In this interview recorded in the morning, we discussed Volodymyr Zelensky’s latest proposal that both sides create buffer zones on their sides of the present battle lines, meaning ‘demilitarization’ of the part of Donetsk still in Ukrainian hands and a similar ‘demilitarization’ of as many kilometers to the east of the battle lines by Russia.

As I remark, this is purely a propaganda initiative by Kiev. They know perfectly well that the proposal is completely unacceptable to the Russians for several reasons that are easy to see.  First, this buffer zone on the Ukrainian side would remain under Ukrainian administration, meaning that the Russian speaking population would remain subject to the brutal repression which touched off their resistance to the newly installed ultra-nationalist government in Kiev in February 2014 and continued for eight years, prompting the Russians to launch their Special Military Operation. 

Zelensky’s ‘demilitarization’ would mean removal of heavy military equipment.  That sounds good, but in fact the war has evolved into a drone war and it is easy to envision that the Ukrainians would continue to launch drones against Russian positions to the East, while Russian responses would be condemned as violation of the peace justifying the entry of European “peacekeepers.”

If we look further afield, the Zelensky proposal does not address the root causes of the war that the Russians insist must be resolved if there is to be a durable peace. This means the neutrality of Ukraine, the ensured absence of any foreign troops or military installations. Though the Russians are not saying this aloud, they seek regime change in Kiev as part of any settlement. The extreme nationalists who have controlled the Kiev government since 2014 must be removed.

For all of the above reasons, the latest Zelensky proposal is dead on arrival in Moscow, even if the Kremlin is saying now politely that they will study it closely.

https://www.urmedium.net/c/presstv/135508

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2025

The addition of retired Swiss intelligence officer Jacques Baud to the list of persons sanctioned by the European Council a little more than a week ago has shocked the community of Alternative Media, precisely because it indicates that the European Institutions have gone rogue, are trampling on the concept of freedom of expression with impunity and operating in completely opaque fashion so as to frustrate any possibility of recourse to justice by any of our dissidents.

Baud has now appeared on ‘Deep Dive’ and other widely watched podcasts to explain his situation. He has received moral support from serious people including state officials from a number of European countries. Though his bank accounts have been frozen and he is under a travel ban, friendly and decent people are giving him some assistance. Working through the proper channels, he may even get some humanitarian allowance access to his own funds. But I do not see that he is getting legal aid.

The issue raised by his case compels us all to put on our thinking caps and also to look in the mirror to see if we all have not in some way allowed government arbitrariness and disregard for due process, trampling on the sanctity of private property to go unchecked for too long, so that the latest acts of tyranny happening around us today are merely a continuation of preexisting trends.

I will not beat around the bush:  what we are now witnessing is shocking because it is happening to us.  Four years ago, at the start of the Special Military Operation, when it happened to Russians, we all had a good laugh.  Just think, this or that jurisdiction just seized the yacht of some Russian oligarch.  It was ‘rob the robbers!’ nothing more. 

I ask myself why I did not get hot under the collar when Peter Aven’s bank accounts in the UK were frozen so that he sat penniless in his London mansion and could not pay his butler.  Aven was the co-founder and co-owner of one of Russia’s most successful commercial and retail banks, Alpha Bank, that he has since sold off to be free of the associations that were used to put him on the sanctions list. Why was the seizure of his assets not troubling?  Perhaps because Aven was/is quite obnoxious as a personality.

But being obnoxious is hardly a criminal offense. Nor was he given a proper day in court when his assets were frozen. That came only years later.

Many of the wealthy Russians who were put on the personal sanctions lists of the EU, of the UK and other jurisdictions were accused of nothing more than ‘being a friend of Putin,’ or supporting the Putin regime and not denouncing the war.  As in the case of Baud today, these supposedly incriminating charges are vague and unenforceable in a court of law.  The sanctions were a political act of the given government of the day, not a judicial act, exactly as is the case of Baud today.

If we are troubled by the implications of the arbitrariness and extrajudicial nature of Baud’s being sanctioned, then we must go back to the very beginning of the confiscatory behavior of countries well outside the EU and including, by the way, the USA.  

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On thinking through the Baud case, I have been looking for some special reason why this man who made every effort to be objective in his written and spoken comments about the Ukraine war has nonetheless landed on the still rather short list of victims of EU tyranny.

My first conjecture was that maybe he had some personal enemies who decided to use the opaque procedures of denunciation to bring him down.  However, on second thought I see a more likely explanation in Baud’s very professionalism and respectability.  By career line, he had been one of theirs, not some shambolic peacenik. But then in his retirement he has spoken his mind, which does not match the mainstream narratives.

What I see in Baud’s punishment without a crime is the same as happened to a Canadian former diplomat, Patrick Armstrong, who had done service in Canada’s Moscow embassy in mid-career, if my memory serves me right. In the run-up to and first year of the Special Military Operation he was retired and occupied his mind by writing very good blogs on his own internet platform, all in the dissident vein.  Then one fine day in 2023 he received a visit from the Canadian thought police who told him that either he shut down his blog and instead looked after his garden OR his bank accounts would be frozen and his pension payments would stop.  Patrick made the right decision and we have hardly heard from him since.  This was just an example of the awful human rights watch of Justin Trudeau as Canadian prime minister, panderer to the neo-Nazi Ukrainian community in Canada.

The situation is not hopeless. On 19^th December here in Brussels there was an historic turning point when respect for international law won out over unprincipled theft and lawlessness at the level of the European Institutions.  Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever successfully stopped in their tracks Ursula von der Leyen and Friedrich Merz by refusing their demands that Belgium confiscate Russian sovereign assets on deposit in Euroclear to support a loan to Ukraine.  A sovereign state finally brought down the EU’s tyrants and the Belgian solution of a mutualized EU loan to Ukraine was decided upon. That should give us courage to take the European Council to court for violation of freedom of speech and other human rights.  This may not be pursued in EU courts but there are international courts that surely will hear the case if it properly presented, and that is also doable if authoritative expert lawyers come forward on a pro bono basis to help out.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2025

I assume that the Community is well aware of the savage act of censorship and intended financial ruin directed by EU authorities a week ago against the Swiss intelligence veteran and widely read author on the Russian Way of War, Jacques Baud. I refer you to his Wikipedia entry for details on his career in his homeland, in United Nations operations and on his most recent writings.

Baud’s bank accounts and other assets in the EU have been frozen. This is all the more painful in that he in fact lives in Brussels. He is under a travel ban which in principle excludes the possibility of his going to Switzerland to pick up some cash and then returning to his Brussels residence. He is now dependent on the generosity of friends and supporters to put bread on the table, and those who assist him are themselves risking being sanctioned for that very act.

Worst of all, the sanctions have not been handed down by a court. The rule of law does not apply, because the sanctions are an act of political fiat within the EU’s executive body, the Council, against which it seems there is no appeal to European instances of justice. So much for checks and balances, which the architects of the EU in the 1990s, all highly educated intellectuals in the Leftist camp seem to have overlooked due to their unfounded optimism about the goodness of human nature, especially among the well-educated social strata like themselves. This situation is one further argument why the structure of the EU must be reinvented if democracy and civil liberties are to have any future here. The problem is not just the very low intellectual and educational level of the present national leaders and bosses within the EU Institutions; it is rooted in the EU’s founding documents.

Those of you who have sampled Baud’s writings or heard his occasional interviews on leading podcasts know that the man is as far removed from being a propagandist in general and an asset for the Kremlin, in particular, with which he is charged, as is humanly possible.  I found his book on the structure of the Russian armed forces to be impenetrable beyond the first chapter, suitable for experts not for the layman.  Moreover, he has shunned invitations to appear on RT, he has avoided using Russian sources in his research. He has minded his tongue on the few video appearances he gave to Alternative Media.  In short, he has tried consciously to avoid any suspicion of being biased on the war.  All to no avail!

Indeed, the case is so strange that I suspect he has been put under sanctions at the urging of some personal enemies, not by disinterested examiners of his case within the EU.  But that is just my guess.

Now, to cut to the quick: what does the Baud case mean for the panelists, for the hosts of programs like ‘Judging Freedom’ or Glenn Diesen’s channel, to mention just two of the most prominent podcasts?  Most every participant and host daily violates the political correctness of Euro-speak and could be accused of promoting Russia’s views of the war.

In yesterday’s ‘Judging Freedom,’ Scott Ritter stated flatly that he will no longer travel to Europe, because he fears detention and other serious unpleasantness over his political statements and participation in Russian media. 

This issue is one that I must take with the utmost seriousness, given that I do not just travel through Europe but actually live there – for 45 years and counting.   

I will take precautions, to the extent possible, not to be caught out as has Jacques Baud.  However, I believe that it is highly unlikely that the European Council will sanction Americans under present conditions of ideological warfare with the Trump administration. I point to the speech of Vice President J.D. Vance at the Munich Security Conference in February and now, a couple of weeks ago to the newly issued National Security Strategy document which denounces the European Union for violation of civil liberties, for depriving citizens of freedom of speech.  Any EU sanctions against individual American citizens for expressing their opinions on the war would go directly against the frantic efforts of the Commission to keep Trump on side over the Ukraine war and ensure provision by the U.S. of essential participation in any post war security guaranties to Kiev.

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All of the foregoing brings me back to the core issue that I am publicizing in my latest critical comments on the Russian ‘gently, gently’ conduct of the war. Indeed, I am saying before any microphone offered to me that Putin should move to end the war here and now by a decapitating strike on both civilian and military decision-making centers in Ukraine.

I say this not for the sake of sparing further loss of life among Russian or Ukrainian soldiers and civilians, important as that may be. I say it out of concern for the milieu in which I live.

Wars do not bring out the best in society, unless you enjoy watching ceremonies recounting heroism on the field of battle. All too often, the medals are given out posthumously to the widows.

No, wars mostly bring out the worst instincts of society to suppress liberties and enforce the rule of authoritarians.  Two or more years of war in Ukraine, which is what the Putin and EU strategies are envisioning, will further poison the political life of Europe, will keep in power the monsters and fools who rule us presently.  This is patently not in the interests of everyone living on this Continent and it is also not in Russia’s interests because it will lead straight to a Russia-NATO kinetic war two or three years hence.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2025