Russia has launched new attacks across Ukraine, killing at least four people and injuring many more with missiles and drones.
0:56 Russia also claimed full control of Ukraine’s gains in the Kursk region, though Ukrainian officials insist fighting there continues. Trump hinted at tougher sanctions on Russia, even as he emphasized wanting quick progress towards peace. At the same time, European leaders have reaffirmed support for Ukraine, pushing back against any deal favoring Moscow. Zelensky and European Commission President von der Leyen has agreed to coordinate pressure on Russia through new sanctions and stronger security ties.
Though pressure on Ukraine is mounting, Zilensky insists on a ceasefire tied to lasting security guarantees, not surrendering territory without future recovery plans. The path to peace remains uncertain, but after Saturday, Ukraine sees a small opening with Trump that did not exist before.
Gilbert Doctorow, Russian affairs expert, is joining us live from Brussels in Belgium. Thank you for being with us today, Gilbert. What do you make of this latest statement by President of the United States Donald Trump criticizing Russia?
Gilbert Doctorow, PhD: 1:56 I don’t think it means anything, frankly. Mr. Trump has been rocking back and forth, praising or criticizing each of the sides in turn in an effort to confuse all of us. And I must say he succeeded very well. All commentators, all of them, whether they are in the alternative media or they are in major Western media, are totally confused about his intentions.
The remarks that you have quoted, coming essentially from Ukrainian sources, make reference to this short chat that they had prior to the funeral service for Francis in Rome. The Ukrainians requested a second meeting that same day, and it was turned down by the White House. So as for their rejoining closer together, I think that’s an exaggerated interpretation coming from Kiev and is hopeful, but doesn’t express reality. It is pretty obvious to me that Mr. Trump favors the Russian side.
3:01 His direct emissary, Steve Witkoff, was a week ago Friday in Moscow. He had a long walk and chat with Mr. Dmitriyev, who is his counterpart, that is to say Vladimir Putin’s emissary, to these talks about a peace in Ukraine war. They had a long walk down the center of Moscow in a pedestrian zone called the Arbat, which is an expression of friendliness, of rapprochement on a personal level between the people who are responsible for ending the war.
3:47 Mr. Putin received Witkoff, and they had three or four hours of discussions, which were not chit-chat. What is at issue here is that the Russians and the United States are discussing points for the end game, for how the war will end, while Mr. Zelensky is only interested in discussing his 30-day ceasefire, because when push comes to shove, he does not agree to make any concessions, any compromises to enable a peace. And he tries to disguise that and hide it by talking only about ceasefire. For the Russians, a ceasefire is meaningless and will lead nowhere.
I wrote a week ago, the last few days, that Mr. Trump, the best thing he could do would be to walk away from these talks. It is possible, but I would say unlikely, that they will end in a peace agreement. It is more likely that Mr. Trump is building an argument for dumping Ukraine.
And the argument is based on the unwillingness or inability of the Ukrainian side to negotiate a peace that involves anything other than forcing a capitulation on the winner, the Russians. So the end of these discussions, nobody could foretell. As I said, Mr. Trump has done an excellent job of confusing everybody. I just am not certain whether he isn’t also confusing himself. That remains to be seen.
NewsX: 5:12 Gilbert, do you believe that there has been any breakthrough based on this meeting that Trump had with Zelensky in the Vatican, this one-on-one meeting that happened there?
Doctorow: First of all, it was very brief. And second of all, the best indicator was the White House’s refusal to have a second meeting that same day requested by Zelensky. So I think it’s entirely understandable that the Ukrainians would want to make a great deal about this little mini-summit, as they would call it, between Trump and Zelensky.
5:48 But I don’t think anything is achieved except their behaving for once in a civilized way, as opposed to the real spat that they had before the whole world at their meeting in the Oval Office of the White House, when Zelensky came calling.
NewsX: Yes. Gilbert, do you believe that this conflict then is likely to continue for the long term? You believe there is no short-term breakthrough likely, looking at these fresh developments?
Doctorow: 6:22 I don’t believe in a short-term end to this war. As I said, these parties are quite far removed, And the Europeans are doing everything possible to sabotage the talks by giving Zelensky the false hope that they can support his war effort if the United States leaves and walks away from it. They cannot. They don’t have the men. They don’t have the materiel.
Without US participation, the Ukrainians will find themselves short of everything they need to continue the war, as it has been for the last three years, holding up the line, not crumbling, not capitulating. That will be very difficult for them if the United States leaves. And I think that is just a question of a few weeks when these latest talks result in what? What can you expect? They result in zero, because the Ukrainians refused to accept reality on the ground.
7:22 They’re arguing about the moral stance, as they are the victims of aggression, as if that gives them the right to reverse the battlefield results that everybody sees, that they are losing and the Russians are winning. The losers never dictate the terms of capitulation to the winners. That is against the laws of gravity. So in this sense, unless Mr. Trump can summon the strength and the determination, and I would say the courage, to beat down Europe and to remind them of who is who and what is what, namely the United States leaves and the United States can also leave Europe.
7:59 If he does that and reads the riot act to Messrs. Starmer and Macron, then the war will end. If he cannot do that, then he will have to walk away from the talks.
NewsX: All right, Gilbert Doctorow, thank you for joining us with your perspective on that story. Meanwhile, efforts to end the Israel-Hamas conflict continue with some–
My first Travel Notes for this trip to Russia which began yesterday should interest not only those in the Community, particularly those living in Europe, who want some tips on how to make the trip to Russia without breaking the budget by flying via Istanbul or Dubai. The route I describe below is, for those based in Europe, two to three times cheaper.
However, what I have to say here is also essential reading for the Community at large. I set out Russia’s weak sides at the level of bureaucracy that they will not hear about either from the Russia-lovers in the alternative media or the Russia-haters in mainstream. As usual, real life is in the gray zone rather than pure white or pure black.
Ever since the Finns closed their border crossings to Russia more than 18 months ago, I have been making my periodic visits to Petersburg via Estonia. The main crossing there is in the north of the country at the Narva river estuary where the Estonian city of Narva on one side faces the Russian Ivangorod on the other bank. The bus carrying travelers from the Estonian capital Tallinn to this border crossing takes about two and a half hours. Until the Estonians and Russians decided to ‘renovate’ the bridge about a year ago and close it to vehicular traffic indefinitely, that bus would drop off its passengers to be processed on the Estonian side, cross over to the Russian side and wait for them outside the Russian border control post to continue on the way to Petersburg for another two and a half hours. If we include the time lost at the border to the double processing, the entire travel time en route was about 7 hours.
When the buses no longer were allowed to cross the bridge, passengers were obliged to drag their suitcases the 500 meters along an open walkway on the bridge. But that was the least of their problems. On their own, the Estonian authorities decided to make life as miserable as possible for anyone of their citizens having relations or other reasons to visit Russia, and foreigners were also exposed to this gratuitous nastiness. The passport control questioning of those headed east and the very exaggerated customs inspections put in place now drew out the process, resulting in the formation of long lines outside the Estonian border control buildings. A week ago, in the run-up to Easter when families are especially keen to see relatives on the other side, those lines meant waits in the street, whatever the weather, of 5 hours or more. To better understand me, I note that even in yesterday’s late spring, there were heavy snowstorms here in northwest Russia.
Yesterday morning, I heard from bus drivers in Tallinn that things had calmed down at the Narva crossing and there was ‘only’ a two to three hour wait to be admitted for passport and customs processing by the Estonians. Knowing this, I opted instead for the ‘southern’ bus route that takes you through the Estonian university town of Tartu to a border crossing into Russia that is 50 km west of the Russian city of Pskov, which is itself 290 km south of Petersburg. From Pskov you have a three and a half hour trip by car or train to reach Petersburg. But this route sees you cross the border in the bus and, being relatively little used, has no waiting time to be processed either by the Estonian or the Russian border officials.
I say at once that both Russian and Estonian officials were nonetheless excessive in their inspections. Perhaps the Russians were even worse in their checking every passenger however decrepit or pregnant with hand-held metal detectors even after we walked through the airport style detector frames. And looking inside wallets and purses to check on the amount of currency being carried across, etc. Thus, a good two hours were wasted on this exercise while our bus also underwent an extensive inspection for hidden narcotics, hidden stowaways and Lord knows what else.
All of this reminded me of the worst days of border crossings from East Germany into West Berlin.
Tit for tat, you may reason in looking for an explanation for the official Russian border procedures. But, beg my pardon, I see it as runaway bureaucracy, bureaucracy that is doing nothing of value but has to prove its worth by endlessly thinking up new procedures to implement for greater state security. This came up again today when I underwent the mandatory registration as a foreign visitor at the Pushkin city multi-service administrative center.
Ninety-eight percent of you who travel to Russia will not know what I am talking about when I raise the question of registration. Registration is done for you by your hotel at check-in and you are unaware of it. But it is essential that you hear me out if you want to understand how and why Russia is moving backwards in some ways even as it rises in general prosperity and industrialization from import substitution. Its bureaucracy appears to be out of control. All of which is why I say that the country desperately needs its own slash and burn Elon Musk.
*****
Registration of the residential address of foreigners has been a Europe-wide phenomenon since the days of Napoleon. It exists on the law books today most everywhere in the EU, but there, too, the average traveler is unaware of it for the same reason as in Russia – registration with the police is done by their hotel. If a traveler stays privately, he or she generally ignores the mandatory requirement to register with the authorities but the European authorities are not interested in chasing down the violator if you happen to be white and look solvent. Though sometimes they do, as I learned when I introduced my naturalization request in Belgium a dozen years ago and was asked to explain why I never registered my arrivals and departures when I came to Belgium from time to time and stayed in the house I owned in Brussels and paid taxes on as a secondary residence. It took some intercession by high-level friends to sort that out in my favor.
But back to Russia. Anyone staying privately more than 8 days in Russia is obliged to be registered with the municipal or other local authorities by their host. The registration forms are 4 pages long, and it takes a well trained official, probably with a college degree, preferably with an engineer’s degree, 30 to 45 minutes to process each application, because every entry on the form has to be checked against your passport, your visa, the immigration card you received at the border passport control, the phone numbers you and your host entered and much more irrelevant trivia like your profession, if any.
The administrator who reviews your application scans all the papers and sends them to some central processing center, probably in Moscow. I have wondered whether anyone there has the common sense to shred this incoming trash upon receipt or whether, as is more likely, it is archived somewhere for eternity. I also wonder what the administrators who take and process my application say to their husbands, kids, mothers about how they have spent their day. I wonder how Russia, with its present serious labor shortage can afford to have these skilled and well educated and well motivated employees do nothing all day but cause headaches for foreign visitors who should be welcomed with open arms and instead waste the greater part of a day on the registration process.
But there is more to it. Those 4 pages of the application are changed every year and the officials cannot accept any application prepared by the visiting foreigner on his or her computer using last year’s edition. Verboten. And what has changed in the 1 January 2025 edition versus 2024? Now they added three lines for the applicant to provide the Latin spelling of his or her name in addition to the Cyrillic spelling. It seems that having a photocopy of the applicant’s passport and visa pages which also must be provided with the application was not enough to satisfy the ever more demanding bureaucrats in Moscow.
Allow me to assure you that this kind of make-work exists wherever you want to take a close look. It exists despite the evidence of heavy investment in new technical equipment for staff and for the ‘clientele.’ Our Pushkin center has newly purchased scanners-copiers, electronic appointment scheduling, QR-code driven devices for the clients. But it is largely directed at performing obligations that should not exist at all in a modern society and do nothing whatsoever to improve Russian state security.
Russland braucht dringend sein eigenes DOGE unter der Führung seines eigenen Elon Musk
Meine ersten Reiseberichte zu dieser Reise nach Russland, die gestern begonnen hat, dürften nicht nur für diejenigen in der Community interessant sein, insbesondere diejenigen, die in Europa leben und Tipps für eine Reise nach Russland suchen, ohne ihr Budget durch Flüge über Istanbul oder Dubai zu sprengen. Die Route, die ich im Folgenden beschreibe, ist für Reisende aus Europa zwei- bis dreimal günstiger.
Was ich hier zu sagen habe, ist jedoch auch für die gesamte Community von wesentlicher Bedeutung. Ich zeige die Schwächen Russlands auf der Ebene der Bürokratie auf, von denen weder die Russland-Liebhaber in den alternativen Medien noch die Russland-Hasser in den Mainstream-Medien etwas hören werden. Wie immer liegt das wahre Leben eher in der Grauzone als in reinem Schwarz oder reinem Weiß.
Seit die Finnen vor mehr als 18 Monaten ihre Grenzübergänge zu Russland geschlossen haben, reise ich regelmäßig über Estland nach Petersburg. Der wichtigste Grenzübergang befindet sich im Norden des Landes an der Mündung des Narva, wo die estnische Stadt Narva auf der einen Seite und das russische Iwangorod auf der anderen Seite liegen. Die Busfahrt von der estnischen Hauptstadt Tallinn zu diesem Grenzübergang dauert etwa zweieinhalb Stunden. Bis die Esten und Russen vor etwa einem Jahr beschlossen, die Brücke zu „renovieren“ und für den Fahrzeugverkehr auf unbestimmte Zeit zu sperren, setzte der Bus seine Fahrgäste auf der estnischen Seite ab, fuhr auf die russische Seite und wartete dort außerhalb des russischen Grenzkontrollpostens, bis die Fahrgäste die Kontrolle passiert hatten, um dann die Fahrt nach Petersburg fortzusetzen, die weitere zweieinhalb Stunden dauerte. Rechnet man die Zeit, die an der Grenze durch die doppelte Abfertigung verloren ging, hinzu, betrug die gesamte Reisezeit etwa sieben Stunden.
Als die Busse die Brücke nicht mehr überqueren durften, mussten die Passagiere ihre Koffer 500 Meter lang über einen offenen Fußweg auf der Brücke schleppen. Aber das war noch das geringste ihrer Probleme. Die estnischen Behörden beschlossen eigenmächtig, allen ihren Bürgern, die Verwandte in Russland haben oder aus anderen Gründen dorthin reisen müssen, das Leben so schwer wie möglich zu machen, und auch Ausländer waren dieser grundlosen Gemeinheit ausgesetzt. Die Passkontrollen derjenigen, die in Richtung Osten reisten, und die nun eingeführten übertriebenen Zollkontrollen verzögerten den Prozess und führten zu langen Schlangen vor den estnischen Grenzkontrollgebäuden. Vor einer Woche, in der Vorweihnachtszeit, in der Familien besonders darauf bedacht sind, ihre Verwandten auf der anderen Seite zu sehen, bedeuteten diese Schlangen Wartezeiten von fünf Stunden oder mehr auf der Straße, unabhängig vom Wetter. Um das besser verstehen zu können, möchte ich anmerken, dass es selbst gestern, am späten Frühlingsanfang, hier im Nordwesten Russlands heftige Schneestürme gab.
Gestern Morgen hörte ich von Busfahrern in Tallinn, dass sich die Lage an der Grenze bei Narva beruhigt habe und man „nur“ zwei bis drei Stunden warten müsse, bis man von den Esten zur Pass- und Zollkontrolle vorgelassen werde. Da ich das wusste, entschied ich mich stattdessen für die „südliche“ Busroute, die durch die estnische Universitätsstadt Tartu zu einem Grenzübergang nach Russland führt, der 50 km westlich der russischen Stadt Pskow liegt, die selbst 290 km südlich von Petersburg liegt. Von Pskow aus sind es noch dreieinhalb Stunden mit dem Auto oder der Bahn bis nach Petersburg. Auf dieser Strecke überquert man jedoch die Grenze mit dem Bus, und da sie relativ wenig befahren ist, gibt es keine Wartezeiten bei der estnischen oder russischen Grenzabfertigung.
Ich sage gleich, dass sowohl die russischen als auch die estnischen Beamten bei ihren Kontrollen übertrieben haben. Die Russen waren vielleicht sogar noch schlimmer, als sie jeden Passagier, egal wie gebrechlich oder schwanger, mit Handmetalldetektoren kontrollierten, obwohl wir bereits durch die Detektorschleusen wie am Flughafen gegangen waren. Und sie schauten in Brieftaschen und Handtaschen, um zu überprüfen, wie viel Bargeld mitgeführt wurde, usw. So wurden gut zwei Stunden mit dieser Übung verschwendet, während unser Bus ebenfalls einer gründlichen Inspektion auf versteckte Drogen, versteckte blinde Passagiere und Gott weiß was noch alles unterzogen wurde.
All dies erinnerte mich an die schlimmsten Tage der Grenzübergänge von Ostdeutschland nach Westberlin.
Wie du mir, so ich dir, könnte man argumentieren, wenn man nach einer Erklärung für die offiziellen russischen Grenzverfahren sucht. Aber, mit Verlaub gesagt, ich sehe darin eine ausufernde Bürokratie, eine Bürokratie, die nichts Wertvolles leistet, sondern ihre Daseinsberechtigung dadurch beweisen muss, dass sie endlos neue Verfahren für mehr Staatssicherheit ausheckt. Das wurde mir heute wieder bewusst, als ich mich als ausländischer Besucher im Verwaltungszentrum der Stadt Puschkin registrieren lassen musste.
Achtundneunzig Prozent derjenigen, die nach Russland reisen, werden nicht wissen, wovon ich spreche, wenn ich die Frage nach der Registrierung aufwerfe. Die Registrierung wird beim Check-in von Ihrem Hotel vorgenommen, ohne dass Sie davon etwas mitbekommen. Aber es ist wichtig, dass Sie mir zuhören, wenn Sie verstehen wollen, wie und warum Russland in mancher Hinsicht Rückschritte macht, obwohl es durch Importsubstitution insgesamt an Wohlstand und Industrialisierung gewinnt. Die Bürokratie scheint außer Kontrolle geraten zu sein. All das ist der Grund, warum ich sage, dass das Land dringend einen eigenen Elon Musk braucht, der mit radikalen Maßnahmen aufräumt.
*****
Die Registrierung der Wohnadresse von Ausländern ist seit den Tagen Napoleons ein europaweites Phänomen. Sie ist heute fast überall in der EU gesetzlich verankert, aber auch dort ist sie dem durchschnittlichen Reisenden aus dem gleichen Grund wie in Russland nicht bekannt – die Registrierung bei der Polizei erfolgt durch das Hotel. Wenn ein Reisender privat unterkommt, ignoriert er in der Regel die Meldepflicht bei den Behörden, aber die europäischen Behörden sind nicht daran interessiert, Verstöße zu verfolgen, wenn man weiß ist und solvent aussieht. Manchmal tun sie es jedoch, wie ich vor zwölf Jahren erfahren habe, als ich meinen Einbürgerungsantrag in Belgien stellte und erklären musste, warum ich meine Ein- und Ausreisen nie gemeldet hatte, obwohl ich regelmäßig nach Belgien kam, in meinem Haus in Brüssel wohnte und dort Steuern als Zweitwohnsitz zahlte. Es bedurfte der Intervention hochrangiger Freunde, um die Angelegenheit zu meinen Gunsten zu klären.
Aber zurück zu Russland. Jeder, der sich länger als acht Tage privat in Russland aufhält, muss von seinem Gastgeber bei der Gemeinde oder einer anderen lokalen Behörde angemeldet werden. Die Anmeldeformulare sind vier Seiten lang, und ein gut ausgebildeter Beamter, wahrscheinlich mit Hochschulabschluss, vorzugsweise mit einem Ingenieurstudium, benötigt 30 bis 45 Minuten, um jeden Antrag zu bearbeiten, da jeder Eintrag auf dem Formular mit Ihrem Reisepass, Ihrem Visum, der Einreisekarte, die Sie bei der Passkontrolle an der Grenze erhalten haben, den von Ihnen und Ihrem Gastgeber angegebenen Telefonnummern und vielen weiteren irrelevanten Kleinigkeiten wie Ihrem Beruf, falls vorhanden, abgeglichen werden muss.
Der Sachbearbeiter, der Ihre Bewerbung prüft, scannt alle Unterlagen ein und schickt sie an eine zentrale Bearbeitungsstelle, wahrscheinlich in Moskau. Ich habe mich gefragt, ob dort jemand den gesunden Menschenverstand hat, diesen eingehenden Müll nach Erhalt zu schreddern, oder ob er, was wahrscheinlicher ist, irgendwo für die Ewigkeit archiviert wird. Ich frage mich auch, was die Sachbearbeiter, die meine Bewerbung entgegennehmen und bearbeiten, ihren Ehemännern, Kindern und Müttern darüber erzählen, wie sie ihren Tag verbracht haben. Ich frage mich, wie sich Russland angesichts seines derzeitigen gravierenden Arbeitskräftemangels leisten kann, diese qualifizierten, gut ausgebildeten und motivierten Mitarbeiter den ganzen Tag untätig herumstehen zu lassen, anstatt sie für ausländische Besucher einzusetzen, die mit offenen Armen empfangen werden sollten, und stattdessen den größten Teil des Tages mit der Registrierung zu verschwenden.
Aber das ist noch nicht alles. Diese vier Seiten des Antrags werden jedes Jahr geändert, und die Beamten können keine Anträge akzeptieren, die von ausländischen Besuchern auf ihrem Computer mit der Vorjahresversion erstellt wurden. Verboten. Und was hat sich in der Ausgabe vom 1. Januar 2025 gegenüber 2024 geändert? Nun wurden drei Zeilen hinzugefügt, in denen der Antragsteller zusätzlich zur kyrillischen Schreibweise auch die lateinische Schreibweise seines Namens angeben muss. Es scheint, dass eine Fotokopie des Reisepasses und der Visaseiten des Antragstellers, die ebenfalls mit dem Antrag eingereicht werden müssen, nicht ausreichte, um die immer anspruchsvolleren Bürokraten in Moskau zufrieden zu stellen.
Ich kann Ihnen versichern, dass es solche Art von Bürokratie überall gibt, wo man genau hinschaut. Und das trotz der offensichtlichen Investitionen in neue technische Ausrüstung für das Personal und die „Klientel“. Unser Puschkin-Zentrum hat neue Scanner-Kopierer, ein elektronisches Terminvergabesystem und QR-Code-Geräte für die Kunden angeschafft. Aber all das dient hauptsächlich dazu, Verpflichtungen zu erfüllen, die in einer modernen Gesellschaft gar nicht existieren sollten und nichts zur Verbesserung der russischen Staatssicherheit beitragen.
Note: one and the same reader has been providing all of these transcripts for the past year. He requested anonymity, which I have been obliged to respect although I regret not having had the opportunity to thank him publicly for all these efforts which many readers have found very useful
Prof. Glenn Diesen: 0:00 Hello everyone and greetings from Dubai. In today’s program I am joined by the excellent Dr. Gilbert Doctorow, historian and an international affairs expert. So the US prepared this proposal for ending the war in Ukraine, yet we see now that Zelensky rejected it quite publicly before it could even be presented, and the Europeans are seemingly encouraging him to do this as well. So as a result, we now see Marco Rubio canceling his attendance and their entire thing more or less collapsed before it had even begun.
A very dramatic development, given that the US now threatens to wash its hands [of] this war and walk away unless the parties start falling line. How do you make sense of all of this?
Gilbert Doctorow, PhD: 0:59 I think the Russians have finally mastered a technique that was outside their competence for decades: public relations. This weekend was quite remarkable that Vladimir Putin took the initiative and launched, without any prior consultation with the Ukrainians or the Americans or anybody else, he launched his proposal for a 30-hour ceasefire in honor of Easter, and he assumed that the Ukrainians would follow suit. The result immediately of his announcement was Zelensky appearing before [cameras], disheveled, looking confused, and making a rather spontaneous and not very kindly or agreeable statement, denouncing the Russians for never agreeing to the 30-day unconditional ceasefire that he had proposed and instead of offering a 30-hour peace pause.
That was in bad humor, and it showed that the Russians had really caught him flat-footed. Now, the next move was obviously a leaking of information to the “Financial Times” that Vladimir Putin was ready to abandon the maximalist ambitions of Russia to take all of the four oblasts, which it has incorporated into the Russian Federation after referenda in the fall of 2022, but which it has not fully captured. We know that Donetsk province or oblast is only about 65-70 percent held by the Russians. The Lugansk was always very well kept by the Russians, it’s about 98%, 99% in Russian hands.
3:07 But the other two oblasts are not. They’re maybe 50 or 60% Russian. And Kherson, the very capital of Kherson oblast is in Ukrainian hands on the right bank of the Dnieper river. So the fact that he would violate actually the constitutional requirement that Russia not sacrifice any territory that is deemed to be fully Russian. That is quite extraordinary. And it was meant to demonstrate to the Americans that Russia is not after a land grab, that Russia is after security and the other principles that were announced at the start of the Special Military Operation.
3:53 And the “Financial Times” took close note of this and remarked that probably the Russians in exchange for this concession, very considerable concession, would be looking for their other interests to be fully adopted by the Americans in the final peace settlement that would be on the table.
Well, here you have the Russians making an important seeming concession, although when asked about this by reporters, the press secretary of the Kremlin, Pieskov, said, “No, no, no, this was fake news.” That’s understandable. I believe that this leaking of information to the “Financial Times” and to the Western media was intentionally done in this– to catch again, to smoke out the Ukrainians and to avoid unnecessary discussion of this concession at home in Russia, where it would raise eyebrows, where it would come under strict criticism from real patriots who say, “Ah, it violates the constitution. We cannot sacrifice the land that has been duly incorporated into the Russian Federation.”
5:16 Well, they smoked out Zelensky in more than one way. It occurred– when you turn this around in your mind, you see that the Ukrainians– probably at the suggestion of what the Russians call their curators in London and in Washington and in Paris– the Ukrainians were proposing and were advancing the unconditional ceasefire with intent to divert attention entirely away from their rigid position on the end game, for their unwillingness to accept anything other than a Russian capitulation as the basis for a peace treaty.
And here you have it. The Russians have publicly or at least are assumed to have made a concession of great importance. And Mr. Zelensky turns around and says that Crimea is Ukrainian and always will be, and he will not recognize it as Russian territory.
6:19 Now, that’s one level of analysis. There’s an additional point here. Let’s be honest about it. The Ukrainians diverted attention from the endgame because if Mr. Zelensky were to propose anything less than the maximalist program that he has from the beginning set out as his peace objectives, which is essentially Russian capitulation, trial and tribunal of Putin and the other Russian leaders, reparations and so forth, as if Russia lost the war and Ukraine won the war…
if Zelensky would back away from any of this, he’d be lynched the next day. He cannot make any compromises. It is not a question of whim, it is a statement of fact. He’ll be lynched and he knows it. So the Russians have been very clever in setting up the stage.
7:17 And what is the end act of this stage presentation that they prepared? That the United States wash its hands of its whole existence, walk away from it, probably cut all further intelligence systems to Ukraine, say, “let the Europeans do it if they like Ukraine so much”, and continue the progress on normalization of relations with Russia. This is a scenario that I see in the making.
Diesen: So the seeming Russian concessions, as you mentioned, they were quite significant as reported in the “Financial Times”. Do you see the reports as credible, that the Russians actually did offer to freeze the conflict along the existing lines, given that this would provide a problem within the Constitution, or were they simply betting on Zelensky not accepting these terms? How are you reading this? Because if it is correct, it is, it was, well, it was significant concessions on the Russian part.
8:32 Well, this is not the first time that I’m airing these views. And I can tell you that some comments came back on the previous video in which I mentioned this, saying, “Oh no, the Russians can’t possibly give up this territory. Doctorow doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” Well, I think I know what I’m talking about. And again, you have to look at what are the Russian war objectives. They were never to seize more territory. The … corporation of these four oblasts of the Donbas and the Novo Rossiya oblasts into Russia was done post haste.
9:10 It was done in what, in September, I believe, 2022. It was done when it was clear that the western supporters of Ukraine — United States in the front row and the British next to them — were on a war footing and had no intention of letting this go and letting the Ukrainians settle with the Russians. When this was clear, that’s when the incorporation of these four oblasts became a necessity and was carried out. But that was not the original game plan. The original game plan was denazification and demilitarization, and no NATO, and rollback of NATO in general from its advanced positions in Eastern Europe as infrastructure and personnel.
10:04 So Mr. Putin is not making any great sacrifices here. He’s simply returning to basics. And it becomes very attractive to return to basics when he sees the prospect of some normalization with the United States, that is not just a theoretical idea, but already has been demonstrated by what I see as the cooperation of Team Trump and Team Putin on resolving the nuclear issue in Iran, which is a great indicator to Trump of how Mr. Putin can be as useful to him as he was to President Obama in resolving the question of the chemical weapons in Syria, which the war hawks in Washington wanted to use to justify massive airstrikes in Syria.
11:02 This scene is being replayed now, as I understand it. Just to put a dot on the “i”, it is not just consultations with Witkoff, and also with the Urainians. Let’s get this straight. Before he went to Oman on the first visit, Witkoff stopped over for half a day in Petersburg, and you can be sure that they talked about what he was going to do in Oman the next day in negotiations with the Iranian foreign minister through an intermediary.
I believe it is reasonable to expect that the Russians are presenting themselves as not the only, but among the key supervisors and inspectors of any Iranian settlement made from the United States to ensure that it is being respected. Probably the Chinese also will put themselves up in that role.
12:09 And it would make a lot of sense for these two powers to be the guarantors of Iranian good behavior, as opposed to the absolute wimps from the United Nations Atomic Energy Group, who are afraid to say anything that becomes political.
Diesen: So this diplomatic flop, how does it change now the nature of the war? Because [on] the face of it, it does seem to put Russia in a good position. Even the American media recognized that the Russians were prepared to make great concessions to reach a peace. Meanwhile, Zelensky is seen now as taking a very maximalist position, even again rejecting this proposal before even the meeting took place in London, so in doing so quite publicly.
13:05 And of course, now the United States has an excuse, if you will, to divorce itself from the war if it wants to leave before the collapse and, I guess, dump the whole mess on the Europeans. So do you think, do you see it in, I guess, such dramatic terms, or how will the war be affected by this?
Doctorow: I see it in precisely the terms that you just set out. I think that the United States is receiving the reason, a justifiable reason, for walking away from this. The Europeans in holding the hand of Zelensky are setting themselves up for a big fall, because the disaster in Ukraine will become their property, not the United States.
13:55 While Trump and Team can go ahead and find points in common in international affairs and business affairs with the Russians, without anybody’s nose being turned the wrong way. The hawks in Washington will have to accept this. Now, what nobody is saying is what I just said. It isn’t just the whim of Mr. Zelensky over his bad mood or his bad temperament or his stupidity, Lord knows what, no.
The man understands, and it was said publicly, that if he betrays the neo-Nazi gang that has controlled the Kievan government since 2014, they’ll be strung up from a tree. It’s not my speculation. This is on the public record. So you don’t find that on the front page of the “Financial Times”.
14:54 But it’s obvious as day. He cannot give any concessions. Not that he won’t give them, he cannot. If he has to give concessions, he’d better get on a plane a few minutes later, because his life will be worth nothing.
Diesen: Yes, well, that was kind of something that Boris Johnson also suggested happened in 2019, that he was unable to implement any of his peace mandate because of the nationalists. But it was an interesting commentary out today by former advisor of Zelensky, Alexei Aristovich, who argued that Ukraine should accept this, the loss of these four regions because, in his words, the alternative was there will be a loss of eight regions instead.
15:43 So in other words, the alternative isn’t victory, it’s further defeat. And I guess anyone who’s following the conflict now kind of recognizes this, that the war is being lost, that the more it’s delayed, the more men and territory will simply be lost. So I understand the position that Zelensky is in. He’s had to live with this threat by the nationalists since 2019. It’s not much he can do to reverse course now.
But the Europeans, what is the objective here? Because if the Americans are prepared to walk away from this, what is the benefit of prolonging the war now and further extending it? It’s– I guess of all the actors, I have the hardest time understanding the Europeans.
Doctorrow: 16:36 Right. Well, step back, Aristovich remarks, he’s in the United States, isn’t he right now? He hasn’t been there for several years unless I’m missing something. Where was he when he said made this statement?
Diesen: I’m uncertain. He was on one of these podcasts he usually attends. I’m not sure. I heard it was in US, then I heard it was in Turkey. I don’t really know, to be honest. But he’s not in Ukraine at least, that’s for sure.
Doctorow: 17:00 He’s not in Ukraine. Otherwise, he wouldn’t dare said what he said.
Diesen: No.
Doctorow: So this– you can be objective, and you can make valuable contributions as that statement appears to be, when you don’t have your life on the line, because you got these fellows behind you who are ready to lynch you. And that is a situation of Mr. Zelensky, which he has gotten himself into the whole time he’s been in power.
17:24 But as to the Europeans, why are they so stubborn? Well, you’ve discussed this and the various, various analysts, and I think generally it’s been, what I’ve heard or understood, is that they have … dug a hole for themselves, and it’s very hard for most of them to extricate themselves from the commitments they’ve made, and they have no intention of retiring early from political life. So they keep on doing it. And they’re hoping that Mr. Trump will flip-flop, because he seems to do a lot of flip-flopping these days, and will come around to their view.
18:00 And he has done nothing to disabuse them of that illusion. He has not done what he should have done, that is, to read the riot act to the Europeans. He never did that. Instead he sent Kellogg a week ago to meet with them, and to hold their hands, and to give them some hope that the Trump administration is sympathetic to their efforts of securing a peace by their sending peacekeepers and whatever, which is total rubbish, of course. Trump should have read the riot act and he hasn’t had the guts to do that, which I mean, I have to hold this out as a severe criticism. He is trying to let everybody see Trump through their own lens, rather than to understand his real position, which is quite close to the Russian position.
Diesen: 18:57 So will the Americans actually walk away from this war now? Because Trump keeps making the point that this is not his war. It was Biden’s war. But nonetheless, he keeps sending weapons. He keeps providing the intelligence. I know at the moment it’s a huge effort to reposition the US from a participant in the war to being a mediator, but if he continues down this path, surely it will be too late.
19:27 He will gain some ownership of this war. And as he’s now reaching his 100 days of, well, which was the date, well, the time he set for himself to resolve the war, how likely do you see it as the United States actually walking away from this?
Doctorow: Well, the moment that Trump stops providing weapons and perhaps stops providing intelligence, that is a moment when he has taken a clear decision and when those among his opponents domestically and abroad will be ready to strike. So he’s postponing that moment, but the moment will come. And I think the longer he postpones it, the worse it is for him.
20:08 The present state of flux and fluidity and uncertainty about his intentions has reached its limit. Will he walk away from it? I believe he will. Right now, he has every justification. It’s very hard for someone the least bit objective to say he should stand by the Ukrainians when they’re being totally unrealistic, not facing the reality on the ground and demanding that the victor take the lot of the loser. So I think that he will prevail, but only if he acts, and not just if he fudges as he’s doing now.
Diesen: 20:55 Well, I guess it takes me to my last question. If the United States does leave now after this flop, What do you see happening? How long do you think Ukraine can hold out on the battlefield based on what you’re seeing now? Because some of the weaponry has shifted from this, for example, the huge need for artillery shells to more cheaper weaponry like the drones which the Europeans are able to supply.
I’m not saying that the Europeans can fill the shoes of the Americans, but how long can realistically the war go on if the United States decouples completely this?
Doctorow: Well, you’ve touched upon a key issue. The nature of the war has changed. There have been multiple changes over the last three years. There have been turning points which make all of us observers and commentators look foolish, because our expectations were based on a steady-state nature of war, and it has changed, first by the introduction of lethal weapons by the United States and its allies, which was unanticipated, and by the ever-more-lethal and ever-more-sophisticated weaponry that they have supplied to Kiev.
22:06 So these turning points have existed. In the last few months, there is a decisive change in the nature of the war, which makes it, frankly, easier for the Ukrainians to hold out longer. And you just touched upon it. It has become a drone and electronic warfare, a battlefield scene, which works against massing of troops, which will be decimated by kamikaze drones, and which makes it possible for a relatively small number of computer nerds and video game players to constitute an effective military force using drones and to make it very risky for an attacking force to go out on the field and expose itself to these weapons that, as I say, are controlled by relatively few people. So the whole question about, “Ah, the Ukrainians are short on manpower”, well not really, if it is a drone situation.
23:10 And just to come back to a very important issue, this nature, the changed nature of the war, I believe is expressed in the number of kills. When it was clearly, as you were saying, an artillery war, and the Russians had, as they almost in the beginning had, a seven to one or ten to one advantage in available artillery shells versus the Ukrainian supplies. It didn’t happen in the middle of the war. It happened from the first days of the war. When it changes from that to drones, where the Brits have sent thousands of drones and where the Ukrainians themselves are manufacturing them in underground workshops and perhaps supplying 30% of their needs domestically.
23:56 When that shift took place, the number of kills went down. Three months ago, day after day, the Russian news is reporting 1800, 2000, 2200 Ukrainian casualties day by day. Now when I listen to the Russian state television news reports from the field, I hear about on this front, we killed 50 Ukrainians on that front. What is it? It’s a different scale.
It is an order of magnitude different. And so this has a decisive importance for us as we consider how long can the Ukrainians hold out. On the other side, war is not just technical and material, war is psychological. And on the psychology side, the United States abandoning Ukraine can have decisive importance in destroying the self-confidence of the Ukrainian people in their ability to resist the Russians. So this makes it very hard to give a reliable or confident prognosis how long the war can go on.
25:09 But I believe it will be over before the end of this year, probably because of psychological impact and the departure of the United States and a collapse of morale on the Ukrainian side. Not because they don’t have any bodies to put on the line. They have some bodies and the front lines have not collapsed. And in the case of the little scraps of land that were being held by the Ukrainian forces in Kursk province, my goodness, it’s down to 99.5% of the land recovered. That last 100% is awfully difficult for the Russians to capture.
25:49 The Ukrainians are going to their deaths knowingly, rather than surrender or flee. Flee is rather problematic, but they’re not doing that. And so the Russians recognized a long time ago that their Slavic brethren in Ukraine have the same kind of guts and the same kind of determination that they do. And that hasn’t changed.
26:20 Therefore, as I say, it’s very hard to get a serious date when will the war end. But I believe it’ll be sooner rather than later, and it’ll certainly be before the end of this year.
Diesen: Yeah. Well, when I heard about the huge US pressure and the Russians making great concessions, I was struck by a moment of optimism that this war could possibly come to an end fairly soon, but it appears it will still go on for some time. But I do agree though that it is a huge limit now on how far, of course, it can go.
26:57 So, yeah, Dr. Gilbert Doctorow, Thank you very much. It’s always very fascinating to get your insights. Well, thanks again.
This community is growing, partly thanks to kind invitations from new, additional host broadcasters to enter into recorded conversations about the most important relevant developments in the Russia-Ukraine war. So it was with this week’s hosts at LegitTargets who disseminate their videos on X and other platforms.
The main focus of this interview was my statement that conclusion of a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine is unlikely and the best decision Trump can make would be to withdraw from the process.
Of course, such pronouncements are formulated by reading the day’s tea leaves and when the tea leaves are refreshed the calculus changes. The meeting yesterday in Moscow between Trump’s emissary Steve Witkoff and President Putin suggests that agreement on the terms for peace has become closer at least between the two Great Powers. What remains problematic is getting the Europeans and Zelensky to agree to the terms.
The Witkoff-Putin talks have been discussed extensively this morning on Russian media. I do not hear there the venomous condemnations of Putin’s not going for broke and demolishing Kiev that I hear from some of my confreres in the U.S. alternative media who are more royalist than the king, so to speak.
I find it interesting that my LegitTargets interview was picked up by the Russian news aggregator Inosmi in a Russian voice-over video and from that news articles were published by various Russian print media.
Diese Community wächst, auch dank der freundlichen Einladungen neuer, zusätzlicher Gastgeber, an aufgezeichneten Gesprächen über die wichtigsten relevanten Entwicklungen im Krieg zwischen Russland und der Ukraine teilzunehmen. So war es auch bei den Gastgebern dieser Woche bei LegitTargets, die ihre Videos auf X und anderen Plattformen verbreiten.
Im Mittelpunkt dieses Interviews stand meine Aussage, dass ein Friedensabkommen zwischen Russland und der Ukraine unwahrscheinlich ist und die beste Entscheidung, die Trump treffen kann, der Rückzug aus dem Prozess wäre.
Natürlich werden solche Aussagen auf der Grundlage der aktuellen Lage getroffen, und wenn sich die Lage ändert, ändert sich auch die Einschätzung. Das gestrige Treffen zwischen Trumps Gesandtem Steve Witkoff und Präsident Putin in Moskau deutet darauf hin, dass zumindest zwischen den beiden Großmächten eine Einigung über die Friedensbedingungen näher gerückt ist. Problematisch bleibt jedoch, die Europäer und Selensky dazu zu bewegen, den Bedingungen zuzustimmen.
Die Gespräche zwischen Witkoff und Putin wurden heute Morgen in den russischen Medien ausführlich diskutiert. Ich höre dort nicht die giftigen Verurteilungen Putins, der nicht alles auf eine Karte setzt und Kiew zerstört, wie ich sie von einigen meiner Kollegen in den alternativen US-Medien höre, die sozusagen royalistischer sind als der König selbst.
Ich finde es interessant, dass mein LegitTargets-Interview vom russischen Nachrichtenaggregator Inosmi in einem russischen Voice-over-Video aufgegriffen wurde und daraufhin Artikel in verschiedenen russischen Printmedien erschienen sind.
I inform the community that tomorrow, 24 April I travel to Russia, where I will remain until 11 May. Most of the time I will be in St Petersburg, though for several days I will be visiting Moscow.
As usual, during this trip I will be issuing several reports on how the Russian home front is doing during the ongoing Ukraine war.
I will return again to Russia in mid-June to attend the St Petersburg International Economic Forum, which could be especially interesting this year if the rapprochement with the United States continues.
It has been a busy day. This evening’s chat with Professor of the University of Southwest Norway Glenn Diesen was a special treat.
Our discussion focused on the likelihood that Trump will wash his hands of the Ukraine conflict now that Zelensky has given him the perfect pretext by his refusal to acknowledge the loss of Crimea and his attempt to divert attention from this intransigence by directing attention only to a 30-day ceasefire.
As I have said elsewhere, Zelensky’s stubbornness comes from the fact that should he agree to territorial concessions to Russia he will be lynched by the radical neo-Nazi gang who since 2014 have been the force behind his throne.
My remarks in this interview are optimistic about Trump doing the right thing and shutting down military assistance and satellite intelligence to Kiev after he walks away. However, I note here that that the expert panelists and host Vyacheslav Nikonov on this evening’s Great Game talk show are less sanguine and fear that Trump will sanction Russia as well as Ukraine when he slams the door on the peace process.
Gilbert Doctorow 