About nine months ago, I alerted readers of these pages to a feature length article in The Financial Times which described the generalized prosperity in Russia since the start of the Special Military Operation and transition to a war economy. That article quoted extensively from Rosstat and other Russian official sources. It highlighted the fact that truck drivers were now earning four times what they made before the war and how Russia’s lower classes did especially well under conditions of full employment that even penetrated to the one-factory towns that languished as from the Yeltsin years of the mid-1990s when that factory shut its doors. Considering that over-all the FT is notoriously anti-Putin, anti-Russian that one article was something to celebrate.

Now in today’s online edition of the FT we find another feature article entitled ‘Russia’s war economy fuels rustbelt revival” that is more focused geographically in long deprived regions and focused topically on the consumer sector of goods and services.

See https://www.ft.com/content/559ca59f-7fdc-4c47-8e87-edb562acdc7b

Given that many of you may not have subscriptions to the FT and cannot access the article, I will provide here some indicative information that it carries.

The opening couple of paragraphs set our expectations:

Russian retailers are rushing to set up shop in the country’s rustbelt, tapping into new wealth flowing from soldiers’ bonuses and rampant military production.

Shops, restaurants and gym chains have opened up in Russia’s most deprived regions, which serve as recruiting pools for Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. The country’s war economy has also created jobs, increased salaries for factory workers and injected unprecedented sums of money into historically poor towns and cities.

The regions used for this study include Kirov oblast, Tyumen oblast, Penza oblast, Kabardino-Balkarian, Irkutsk oblast, Khabarovsk krai, and Khanty-Mansia. The geography stretches from Central Russia out to the Far East.

The reporter actually did some independent research, as we see in the following:

The number of retail and hospitality jobs advertised in the southeastern Khabarovsk region almost doubled in the year to January 2025, according to Financial Times analysis of vacancies posted by a sample of Russian businesses.

The FT also relied on official Russian statistics (Rosstat), as for example, the chart on nationwide unemployment from 2017 to 2025.

The remarks about how army enlistment has affected family budgets is precise to a given sample region, Mari El, which offers $35,600 as the starting bonus for army recruits. That sum is three times the annual salary in the region. To be sure, the sign-up bonus varies from region to region. Then there is the pay-out in case of death while on active duty. That comes to 12 million rubles, or $140,000.

Yes, there is heightened inflation ever since the SMO began, jumping from perhaps 4% to the near 10% per annum now.

On the one hand, the journalist tells us that “wage increases are being undermined by high inflation.” On the other hand, we read that “Nominal incomes in the traditionally disadvantaged republic [Mari El] have grown by almost 80 per cent from December 2021 to 2024 compared to a roughly 60 per cent increase in Moscow, according to Rosstat…”  You can buy a lot of prime steaks when your salary goes up by 80% and food only goes up by 10%.

What are the signs of prosperity that the article points to?  They are the opening of beauty salons, the trend for all women to go to manicurists, the entry of national chain supermarkets and fast-food outlets, the long waiting times to reserve a table at quality restaurants, the opening of a private dog grooming service in one town.  In short, the generalizations are based on examination of how people are living their daily lives.

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Note that Max Seddon and the other Russia-bashing FT reporters based in their Riga, Latvia offices had no role in preparing this article. Riga was an anti-Russia center when George Kennan did his language studies there prior to entering the U.S. diplomatic service and it remains precisely that today.

The lead author of this article, Daria Mosolova, is a relatively recent hire. Her LinkedIn entry tells us that she got her bachelor’s degree in comparative literature (French) at University College London and then took an advanced degree in international relations at the London School of Economics. While at LCU, she was for one year editor in chief of Pi Media, which is their student journalism society.

Mosolova joined the FT in 2022 as a trainee and is in rotating 6-month assignments to various FT desks. She served one term in Brussels and now is based in London, assisting with Russia coverage in the area of economics and business. It will be interesting to see how long Mosolova remains at the FT. But she likely has a promising career ahead of her if the editors have tolerated her dollop of truth amidst their general Russia-bashing.

Translation below into German (Andreas Mylaeus)

Manchmal sagen die Mainstream-Medien die Wahrheit …

Vor etwa neun Monaten machte ich die Leser dieser Seiten auf einen ausführlichen Artikel in The Financial Times aufmerksam, in dem der allgemeine Wohlstand in Russland seit Beginn der militärischen Spezialoperation und dem Übergang zu einer Kriegswirtschaft beschrieben wurde. In diesem Artikel wurde ausführlich aus Rosstat und anderen offiziellen russischen Quellen zitiert. Er hob die Tatsache hervor, dass Lkw-Fahrer jetzt viermal so viel verdienten wie vor dem Krieg und dass es den unteren Schichten Russlands unter den Bedingungen der Vollbeschäftigung besonders gut gehe, die sogar in die Ein-Fabrik-Städte vorgedrungen sei, die seit den Jelzin-Jahren Mitte der 1990er Jahre, als diese Fabrik ihre Tore schloss, darbten. Wenn man bedenkt, dass die FT insgesamt notorisch anti-Putin und anti-russisch eingestellt ist, war dieser eine Artikel ein Grund zum Feiern.

In der heutigen Online-Ausgabe der FT finden wir einen weiteren Leitartikel mit dem Titel „Russlands Kriegswirtschaft befeuert die Wiederbelebung des Rostgürtels“, der sich geografisch stärker auf lange benachteiligte Regionen und thematisch auf den Konsumsektor für Waren und Dienstleistungen konzentriert.

Siehe https://www.ft.com/content/559ca59f-7fdc-4c47-8e87-edb562acdc7b

Da viele von Ihnen möglicherweise kein Abonnement für die FT haben und nicht auf den Artikel zugreifen können, werde ich hier einige Informationen aus dem Artikel wiedergeben.

Die ersten Absätze setzen unsere Erwartungen:

Russische Einzelhändler beeilen sich, Geschäfte im Rostgürtel des Landes zu eröffnen, und erschließen sich neuen Wohlstand, der aus den Soldzulagen und der zügellosen Militärproduktion stammt.

In den am stärksten benachteiligten Regionen Russlands wurden Geschäfte, Restaurants und Fitnessketten eröffnet, die als Rekrutierungspools für Wladimir Putins Invasion in der Ukraine dienen. Die Kriegswirtschaft des Landes hat auch Arbeitsplätze geschaffen, die Gehälter der Fabrikarbeiter erhöht und historisch armen Städten und Gemeinden beispiellose Geldsummen eingebracht.

Zu den für diese Studie herangezogenen Regionen gehören die Oblast Kirow, die Oblast Tjumen, die Oblast Pensa, die Kabardino-Balkarische Republik, die Oblast Irkutsk, die Region Chabarowsk und die Region Chanty-Mansijsk. Die geografische Lage erstreckt sich von Zentralrussland bis in den Fernen Osten.

Der Reporter hat tatsächlich einige unabhängige Recherchen durchgeführt, wie wir im Folgenden sehen werden:

Die Zahl der ausgeschriebenen Stellen im Einzelhandel und Gastgewerbe in der südöstlichen Region Chabarowsk hat sich im Jahr bis Januar 2025 fast verdoppelt, wie aus einer Analyse der Financial Times über die von einer Stichprobe russischer Unternehmen ausgeschriebenen Stellen hervorgeht.

Die FT stützte sich auch auf offizielle russische Statistiken (Rosstat), wie zum Beispiel die Grafik über die landesweite Arbeitslosigkeit von 2017 bis 2025.

Die Ausführungen darüber, wie sich die Rekrutierung in die Armee auf die Familienbudgets ausgewirkt hat, beziehen sich auf eine bestimmte Beispielregion, Mari El, die 35.600 US-Dollar als Einstiegsbonus für Rekruten in der Armee bietet. Diese Summe entspricht dem Dreifachen des Jahresgehalts in der Region. Natürlich variiert der Anmeldebonus von Region zu Region. Hinzu kommt die Auszahlung im Todesfall während des aktiven Dienstes. Diese beträgt 12 Millionen Rubel oder 140.000 US-Dollar.

Ja, seit Beginn der SMO ist die Inflation gestiegen, von vielleicht 4 % auf jetzt fast 10 % pro Jahr.

Einerseits berichtet der Journalist, dass „Lohnerhöhungen durch die hohe Inflation untergraben werden“. Andererseits lesen wir: „Die Nominaleinkommen in der traditionell benachteiligten Republik [Mari El] sind von Dezember 2021 bis 2024 um fast 80 Prozent gestiegen, verglichen mit einem Anstieg von etwa 60 Prozent in Moskau, laut Rosstat …“ Mit einem um 80 % höheren Gehalt und einer Lebensmittelpreissteigerung von nur 10 % kann man sich viele erstklassige Steaks leisten.

Auf welche Anzeichen für Wohlstand weist der Artikel hin? Die Eröffnung von Schönheitssalons, der Trend, dass alle Frauen zum Maniküren gehen, die Eröffnung von Supermärkten und Fast-Food-Restaurants nationaler Ketten, die langen Wartezeiten, um einen Tisch in guten Restaurants zu reservieren, die Eröffnung eines privaten Hundesalons in einer Stadt. Kurz gesagt, die Verallgemeinerungen basieren auf der Untersuchung, wie die Menschen ihren Alltag leben.

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Bitte beachten Sie, dass Max Seddon und die anderen Russland-kritischen FT-Reporter, die in ihren Büros in Riga, Lettland, arbeiten, an der Erstellung dieses Artikels nicht beteiligt waren. Riga war ein antirussisches Zentrum, als George Kennan dort vor seinem Eintritt in den diplomatischen Dienst der USA Sprachstudien absolvierte, und daran hat sich bis heute nichts geändert.

Die Hauptautorin dieses Artikels, Daria Mosolova, wurde erst vor relativ kurzer Zeit eingestellt. Ihrem LinkedIn-Eintrag entnehmen wir, dass sie ihren Bachelor-Abschluss in vergleichender Literaturwissenschaft (Französisch) am University College London erworben und anschließend einen Aufbaustudiengang in internationalen Beziehungen an der London School of Economics absolviert hat. Während ihrer Zeit am LCU war sie ein Jahr lang Chefredakteurin von Pi Media, der studentischen Journalismusgesellschaft der Universität.

Mosolova kam 2022 als Praktikantin zur FT und absolviert derzeit sechsmonatige Rotationspraktika an verschiedenen FT-Schreibtischen. Sie verbrachte ein Semester in Brüssel und arbeitet nun in London, wo sie bei der Berichterstattung über Russland im Bereich Wirtschaft und Unternehmen unterstützt. Es wird interessant sein zu sehen, wie lange Mosolova bei der FT bleibt. Aber sie hat wahrscheinlich eine vielversprechende Karriere vor sich, wenn die Redakteure ihren Schuss Wahrheit inmitten ihres allgemeinen Russland-Bashings tolerieren.

Yesterday evening’s Russian news programs carried a great deal of information that is highly relevant to our understanding of how the Kremlin now views the prospects for Donald Trump’s peace initiative succeeding and on how the war may play out should the ongoing cease-fire talks fail. Yet none of this has been picked up by major Western media to date. We may assume that the usual explanation for such silence applies in this case: Western governments do not yet know what to make of it and how to react, so the media are waiting for a signal from above on the proper spin for their eventual coverage. 

Let us now take the plunge, summarize what Putin said, look at what other news of the day provides as context for his remarks, and synthesize all of this to come to some conclusions.

First, I offer the links to the presidential website entry on Putin’s visit to the nuclear submarine Arkhangelsk near Murmansk on 27 March which includes his statements about the present situation in the Ukrainian army that bear upon the recommendation he makes for how the war may end.

Putin ‘s visit to the Arkhangelsk came on day two of his visit to Russia’s major naval base in Murmansk where on day one he spoke to a gathering dedicated to the Russian activities in the Arctic and emphasized his government’s commitment to restoring Russia’s operating bases in the Far North and to making living conditions, wages and other considerations very attractive for would-be Russian settlers. The objective is to properly exploit the defense, logistics and natural resources possibilities of the region under conditions of close competition with the USA and other major global powers for control of the Arctic.

Putin’s visit to the submarine Archangelsk on day two followed successful completion of its sea trials and imminent entry into active service. His chat with staff inside has the appearance of being off the cuff, in answer to a question posed by a serviceman on the submarine. But clearly what he said was well prepared in advance: it was programmatic and was directed over the heads of those on board the ship to leaders in Washington, New York (UN), London, Paris and Brussels. Whether the remarks were properly received and considered in the West is another matter.

English version:  http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/76557

Russian version   http://www.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/76557

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Putin told the crew on the Arkhangelsk that Russia has the strategic initiative along the entire line of confrontation in the Donbas and Kursk and is proceeding with liberating its territory. In Lugansk oblast, 98% of the territory is now in Russian hands.  In Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporozhie, more than 70% of the land is now controlled by the Russians.

At the same time, he noted changes in the enemy forces that bear upon the further conduct of the war and on its outcome. Specifically, the neo-Nazi Azov battalion that from the first days after the coup d’etat of 2014 was a major force determining government policy in an extreme nationalist direction, notwithstanding their integration into the regular armed forces of Ukraine have kept their Nazi ideology and behavior intact and now appear to be taking control of the army. Azov units played a big role in the invasion and occupation of the Kursk oblast, where they committed atrocities against the civilian population and left their swastikas on facades of buildings, as Russian television has shown.

These observations by Putin must be put together with news separately reported by the Ministry of Defense that the Ukrainians have been violating the terms of the partial cease-fire dating from 18 March and have been attacking Russian energy infrastructure each day, causing severe damage to some important gas and oil installations. This suggests that Zelensky has lost control over his own armed forces. Accordingly, the Russian Ministry has announced that it reserves the right to suspend the cease-fire at any time and to respond in kind by renewing attacks on the energy facilities of Ukraine.

All of the foregoing must be taken into consideration when we look at the single most important part of what Vladimir Putin said on board the submarine Arkhangelsk on the 27^th.

He returned to the issue which Russia raised some months ago when responding to candidate Trump’s proposal to broker a cease-fire in the first days after taking office, namely Russian objections that Ukraine does not have a legitimate president with whom a lasting agreement can be negotiated. Putin now added that since all Ukrainian officials are appointed by their president, there is no legitimate government in Ukraine at any level.

For this reason, he now proposed that Ukraine must be put under temporary management from outside, and he called for this to be undertaken by the United Nations.  In that case, the USA, Europe, Russia, China and other members of the Security Council would be jointly responsible for that temporary external control, whose job it would be to supervise free and fair elections and install a new government corresponding to the wishes of the Ukrainian people. That government would then enter into negotiations for a treaty that will end the war.

Without saying it directly, Putin was indicating Russia’s next scenario should the ongoing U.S.-brokered cease-fire and peace fail.

That his proposal would not meet with approval by other interested parties was surely taken for granted. Indeed, no sooner did Putin make his proposal than UN Secretary General Antonio Gutterez declared that Ukraine does have a legitimate government. We may assume that the EU will say the same shortly.

No matter.  Putin intended his proposal to be a scenario that would be activated after the present talks fail, after the Russians finally smash the Ukrainian armed forces and force a capitulation. This could happen after the Russian army pushes back the Ukrainians to the Dnepr River. Given that Russia has no interest in taking all of Ukraine, it would then call for the outside collective management of the rump Ukrainian state until a proper government could be elected for conclusion of a peace treaty.

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Apart from Putin’s remarks on board the Arkhangelsk, which is a general-purpose ship with a variety of missiles on board, he also officiated remotely at the commissioning of another new nuclear submarine, the Perm, which is the first of its kind carrying primarily Zirkon nuclear armed hypersonic cruise missiles with 1,000 km range.  In a separate statement about the Perm, he said that it was capable of leveling London to the ground. This was a delayed response to recent statements coming from British defense officials that their four Trident submarines could destroy 40 Russian cities, a notion which Russian military experts have trashed in state television broadcasts.

It is also worth noting, that while in Murmansk, Putin spoke about the sharp increase in naval shipbuilding now going on in Russia, much of it in the shipyards of St Petersburg.  He was accompanied to Murmansk and seconded in his explanations of the new navy vessels now under construction by Andrei Kostin, CEO of the VTB (former USSR Foreign Trade Bank), who has been put in charge of the shipbuilding industry as well.  Note that Kostin, like his bank, is now highly visible in Russia.  VTB commercials fill the airwaves during television intermissions, largely replacing the ad space previously taken by the country’s largest savings bank, Sber. 

Kostin is a strong Putin supporter and a hard-line patriot. He has now taken the place in public life formerly held by Sber chairman German Gref, who was one of the last prominent Liberals in the Putin entourage.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2025

Translation below into German (Andreas Mylaeus)

Wichtige politische Erklärungen Putins in Murmansk am 27. März, die von westlichen Medien ignoriert wurden

Die russischen Nachrichtensendungen von gestern Abend enthielten viele Informationen, die für unser Verständnis der aktuellen Einschätzung des Kremls hinsichtlich der Erfolgsaussichten von Donald Trumps Friedensinitiative und der möglichen Entwicklung des Krieges im Falle eines Scheiterns der laufenden Waffenstillstandsgespräche von großer Bedeutung sind. Bisher wurde jedoch nichts davon von den großen westlichen Medien aufgegriffen. Wir können davon ausgehen, dass in diesem Fall die übliche Erklärung für ein solches Schweigen gilt: Die westlichen Regierungen wissen noch nicht, was sie davon halten sollen und wie sie reagieren sollen, sodass die Medien auf ein Signal von oben warten, wie sie ihre Berichterstattung richtig gestalten sollen.

Lassen Sie uns nun den Sprung wagen, zusammenzufassen, was Putin gesagt hat, uns anzusehen, was andere Nachrichten des Tages als Kontext für seine Äußerungen liefern, und all dies zusammenzufassen, um zu einigen Schlussfolgerungen zu gelangen.

Zunächst biete ich die Links zum Eintrag auf der Website des Präsidenten über Putins Besuch des Atom-U-Boots Archangelsk in der Nähe von Murmansk am 27. März an, der seine Aussagen über die aktuelle Situation in der ukrainischen Armee enthält, die sich auf seine Einschätzung über das Ende des Krieges beziehen.

Englische Version:  http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/76557

Russische Version   http://www.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/76557

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Putin teilte der Besatzung der „Archangelsk“ mit, dass Russland entlang der gesamten Konfrontationslinie im Donbass und in Kursk die strategische Initiative habe und mit der Befreiung seines Territoriums fortfahre. Im Oblast Lugansk befinden sich nun 98 % des Territoriums in russischer Hand. In Donezk, Cherson und Saporischschja werden nun mehr als 70 % des Landes von den Russen kontrolliert.

Gleichzeitig stellte er Veränderungen bei den feindlichen Streitkräften fest, die sich auf den weiteren Verlauf des Krieges und auf dessen Ausgang auswirken. Insbesondere das neonazistische Asow-Bataillon, das seit den ersten Tagen nach dem Staatsstreich von 2014 eine wichtige Kraft war, die die Regierungspolitik in eine extrem nationalistische Richtung gelenkt hat, hat trotz seiner Integration in die regulären Streitkräfte der Ukraine seine nationalsozialistische Ideologie und sein Verhalten beibehalten und scheint nun die Kontrolle über die Armee zu übernehmen. Die Asow-Einheiten spielten eine große Rolle bei der Invasion und Besetzung des Oblast Kursk, wo sie Gräueltaten an der Zivilbevölkerung verübten und ihre Hakenkreuze an den Fassaden von Gebäuden hinterließen, wie das russische Fernsehen gezeigt hat.

Diese Äußerungen Putins müssen im Zusammenhang mit einer separaten Meldung des Verteidigungsministeriums gesehen werden, wonach die Ukrainer gegen die Bedingungen des seit dem 18. März geltenden teilweisen Waffenstillstands verstoßen und täglich russische Energieinfrastrukturen angreifen, wodurch einige wichtige Gas- und Ölanlagen schwer beschädigt wurden. Dies deutet darauf hin, dass Selensky die Kontrolle über seine eigenen Streitkräfte verloren hat. Dementsprechend hat das russische Ministerium angekündigt, dass es sich das Recht vorbehält, die Waffenruhe jederzeit auszusetzen und mit erneuten Angriffen auf die Energieanlagen der Ukraine zu reagieren.

All dies muss berücksichtigt werden, wenn wir uns den wichtigsten Teil dessen ansehen, was Wladimir Putin am 27 März an Bord des U-Boots Archangelsk gesagt hat.

Er kam auf das Thema zurück, das Russland vor einigen Monaten angesprochen hatte, als es auf den Vorschlag des Kandidaten Trump reagierte, in den ersten Tagen nach seinem Amtsantritt einen Waffenstillstand zu vermitteln, nämlich die Einwände Russlands, dass die Ukraine keinen legitimen Präsidenten habe, mit dem ein dauerhaftes Abkommen ausgehandelt werden könne. Putin fügte nun hinzu, dass es in der Ukraine auf keiner Ebene eine legitime Regierung gebe, da alle ukrainischen Amtsträger von ihrem Präsidenten ernannt würden.

Aus diesem Grund schlug er nun vor, dass die Ukraine vorübergehend von außen verwaltet werden müsse, und er forderte, dass dies von den Vereinten Nationen übernommen werden solle. In diesem Fall wären die USA, Europa, Russland, China und andere Mitglieder des Sicherheitsrates gemeinsam für diese vorübergehende externe Kontrolle verantwortlich, deren Aufgabe es wäre, freie und faire Wahlen zu überwachen und eine neue Regierung einzusetzen, die den Wünschen des ukrainischen Volkes entspricht. Diese Regierung würde dann Verhandlungen über einen Vertrag aufnehmen, der den Krieg beenden würde.

Ohne es direkt zu sagen, deutete Putin das nächste Szenario Russlands an, falls der derzeitige, von den USA vermittelte Waffenstillstand und Frieden scheitern sollten.

Dass sein Vorschlag bei anderen interessierten Parteien nicht auf Zustimmung stoßen würde, war sicherlich selbstverständlich. Tatsächlich erklärte UN-Generalsekretär Antonio Guterres, kaum dass Putin seinen Vorschlag gemacht hatte, dass die Ukraine eine legitime Regierung habe. Wir können davon ausgehen, dass die EU in Kürze dasselbe sagen wird.

Das ist jedoch nicht wichtig. Putin beabsichtigte mit seinem Vorschlag, ein Szenario vorzuschlagen, das aktiviert werden sollte, nachdem die aktuellen Gespräche gescheitert sind, nachdem die Russen die ukrainischen Streitkräfte endgültig zerschlagen und eine Kapitulation erzwungen haben. Dies könnte geschehen, nachdem die russische Armee die Ukrainer bis zum Dnepr zurückgedrängt hat. Da Russland kein Interesse daran hat, die gesamte Ukraine zu übernehmen, würde es dann eine kollektive Verwaltung des ukrainischen Reststaates durch externe Akteure fordern, bis eine ordnungsgemäße Regierung für den Abschluss eines Friedensvertrags gewählt werden könnte.

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Abgesehen von Putins Bemerkungen an Bord der Archangelsk, einem Mehrzweckschiff mit einer Vielzahl von Raketen an Bord, nahm er auch aus der Ferne an der Indienststellung eines weiteren neuen Atom-U-Boots teil, der Perm, dem ersten seiner Art, das hauptsächlich mit nuklear bewaffneten Zirkon-Hyperschall-Marschflugkörpern mit einer Reichweite von 1.000 km ausgestattet ist. In einer separaten Erklärung zur Perm sagte er, dass sie in der Lage sei, London dem Erdboden gleichzumachen. Dies war eine verspätete Reaktion auf die jüngsten Aussagen britischer Verteidigungsbeamter, dass ihre vier Trident-U-Boote 40 russische Städte zerstören könnten, eine Behauptung, die russische Militärexperten in Fernsehsendungen des Staatsfernsehens widerlegt haben.

Es ist auch erwähnenswert, dass Putin in Murmansk über den starken Anstieg im Marineschiffbau sprach, der derzeit in Russland stattfindet, und zwar größtenteils in den Werften von St. Petersburg. Er wurde nach Murmansk begleitet und bei seinen Erklärungen zu den neuen Marineschiffen, die derzeit im Bau sind, von Andrei Kostin, CEO der VTB (ehemalige Außenhandelsbank der UdSSR), unterstützt, der auch für die Schiffbauindustrie zuständig ist. Beachten Sie, dass Kostin, wie auch seine Bank, in Russland mittlerweile sehr präsent sind. VTB-Werbespots füllen die Werbeblöcke im Fernsehen und ersetzen weitgehend die Werbefläche, die zuvor von der größten Sparkasse des Landes, Sber, eingenommen wurde.

Kostin ist ein starker Unterstützer Putins und ein Patriot der harten Linie. Er hat nun den Platz im öffentlichen Leben eingenommen, den zuvor der Sber-Vorsitzende German Gref innehatte, der einer der letzten prominenten Liberalen im Gefolge Putins war.

Transcript submitted by a reader

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmuHYvItP5A
Napolitano: 0:31
Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for “Judging Freedom”. Today is Thursday, March 27th, 2025. Professor Gilbert Doctorow joins us now. Professor Doctorow, a pleasure. As always, thank you very much for joining us.

The United States at the present moment is embroiled in a controversy over this Signal app chat that the president’s senior national security advisors had and whether or not secret military plans were accidentally or intentionally revealed to a journalist. It’s clear that these were secret plans. So taking a step back from this, first of all, how is the American attack on Yemen viewed in Europe? And second, how is this kerfuffle over the sloppiness of Trump’s senior national security people viewed, if at all, in Europe?

Gilbert Doctorow, PhD:
Well, in Europe, the feeling about Yemen is much in line with the United States’ official position. There’s not much difference there. That it is causing a great deal of difficulty because of the near closure of the Suez Canal to a lot of shipping. And after all, 40% of the traffic that goes through the canal and through the Red Sea is actually European shipping. So the American position to try to restrain the Houthis is viewed favorably. As regards the security leak, such as it was, I think in Europe there is concern over the professionalism of the American administration in keeping things secret. It plays into the notion. Just one moment. I’m very sorry, but I have to–

Napolitano: 2:48
Sure, sure, sure. I guess that was a phone ringing or somebody at his front door. But he’ll be back with us in just a second. We’re talking to Professor Gilbert Doctorow who just stepped away from the camera for a moment because of some unexpected visitor. I trust it was a visitor and not an intruder.

Doctorow:
Oh just one moment. It’s a–

Napolitano:
All right these … things happen; it’s happened to me, can happen to you. Welcome to the modern world of television, where we do it from venues not always as insulated as we’d like. Okay, you were explaining to us the European concern about either the American attitude about security or the American attitude about Europe. I mean, I’m going to ask you about Vice President Vance and what he said about Europe, but go ahead, please.

Doctorow:
Well, no particular remark was made on Vance and his disparaging remarks with respect to Europe. But there was the opportunity, just as the Democrats seized upon this in the United States Congress, there was the opportunity to criticize the appointees that Trump had brought in his high positions in his administration, for lack of professionalism, for amateurism. And so they seized upon that. Any angle they can have to take against Trump will be used in that way.

4:22
As for the Russians, their interest in this was very precise. The first reaction was: probably this wasn’t inadvertent. The inclusion of the Atlantic magazine journalist was an act of sabotage by some middle-level functionary in this intelligence services who wanted to embarrass the boss. That was the first Russian reaction. After that, they took this broader.

They are very much trustful now with Trump because– this was a question that you and I discussed several weeks ago, do they trust Trump? Is there some kind of mutual trust which is essential for any negotiations to proceed successfully? And I would say from the Russian standpoint, the trust is there. For the talk that Trump and Putin had, the two and a half hours, it was clear that the Russians were persuaded that they can do business with Trump the same way that Margaret Thatcher was persuaded that the UK and the US could do business with Gorbachev. And that is essential.

5:37
Now, they’re concerned that he is under attack, and they are uncertain that he can withstand the opposition from Europe and from the United States to proceed with the implementation of his government.

Napolitano:
When you say he is under attack, you mean Trump?

Doctorow:
Exactly right. They are concerned that Trump is under attack. And this is an American issue to be solved by the Americans alone. The Russians are bystanders and that’s how they see the situation. There’s nothing that they can do.

6:07
But they are concerned, because they’re satisfied that he is going to bring, impose on the Ukrainians essentially what are the Russian demands to end the war. And in that perspective, anything that holds up Trump, holds up their achieving their goals.

Napolitano: 6:31
I want to play you a clip from Jeffrey Goldberg, who’s the journalist whose telephone number was included on these texts. We don’t have an explanation, a rational explanation as to how that happened yet. But this is fascinating because he mentions the Chinese, and I’m anxious to hear your thoughts on this, professor Doctorow. Chris, cut number six.

Goldberg:
The problem is, one of the problems is, is that the phones themselves are targets of foreign intelligence operations, right? I mean, the Chinese, the Russians, Iranians, others, obviously would love to know what’s happening inside Pete Hegseth’s phone, what’s happening inside Marco Rubio’s phone.

And, you know, there are all kinds of very sophisticated operations, And we know about some of these and we don’t know about others. So, so that’s the reason that they’re supposed to do things behind a kind of like a digital wall of protection and not just be out of the supermarket, out at a restaurant running errands.

ABC interviewer: 7:34
So let me follow up on that then. Do you think they were using Signal because they didn’t they didn’t want the communication to be archived?

Goldberg:
I mean, you’d have to ask them. I mean, I think that’s one plausible explanation. Y

Napolitano: 7:50
You know, when when Mike Waltz, whom I’ve known for years, and whose patriotism really can’t be questioned, sometimes his judgment can, was asked about this by my friend and former colleague Laura Ingram, he gave a bizarre answer. And he said, apparently his cell phone got too close to somebody else’s cell phone, and that person’s number was sucked into his. And I don’t know if that makes sense from a technical perspective.

You’re a historian. I don’t know if that makes sense from your understanding, but we still don’t know why the man whose face and voice we just heard was brought into this conversation. But we do know that President, excuse me, that Vice President Cheney used Jeffrey Goldberg extensively to promote administration propaganda in favor of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Your thoughts.

Doctorow: 8:51
Well, all of what you just said would fall in line with the early Russian interpretation that this was an act of sabotage by somebody lower down in the administration who wanted to embarrass, as they succeeded in doing, Hegseth and Waltz. And so to call into question the [professionalism] of the top people in the Trump administration. It’s entirely possible. The notion of telephone being sucked into your phone, well, of course that goes on. But it goes on with your willingness. I don’t know that it can be done against your interests and without your participation. People normally do exchange telephone numbers–

Napolitano: 9:34
Yeah, of course. But Mike Waltz told Laura Ingram that he intended for some other person’s number whose name he wouldn’t identify. I don’t blame him for not identifying. And somehow Jeffrey Goldberg’s got in there by mistake, and nobody bothered to check it.

Remember, this was a texting thread that went on for days. This is not a 30-second conversation. There are pages and pages of the conversations to which Mr. Goldberg was given access, which he recorded and which his magazine has now published. And now the issue of espionage comes up.

10:17
This is the same allegation made against Hillary Clinton, the failure to safeguard secret information, whether it’s been formally classified or not. It’s attack plans by definition it’s secret.

Doctorow:
Yeah, exactly. The sins of the present administration, including this disparagement of European allies by JD Vance, takes us back to Victoria Nuland and her famous remarks about what the EU could do with itself in her talk with the American ambassador in Kiev, [Piat], just before the coup d’état in 2014. These are sins that have been committed before and will be committed in the future by error, by misfortune in the case of Victoria Nuland that her telephone call was intercepted by the Russians, and was then posted on the internet.

11:18
I don’t see anything fatal to the standing of Trump’s appointees. It is embarrassing. The Democrats are seizing on what they can, since they are otherwise totally confused about Trump’s policies.

Napolitano: 11:36
Have the have the Europeans seized on Vice President Vance’s rather flippant comment about “I hate to be seen as helping the Europeans?”

Doctorow:
No, I haven’t seen any remarks on that. That would take them off in a slightly different direction. They saw enough of Vance during his Munich speech, condemning them as being undemocratic. So this was a rather minor, minor critique.

Napolitano:
Good point, good point. This is nothing compared to that. Does the Kremlin view Donald Trump as a man of peace? And before you answer that, just think of Yemen and think of Gaza.

Doctorow:
No, I don’t think they see him as a man of peace. They see him as a person who can bring peace to their war. They see him as a person with whom they can do business, as I said a couple of moments ago.

What he is doing in Gaza, of course, is repugnant to the Kremlin. What they are, what their attacks on Lebanon, these actions by Israel enabled by the United States, of course, are condemned in Moscow. The notion that Trump is threatening Iran with military action and the B-52s are flying in the area to remind them that the United States is always ready from Diego Garcia island to bomb the hell out of Iran. This is not viewed with much pleasure from the Kremlin. However, nobody there believes that there will be an attack on [Iran].

Napolitano: 13:23
Do you think that if there is an American attack on Iran, obviously coordinated with the Israelis, that the Russians would get involved militarily in defense of their new friend?

Doctorow:
I think it’s more likely the Chinese would get involved militarily. The Chinese have a lot more than a friendship to lose. They have 30% of their oil supplies are coming now from Iran. So they would have a vital interest in punishing the United States severely for anything it does against Iran.

Napolitano: 13:58
Interesting. Back to the EU, back to Europe, what is the EU position on Ukraine? And is it diametrically opposed to Donald Trump’s position on Ukraine? Is the EU still of the Joe Biden, Victoria Nuland, Tony Blinken view on the origins and morality of the special military operation?

Doctorow:
Well, absolutely. There was an usually good article in yesterday’s “Financial Times” on the response of the spokesperson for the EU foreign affairs … department, or authority. And that statement was exactly reiterating the basic points going back to Biden. The war was unprovoked, the war was an act of aggression, that Europe support Ukraine to the utmost, and that no relief on sanctions to Russia is thinkable until there is a full withdrawal of Russian forces from Ukrainian territory, et cetera, et cetera.

They are taking a very hard line; it’s diametrically opposed. It is intended to frustrate, to sabotage the peace initiative of Donald Trump and the conditions that were accepted by Trump and by the Ukrainians, of course, on Monday night, for implementing a 30-day freedom of navigation in the Black Sea.

15:41
At the same time in Paris, we have today in Paris, 30 countries plus meeting under the direction of Emmanuel Macron or his so-called Coalition of the Willing, which is precisely to give force to the statement of the support for Ukraine. And for the whole–

Napolitano:
When you say force, do you mean emotional and political force or military force?

Doctorow:
Military force. Macron today specifically in his address did not exclude the possibility of sending military forces to Ukraine for monitoring, for peacekeeping, for whatever. He used several terms.

In this regard, he is doing in parallel to Ursula von der Leyen exactly the kind of sabotage that the EU institutions are doing. And what I see in this is not just the very great possibility that NATO will be eviscerated in the next few weeks. By that I mean American withdrawal of support, not American withdrawal formally. That’s not possible for Trump to do. But if he takes the troops out, if he denies them a nuclear umbrella, then NATO is finished.

Napolitano: 17:03
We have a dangerous situation here. You have a very aggressive incoming, militarily aggressive, incoming chancellor of Germany. You have Von der Leyen who’s a former failed defense minister of Germany now as the head of the European Commission. You have Macron sounding more like Napoleon than de Gaulle. And what do they want to do, start World War III? I mean do they really think the Kremlin will sit back while they send anything, troops or a single round of artillery shell to Kiev?

Doctorow:
They’re living in their own bubble; they haven’t seen reality. Now reality will strike when Donald Trump withdraws support, but not even then can we be certain that reality will strike.

And now I go back to the suggestion that was made by the Russian political scientist Karaganov, who said, this is two years ago essentially, that Russia should bring Europe to its senses by using a military strike against one of the NATO countries.

I think we’re coming to that point. If Russia were to evaporate the [Ramstein] base by an Oreshnik strike, I think they might just get it in Berlin. Now they don’t get it.

Napolitano: 18:32
You know, when I was privileged to interview Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov two weeks ago in his residence in Moscow, after the interview was over, we engaged in some small talk.

I’m not speaking out of school here. I asked him what he thought would become of NATO if the United States withdrew. And he looked at me and said, it won’t happen. Now, maybe he means legally it won’t happen because of the way the conversation was structured. I couldn’t follow up and ask him what he meant.

But what will become of NATO if Trump in a fit of pique says “all the troops are coming home”?

Doctorow:
Well, NATO’s structure will stand there, but they’ll be absolutely empty. If the Europeans were to proceed with the kind of aggressive warlike language that we hear coming from Macron today and from Von der Leyen and her little entourage on every other day, then they are asking for war, an open war with Russia.

Napolitano:
Wow.

Doctorow:
For which Europe will be totally naked. Naked.

Napolitano: 19:53
Right. Right. A few weeks ago, you and I talked about your analysis of Trump in a hurry, Putin patient. Do you still see it that way?

Doctorow:
Well, absolutely, and there’s good reason for his hurry, that is, for the hurry of Trump. He is doing several policy initiatives at the same time. The question of Iran comes foremost to mind.

It’s a two-month timeline. He gave that. The Ukraine war, he more or less had in mind a two-month timeline. And he is using this honeymoon period at the start of his administration. He has spread massive confusion in the minds of most everybody as to what his intention is.

And that was not a mistake. It’s not because he’s confused. He wants everyone else to be confused when he proceeds with his own priorities. His number one priority is absolutely clear. It is to resolve the Ukraine war so that he can move on to his next priorities.

21:02
And so this, he wants to strike quickly before his opponents can mobilize. As you see by how they seized upon this leak of very sensitive information. The opponents of Trump, are themselves in a state of confusion and at a loss how to [come to] grips with the the daily new initiatives of this president. You know that barely can seize upon one and look for a point of leverage, when he’s already put out another one. This whole tariff war case, he’s got everybody tripping on their shoelaces.

21:38
And that is not because he’s stupid. That is intentional, to keep his opponents off balance.

Napolitano:
Well, if you’re an American who owns a Mercedes, it just went up in value significantly because of the extraordinary cost to replace it. Well, I want to show you a photograph, because Mike Waltz says he doesn’t know Jeffrey Goldberg. Do you have that photograph?

There he is. They’re standing next to each other. All right, you can end up standing next to anybody in a large gathering, but this is a gathering that was secured, and there is Jeffrey right behind Waltz. I can’t get my hands around it if somebody attempted to sabotage this or Walsh attempted to use Goldberg as a PR stunt. The truth has to come out.

The American public’s entitled to know. And the FBI is not going to get to the bottom. This is not going to investigate Hegseth for espionage, the way the Republicans wanted Hillary Clinton investigated for espionage. This is almost the same thing, except Mrs. Clinton did it hundreds and hundreds of times.

Doctorow: 22:53
If we can take a step back to what you just said in passing about the value of a Mercedes going up, again it’s so easy to attack Trump’s tariff policies as being economically nonsense. But this reminds me very much of how– Putin’s policies of standing up to the United States during the 2018 election campaign and the liberals, the Capital L, accused him of talking nonsense when Russia only had a 4% capture of global GDP– how he could stand up to the United States with its massively greater. This is the same type of argumentation, why are we going to raise the prices of cars in America? Because that’s the only way you can restore a manufacturing base.

Without a manufacturing base, you can’t have a military industry. So we’re talking essentially about Americas capability to maintain its defense industry. And so it’s not nonsense. It’s just on the economic side, it’s nonsense. On the US defense side, it’s not nonsense at all.

Napolitano: 23:59
Professor Doctorow, it’s a pleasure, my dear friend. Thank you very much and thank you for letting me go, you know, across the board from Gaza to Ukraine to American economics to this crazy woman, Ursula von der Leyen. I don’t know where that’s going to end up, but thank you for monitoring it for us.

Doctorow;
Well, thanks for having me.

Napolitano:
Sure. Now go take care of whoever was ringing your doorbell.

Doctorow:
That’s a delivery downstairs. We’ll do that.

Napolitano:
Oh, okay. All the best, my friend. Have a good day.

Doctorow:
Thank you. You too.

Napolitano:
Thank you. Coming up at 11 o’clock this morning, Colonel Douglas Macgregor; at 2 this afternoon, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson; at 3.30 this afternoon, Professor John Mearsheimer; at 5 o’clock in the afternoon tomorrow Friday from midnight in Yemen, from the areas bombed by the Americans in Yemen. Who else? Pepe Escobar.

25:00
Judge Napolitano for “Judging Freedom”.

In this session, Judge Napolitano was very keen to explore how the Europeans have reacted to the scandal in Washington over the leak of sensitive chat texts about the bombing of the Houthis in Yemen to the editor of The Atlantic magazine. As I remarked, the European media are entirely aligned with the Democratic-leaning media in the USA, using this incident to attack the Trump administration for amateurism that has compromised U.S. security. The most they will say is that this puts in question the wisdom of sharing intelligence with Washington.

As for the Russians, their first reaction was to consider the leak an act of sabotage by lower-level officials in the intelligence agencies.  Looked at more broadly, the Kremlin now has trust in the sincerity of Donald Trump’s efforts to end the war in Ukraine essentially on Russian terms.  They worry whether Trump will be able to overcome his domestic and European opponents and succeed in bringing peace.

Of course, as usual, our chat then went off in a number of different directions including Emmanuel Macron’s gathering of the delusionals from 30 countries, mostly European, to agree on all possible further support to Ukraine, assuming continuation of the war. We also talked about the position of the EU with respect to relaxing sanctions as required by the Ukrainian-Russian-US agreement on freedom of navigation in the Black Sea concluded this past Monday in Riyadh.

Translation below into German (Andreas Mylaeus)

Ausgabe vom 27. März von „Judging Freedom“: Kremls Sicht auf die Schwächen der Trump-Regierung

In dieser Sitzung wollte Judge Napolitano unbedingt herausfinden, wie die Europäer auf den Skandal in Washington reagiert haben, bei dem sensible Chat-Texte über die Bombardierung der Huthis im Jemen an den Herausgeber des Magazins The Atlantic durchgesickert sind. Wie ich bemerkte, stehen die europäischen Medien voll und ganz hinter den demokratisch orientierten Medien in den USA und nutzen diesen Vorfall, um die Trump-Regierung wegen Dilettantismus anzugreifen, der die Sicherheit der USA gefährde. Sie werden höchstens sagen, dass dies die Frage aufwirft, ob es klug ist, Geheimdienstinformationen mit Washington zu teilen.

Die Russen hingegen betrachteten die undichte Stelle zunächst als Sabotageakt von Beamten der unteren Ebene in den Geheimdiensten. Im Großen und Ganzen betrachtet, vertraut der Kreml nun auf die Aufrichtigkeit von Donald Trumps Bemühungen, den Krieg in der Ukraine im Wesentlichen zu russischen Bedingungen zu beenden. Sie fragen sich, ob Trump in der Lage sein wird, seine innenpolitischen und europäischen Gegner zu überwinden und erfolgreich Frieden zu schaffen.

Natürlich ging unser Gespräch dann wie üblich in verschiedene Richtungen, darunter auch über Emmanuel Macrons Versammlung der Wahnhaften aus 30 Ländern, hauptsächlich aus Europa, um sich auf jede mögliche weitere Unterstützung für die Ukraine zu einigen, vorausgesetzt, der Krieg geht weiter. Wir sprachen auch über die Position der EU in Bezug auf die Lockerung der Sanktionen, wie sie in dem am vergangenen Montag in Riad geschlossenen ukrainisch-russisch-amerikanischen Abkommen über die Freiheit der Schifffahrt im Schwarzen Meer gefordert wird.

I have in the past blamed Angela Merkel for giving the pro-Brexit forces in Britain that little bit of assistance that pushed them into majority and led to the first departure of a Member State in EU history.  After all, the flood of illegal migrants that Merkel so graciously welcomed into the European Union under the false story that they were Syrian refugees from a vicious civil war was the last straw for Britons who were not yet committed to leaving Europe.

Now another German, Ursula von der Leyen, our authoritarian unelected Fuehrer of the European Institutions is directing policies that will shortly put the EU into terminal crisis.

Von der Leyen is the gynecologist turned politician who headed the Defense Ministry in Germany until the corruption scandals under her made it imperative that she be moved out. This was a direct precedent for chancellor in waiting Friedrich Merz’s plans to offload the nitwit German Foreign Minister from the Greens Annalena Baerbock onto the UN General Assembly.

For her part, von der Leyen was foisted onto the European Commission as president where during Covid her proclivity for concluding unauthorized and deeply flawed procurement deals raised a scandal there which it took all of her political savvy to contain. 

Seeing around her the utter cowardice of officials in the Commission and in the Parliament, von der Leyen gradually seized power that has exceeded by far what the European constitution allows. And she has been using that power to turn the European Union from a peace project into a war project. In recent months that has expressed itself in plans to consolidate all European military procurement in Brussels under her control and in giving utmost support to the wildly unrealistic plans of the Zelensky regime to defeat Russia militarily and to recover its 1992 borders as well as compensation for war damages.

We read the public statement of these unrealizable, delusional plans in yesterday’s Financial Times, which quoted Anita Hipper, European Commission spokesperson for foreign affairs:

“The end of the Russian unprovoked and unjustified aggression in Ukraine and unconditional withdrawal of all Russian military forces from the entire territory of Ukraine would be one of the main preconditions to amend or lift sanctions.”

This position puts the EU on a direct collision course with the policy of Donald Trump on ending the war. In that sense, it is entirely aligned with today’s gathering of 30+ nations in Paris at the invitation of French President Emmanuel Macron to discuss further steps to support Ukraine in every way possible. Called the ‘coalition of the willing,’ I see a more appropriate title in ‘coalition of the delusionals.’

My key point is taken from what Donald Trump said to Volodymyr Zelensky during their altercation in the Oval Office:  what counts is who hold the cards.  In the coming showdown between the United States and the European Union over the partial lifting of sanctions NOW to enable implementation of the agreement on peaceful navigation in the Black Sea as a 30-day partial cease-fire, the USA holds all the cards and the EU holds none.  The only outcome if Brussels persists will be the de facto withdrawal of the USA from NATO, leaving a disarmed Europe to pursue the conflict with Russia that it is provoking entirely on its own. 

While the madness of precipitating such a situation may not be appreciated by some EU Member States, it is fully appreciated by others. And this is why I say that the EU cannot long survive in its present configuration the coming evisceration of NATO.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2025

Translation below into German (Andreas Mylaeus)

Die NATO ist dem Untergang geweiht. Werden die EU-Institutionen bald darauf implodieren?

Ich habe Angela Merkel in der Vergangenheit dafür verantwortlich gemacht, dass sie den Pro-Brexit-Kräften in Großbritannien ein wenig Unterstützung zukommen ließ, die ihnen zur Mehrheit verhalf und zum ersten Austritt eines Mitgliedstaats in der Geschichte der EU führte. Schließlich war die Flut illegaler Migranten, die Merkel so gnädig in der Europäischen Union willkommen hieß, unter dem falschen Narrativ, dass es sich um syrische Flüchtlinge aus einem grausamen Bürgerkrieg handele, der Tropfen, der das Fass für die Briten zum Überlaufen brachte, die noch nicht entschlossen waren, Europa zu verlassen.

Jetzt leitet eine andere Deutsche, Ursula von der Leyen, unsere autoritäre, nicht gewählte Führerin der europäischen Institutionen, eine Politik, die die EU in Kürze in eine endgültige Krise stürzen wird.

Von der Leyen ist eine ehemalige Gynäkologin, die zur Politikerin wurde und das Verteidigungsministerium in Deutschland leitete, bis die Korruptionsskandale unter ihrer Führung es zwingend erforderlich machten, sie abzusetzen. Dies war ein direkter Präzedenzfall für die Pläne des designierten Kanzlers Friedrich Merz, die dumme deutsche Außenministerin der Grünen, Annalena Baerbock, auf die UN-Generalversammlung abzuschieben.

Von der Leyen ihrerseits wurde der Europäischen Kommission als Präsidentin aufgezwungen, wo sie während der Corona-Pandemie mit ihrer Neigung, nicht genehmigte und äußerst fehlerhafte Beschaffungsgeschäfte abzuschließen, einen Skandal auslöste, den sie nur mit all ihrem politischen Geschick eindämmen konnte.

Angesichts der völligen Feigheit der Beamten in der Kommission und im Parlament ergriff von der Leyen nach und nach die Macht, die weit über das hinausgeht, was die europäische Verfassung zulässt. Und sie hat diese Macht genutzt, um die Europäische Union von einem Friedensprojekt in ein Kriegsprojekt zu verwandeln. In den letzten Monaten hat sich dies in Plänen zur Konsolidierung der gesamten europäischen Rüstungsbeschaffung in Brüssel unter ihrer Kontrolle und in der uneingeschränkten Unterstützung der völlig unrealistischen Pläne des Zelensky-Regimes zur militärischen Niederlage Russlands und zur Wiederherstellung seiner Grenzen von 1992 sowie zur Entschädigung für Kriegsschäden ausgedrückt.

Wir haben die öffentliche Erklärung dieser unrealistischen, wahnhaften Pläne in der gestrigen Ausgabe der Financial Times gelesen, in der Anita Hipper, Sprecherin der Europäischen Kommission für auswärtige Angelegenheiten, zitiert wurde:

„Das Ende der russischen, unprovozierten und ungerechtfertigten Aggression in der Ukraine und der bedingungslose Abzug aller russischen Streitkräfte aus dem gesamten Gebiet der Ukraine wären eine der wichtigsten Voraussetzungen für die Änderung oder Aufhebung der Sanktionen.“

Mit dieser Position befindet sich die EU auf direktem Kollisionskurs mit der Politik von Donald Trump zur Beendigung des Krieges. In diesem Sinne steht sie in völliger Übereinstimmung mit der heutigen Versammlung von mehr als 30 Nationen in Paris, die auf Einladung des französischen Präsidenten Emmanuel Macron zusammengekommen sind, um weitere Schritte zur Unterstützung der Ukraine auf jede erdenkliche Weise zu erörtern. Die sogenannte „Koalition der Willigen“ würde ich eher als „Koalition der Wahnhaften“ bezeichnen.

Mein Hauptargument ist dem entnommen, was Donald Trump zu Volodymyr Zelensky während ihrer Auseinandersetzung im Oval Office gesagt hat: Was zählt, ist, wer die Karten in der Hand hält. Im bevorstehenden Kräftemessen zwischen den Vereinigten Staaten und der Europäischen Union über die teilweise Aufhebung der Sanktionen JETZT, um die Umsetzung des Abkommens über die friedliche Schifffahrt im Schwarzen Meer als 30-tägigen teilweisen Waffenstillstand zu ermöglichen, halten die USA alle Karten in der Hand und die EU keine. Das einzige Ergebnis, wenn Brüssel darauf besteht, wird der de facto Austritt der USA aus der NATO sein, wodurch ein entwaffnetes Europa zurückbleibt, das den Konflikt mit Russland, den es vollständig selbst provoziert, allein weiterführen muss.

Während einige EU-Mitgliedstaaten den Wahnsinn, eine solche Situation heraufzubeschwören, vielleicht nicht zu schätzen wissen, wird er von anderen voll und ganz gewürdigt. Und deshalb sage ich, dass die EU in ihrer gegenwärtigen Konfiguration die bevorstehende Aushöhlung der NATO nicht lange überleben kann.

Transcription submitted by a reader

https://www.urmedium.net/c/presstv/133126
PressTV: 0:00
US officials in Trump’s administration are still caught up in a chat leak scandal. US national security advisor, Mike Walz has now taken responsibility for the leak that exposed sensitive military plans for bombing Yemen. Waltz called the leak embarrassing and admitted to creating the chat group himself on the Signal Messenger app. He also blamed Jeffrey Goldberg, a journalist who was accidentally invited to the chat group in which the war plans were discussed. Goldberg has said that the US Defense Secretary posted the bombing plans shortly before the first wave of attacks against Yemen.

On March 15th, the White House has tried to downplay the leak as a minor glitch. Democratic senators however have slammed the breach as sloppy and careless urging intelligence leaders to address the risks to national security.

0:59
Well, for more on that story we’re now joined by independent international affairs analyst Gilbert Doctorow, who’s with us from Brussels. Mr. Doctorow, welcome to the program. What was your reaction when you heard about the leak and how the plans– and the manner that the plans were leaked. And also, are you shocked that no one has been held accountable yet?

Gilbert Doctorow, PhD: 1:24
Well, Waltz held himself accountable. So in that respect, the buck stopped there on his desk, as they say in the States. Such a scandal is not surprising.

The Democrats have been in a state of total confusion. They have been racing to catch up with the flood of new initiatives which the administration of Donald Trump has put out since he took over the Oval Office. And here they have something which looks very good, because they can attack Trump for the amateurism of his top advisors, that he has not taken people with proven experience. The people with proven experience, Trump already had experience with them in his first administration. These were Pompeo at State and Bolton as national security advisor. These were people who were intent on leading the United States into forever wars and stabbing their boss in the back.

So it is not surprising that Mr. Trump has avoided the experienced, so to speak, warriors who are in great numbers on Capitol Hill, and has taken people from outside their ranks. The notion that this was proof of the inexperience and incompetence of Trump’s appointees was made a feature article in today’s issue of “Financial Times”.

2:56
That’s understandable. The “Times” hates Mr. Trump. They hate his policy of accommodation with Russia, they hate the fact that he is trying to break the cycle of forever wars and of the Cold War with Russia that’s been going on for 80 years. So that is the position of the opponents to Trump, particularly among the Democrats. [It explains] why there has been so much noise about this relatively minor issue. As regards the statement that JD Vance in the recorded chat shows himself to be hostile to Europe: well, there’s no surprise there.

But the statements that Vance has made are in no way comparable to the vulgar remarks that were made in the Obama administration by [Victoria Nuland] in her conversation with Mr. Pyatt, the American ambassador to Kiev, in the days just preceding the full coup d’etat. Those remarks were incredible. But people on the Democratic side would like to make a great deal out of the rather minor remarks critical of Europe for being a leech, a sponge for not paying its fair share for its own defense.

PressTV: 4:26
Okay, thanks a lot. Independent international affairs, analyst Gilbert Doctorow is speaking to us from Brussels.

In yesterday’s short interview with Press TV, I was given the opportunity to comment on the brouhaha in the United States and Europe over the leak of sensitive information about impending bombing of the Houthis in Yemen due to the inadvertent inclusion of a journalist, Atlantic magazine editor Jeffrey Goldberg among the chat recipients.

https://www.urmedium.net/c/presstv/133126

The release of what should have been highly secure military plans awaiting execution was perhaps the least controversial aspect about this event. More damaging was the openly hostile language that Vice President J.D. Vance and other participants used with respect to the European allies in their chat.

 Live broadcasts like this one on Press TV go out unredacted. I use this opportunity to correct my identification of the deputy Secretary of State who made a vulgar and telling comment about the European allies in 2014  to the American ambassador in Kiev when they discussed whom to install there as head of government following the coup d’etat then awaiting implementation a few days later.  It was, of course, not Hillary Clinton but Victoria Nuland who said in a telephone conversation that went viral when posted on the internet: “Fuck the EU!”  Anything critical about Europe said by J.D. Vance this week in the leaked chat notes seems very tame by comparison.

Last night I hastened to provide a summary of the main points in the just concluded tripartite agreement reached in Riyadh over a maritime cease-fire in the Black Sea.  Now, on the morning after, there are further considerations to add including my response to the extensive coverage of the deal last night in the online edition of The Financial Times and commentary broadcast on the Russian political talk show Evening with Vladimir Solovyov. All of this brings us to a re-evaluation of the drivers of Donald Trump’s foreign policy initiatives: do they serve the U.S. military industrial complex, as many suppose or not?

The most important prompt for reconsidering the maritime cease-fire agreement lies in the terms set by the Russians for its implementation, namely a long list of the sanctions, financial and otherwise, relating to Russian farming, fishing and fertilizers which the U.S. must lift before the cease-fire comes into effect.

Interestingly, The Financial Times actually took the time to examine the demanded sanctions relief and put out some highly relevant figures showing that the sanctions have not prevented the Russians from finding alternative export routes and other work-arounds to continue their export earnings from food and fertilizer products. Indeed, as they cite, “Russian fertiliser exports hit a record 40mn tonnes last year and are expected to increase by up to 5 per cent in 2025….” They omit to say that news of the maritime cease-fire instantly caused the prices on global fertilizer markets to fall by 4%. Nor do they tell us who has really suffered from the restrictions imposed on the Russian fertilizer industry:  European and other world farmers and global consumers due to lower crop yields and higher food prices.

Indeed, thanks to work-arounds the Russian remained all this time the world’s biggest grain exporters, but the work-arounds distorted global trade flows and added to prices everywhere.

Nonetheless, true to their disposition to fault the Russians at every turn, for what they do and for what they do not do, the FT concludes that the real purpose of the Russian negotiators was not to free up trade in farm, fish and fertilizer products but to roll back Western sanctions generally, to create ‘holes in the western sanctions regime,’ rather than to boost exports. 

I freely admit that they have a point. And yet there is more to the story than they put out. They do not mention the requirement that Russia now be given sanction-free access to acquire agricultural machinery and equipment needed by the fishing and fertilizer industries.

Over the past three years of sanctions, Russian producers of agricultural machinery such as harvesters, tractors and the like have stepped up their product assortment to fill gaps left by the departing U.S. and other Western manufacturers.  Through parallel trading via third countries like Turkey, the Russians have procured spare parts for previously purchased Western equipment.  But this has greatly complicated operations and led to production shortfalls versus what could have been achieved in normal times. Once implemented, the removal of sanctions surely will lead directly to a reentry into the Russian market of John Deere, FMC and other American manufacturers, resulting both in greater U.S. exports to Russia and greater efficiency for the Russian operators in the domain.

Last night’s Vladimir Solovyov show added several further considerations on the subject worth repeating here. One is that the single biggest beneficiary of the removal of sanctions on Russian agricultural exports will be…China.  After all, China alone accounts for half of all Russian export sales of grains. Supplies will henceforth be greater and prices, lower.  The U.S. itself will also benefit, they say, because lower global food prices also mean lower food prices domestically in the USA, which is good for the Trump administration in its fight against inflation.

Panelists on the show called attention to the greater credibility that the USA now has in the Kremlin following the conclusion of the agreement on a maritime cease-fire in its assumed role of honest broker or intermediary. The visuals of the talks in Riyadh suggest that U.S. negotiators were going back and forth between the Russian and Ukrainian delegations in the same hotel to help them arrive at a deal.  The reality, say the panelists, is that all negotiations were between the U.S. and Russian teams. They reached agreements and then the U.S. team took their decision to the Ukrainians and imposed it on them, like it or not. This, per the Russians, is the only way that an eventual peace treaty can be achieved.

                                                                *****

Now let us look at one aspect of the Trump administration’s foreign policy initiatives that no one is talking about: their impact on U.S. military equipment sales abroad.  The widely held assumption is that this administration like all of its predecessors is beholden to the military industrial complex for delivering votes of the Congressmen it controls on any given piece of legislation.

Yet, the steps to end the war in Ukraine that we see the Trump Team pursuing in such haste, will turn off the spigot of weaponry to Kiev and work against the sales projections of the arms manufacturers.

It is less obvious but more relevant that all of the uncertainty that Team Trump has caused and aggravated in Europe over its reliability as a defense shield works directly against the interests of U.S. arms manufacturers. We see this in the ongoing discussions in Germany about breaking their contract for purchase of the F-35 multipurpose jets. While Europeans are now allocating hundreds of billions of euros for procurement of defense equipment, the emphasis is on placing orders with European defense suppliers, not Americans. The Europeans have belatedly come to see that the U.S. can at any moment withhold its approval for use of its military hardware in any given planned military operation. Or it can cut off supplies of spare parts, thus rendering the expensive acquisitions useless. While the nuclear warheads stored in European bases turn these countries into targets for Russian attack, their use against Russia depends entirely on the mood of Washington at any given moment. These facts were always present, but the possibility of U.S, reneging on its defense obligations never seriously existed before the arrival of Donald Trump in the White House.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2025

Translation below into German (Andreas Mylaeus)

Weitere Überlegungen zur Bedeutung des Abkommens zwischen den USA, Russland und der Ukraine über einen Waffenstillstand auf See

Gestern Abend habe ich mich beeilt, eine Zusammenfassung der wichtigsten Punkte des gerade in Riad geschlossenen Dreiparteienabkommens über einen Waffenstillstand auf See im Schwarzen Meer zu liefern. Jetzt, am Morgen danach, gibt es weitere Überlegungen hinzuzufügen, darunter meine Antwort auf die ausführliche Berichterstattung über das Abkommen in der Online-Ausgabe der Financial Times von gestern Abend und den Kommentar in der russischen politischen Talkshow Abend mit Vladimir Solovyov. All dies bringt uns zu einer Neubewertung der Triebkräfte von Donald Trumps außenpolitischen Initiativen: Dienen sie dem militärisch-industriellen Komplex der USA, wie viele vermuten, oder nicht?

Der wichtigste Grund für eine erneute Überprüfung des See-Waffenstillstandsabkommens liegt in den von den Russen für dessen Umsetzung festgelegten Bedingungen, nämlich einer langen Liste von Sanktionen finanzieller und sonstiger Art in Bezug auf die russische Landwirtschaft, Fischerei und Düngemittel, die die USA aufheben müssen, bevor der Waffenstillstand in Kraft tritt.

Interessanterweise hat sich The Financial Times die Zeit genommen, die geforderte Aufhebung der Sanktionen zu untersuchen, und einige äußerst relevante Zahlen veröffentlicht, die zeigen, dass die Sanktionen die Russen nicht daran gehindert haben, alternative Exportrouten und andere Umgehungsmöglichkeiten zu finden, um ihre Exporteinnahmen aus Lebensmitteln und Düngemitteln fortzusetzen. Tatsächlich, wie sie zitieren, „erreichten die russischen Düngemittelexporte im vergangenen Jahr einen Rekordwert von 40 Millionen Tonnen und werden voraussichtlich bis 2025 um bis zu 5 Prozent steigen …“ Sie verschweigen, dass die Nachricht vom Waffenstillstand auf See die Preise auf den globalen Düngemittelmärkten sofort um 4 % fallen ließ. Sie verschweigen auch, wer wirklich unter den Beschränkungen für die russische Düngemittelindustrie gelitten hat: europäische und andere Landwirte weltweit und die Verbraucher weltweit aufgrund niedrigerer Ernteerträge und höherer Lebensmittelpreise.

Tatsächlich blieb Russland dank der Umgehungslösungen die ganze Zeit über der größte Getreideexporteur der Welt, aber die Umgehungslösungen verzerrten die globalen Handelsströme und trugen überall zu höheren Preisen bei.

Dennoch kommt die FT getreu ihrer Neigung, die Russen bei jeder Gelegenheit für alles, was sie tun und nicht tun, zu kritisieren, zu dem Schluss, dass der eigentliche Zweck der russischen Unterhändler nicht darin bestanden habe, den Handel mit Agrar-, Fisch- und Düngemittelprodukten zu liberalisieren, sondern die westlichen Sanktionen generell zurückzunehmen, um „Löcher in das westliche Sanktionsregime zu reißen“, anstatt die Exporte anzukurbeln.

Ich gebe gerne zu, dass sie nicht ganz Unrecht haben. Und doch steckt mehr hinter der Geschichte, als sie verlauten lassen. Sie erwähnen nicht die Forderung, dass Russland nun einen sanktionsfreien Zugang zum Erwerb von landwirtschaftlichen Maschinen und Geräten erhalten soll, die von der Fischerei- und Düngemittelindustrie benötigt werden.

In den letzten drei Jahren der Sanktionen haben russische Hersteller von landwirtschaftlichen Maschinen wie Erntemaschinen, Traktoren und dergleichen ihr Produktsortiment erweitert, um die Lücken zu schließen, die die abwandernden US-amerikanischen und anderen westlichen Hersteller hinterlassen haben. Durch Parallelhandel über Drittländer wie die Türkei haben die Russen Ersatzteile für zuvor gekaufte westliche Geräte beschafft. Dies hat jedoch die Abläufe erheblich verkompliziert und zu Produktionsausfällen im Vergleich zu dem geführt, was in normalen Zeiten hätte erreicht werden können. Sobald die Sanktionen aufgehoben sind, werden John Deere, FMC und andere amerikanische Hersteller sicherlich direkt wieder in den russischen Markt eintreten, was sowohl zu höheren US-Exporten nach Russland als auch zu einer höheren Effizienz für die russischen Betreiber in diesem Bereich führen wird.

In der Sendung von Vladimir Solovyov gestern Abend wurden einige weitere Überlegungen zu diesem Thema angestellt, die es wert sind, hier wiederholt zu werden. Einer davon ist, dass der größte Nutznießer der Aufhebung der Sanktionen für russische Agrarexporte … China sein wird. Immerhin macht China allein die Hälfte aller russischen Exportverkäufe von Getreide aus. Die Lieferungen werden künftig größer und die Preise niedriger sein. Auch die USA selbst werden davon profitieren, heißt es, denn niedrigere globale Lebensmittelpreise bedeuten auch niedrigere Lebensmittelpreise im Inland der USA, was für die Trump-Regierung im Kampf gegen die Inflation von Vorteil ist.

Die Diskussionsteilnehmer der Sendung wiesen auf die größere Glaubwürdigkeit hin, die die USA nach dem Abschluss des Abkommens über einen Waffenstillstand auf See im Kreml nun in ihrer angenommenen Rolle als ehrlicher Makler oder Vermittler genießen. Die Bilder der Gespräche in Riad deuten darauf hin, dass die US-Unterhändler zwischen der russischen und der ukrainischen Delegation im selben Hotel hin und her gingen, um ihnen zu einer Einigung zu verhelfen. Die Realität, so die Diskussionsteilnehmer, sei, dass alle Verhandlungen zwischen den Teams der USA und Russlands stattfanden. Sie erzielten Vereinbarungen und dann trug das US-Team seine Entscheidung den Ukrainern vor und setzte sie ihnen vor, ob sie wollten oder nicht. Dies ist nach Ansicht der Russen der einzige Weg, um einen eventuellen Friedensvertrag zu erreichen.

                                                                *****

Betrachten wir nun einen Aspekt der außenpolitischen Initiativen der Trump-Regierung, über den niemand spricht: ihre Auswirkungen auf den Verkauf von US-Militärausrüstung im Ausland. Es wird allgemein angenommen, dass diese Regierung wie alle ihre Vorgänger dem militärisch-industriellen Komplex verpflichtet sei, um die Stimmen der von ihr kontrollierten Kongressabgeordneten bei jedem beliebigen Gesetzentwurf zu erhalten.

Doch die Schritte zur Beendigung des Krieges in der Ukraine, die das Trump-Team so eilig zu unternehmen scheint, werden die Waffenlieferungen an Kiew stoppen und den Verkaufsprognosen der Waffenhersteller zuwiderlaufen.

Weniger offensichtlich, aber umso relevant ist, dass die Unsicherheit, die das Trump-Team in Europa hinsichtlich seiner Zuverlässigkeit als Schutzschild verursacht und verstärkt hat, den Interessen der US-Waffenhersteller direkt zuwiderläuft. Das zeigt sich in den anhaltenden Diskussionen in Deutschland über die Aufkündigung des Vertrags über den Kauf der Mehrzweckjets F-35. Während die Europäer derzeit Hunderte Milliarden Euro für die Beschaffung von Verteidigungsgütern bereitstellen, liegt der Schwerpunkt auf der Auftragsvergabe an europäische Rüstungsunternehmen, nicht an Amerikaner. Die Europäer haben spät erkannt, dass die USA jederzeit ihre Zustimmung zur Verwendung ihrer militärischen Ausrüstung bei einer geplanten Militäroperation verweigern können. Oder sie können die Lieferung von Ersatzteilen einstellen und so die teuren Anschaffungen unbrauchbar machen. Während die in europäischen Stützpunkten gelagerten Atomsprengköpfe diese Länder zu Zielen für russische Angriffe machen, hängt ihr Einsatz gegen Russland ganz von der Stimmung in Washington zu einem bestimmten Zeitpunkt ab. Diese Tatsachen waren schon immer präsent, aber die Möglichkeit, dass die USA ihre Verteidigungsverpflichtungen nicht einhalten, bestand vor dem Amtsantritt von Donald Trump im Weißen Haus nie ernsthaft.

Transcript submitted by a reader

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSrGMADG9D4
NewsX: 0:00
Russia has attacked Ukraine’s city of Odessa with one of its biggest drone attacks, injuring three teenagers, damaging residential and commercial buildings and sparking fires across the city. The attack comes as the United States is pushing for a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia and hoping to agree on a partial ceasefire that would halt strikes on energy infrastructure by both sides. Hours after Trump spoke, Russia launched a massive drone attack on Odessa. The long-range drones buzzed into the city in several waves, damaging infrastructure, residential houses and commercial buildings and causing multiple fires, officials said. Around 25 cars had been set ablaze at a car repair shop.

0:38
Zapore Zia regional governor Ivan Fedorov, writing on the Telegram messaging app, said nine were also injured in addition to the casualties. Russian strikes on Ukraine do not stop, despite their propaganda claims. [“Every day and every night, nearly 100 or more drones are launched, along with ongoing missile attacks. With each such launch, the Russians expose to the world their true attitude towards peace.”] Zelensky said on Thursday on X. Delegations from Russia and the US are expected to resume talks on ending the war on Monday in [Saudi] Arabia, both countries officials said, following an earlier round of talks in February. However, the recent escalation has raised concerns once again in the Russian-Ukraine conflict.

1:18
Well, joining us now live is Gilbert Doctorow, Russian affairs expert. He’s joining us live from Brussels in Belgium. Thank you very much for speaking with us today. Let me begin by asking you about what you make of this latest Russian offensive.

Gilbert Doctorow, PhD:
Well, [there’s] nothing unusual about it. Even Donald Trump remarked the very same thing when the question was put to him yesterday. There’s a war going on, and whatever understandings have been reached between Trump and Putin and Zelensky were a very partial limitation on the military operations. Specifically, both sides have pledged not to attack the energy infrastructure of the other side. In point of fact, just a day after Russia’s military was ordered not to attack Ukraine, Ukraine attacked the metering station on the pipeline connecting Russian gas into Ukraine in Sudzha.

2:21
Sudzha is the main town in the territory of the Russian Federation province, region, of Kursk that the Ukrainians have been holding since last August. They did great damage to that pipeline, and the Russians estimate it will take two and a half years to replace it. So this was a major attack on Russian infrastructure relating to energy exports. The Russians have been restrained. They have decided not to take this provocation any further and not respond in kind, because they do not want Mr. Zelensky to sabotage the peace talks, which is clearly the objective of the strike on Sudzha. As to the Russian strikes on Odessa, they were all on fair game. The same way that the Ukrainian attack on the airbase at Engels in the Saratov region of central Russia was fair game. Nasty, damaging, but it’s a military objective. As you reported about the Odessa, you were getting the Zelensky version of it.

3:36
Let me give you the Russian version of it. They successfully destroyed ships in the port of Odessa, carrying munitions. They successfully destroyed caches of arms and weapons in Odessa. When the Ukrainians speak about civilian buildings being destroyed by Russian drones, they are keeping from you the fact that these residential buildings were barracks, they were housing armed men. So these questions are very disputed.

NewsX: 4:13
Yes, let me also ask you then, Gilbert Doctorow, looking ahead now, there is another round of talks expected on Monday. What do we expect then? How hopeful are you [for] some sort of progress? Do you believe a partial ceasefire, at least on restraining attacks on energy infrastructure on both sides, is likely?

Doctorow: 4:34
I think it’s a big mistake to focus our attention on the ceasefire. From the Russian perspective, and I would say now from the American perspective, the objective is two parallel discussions. The technicalities of the ceasefire and the end results of a peace negotiation, where will it end up? These are going on in parallel. As regards the Riyadh talks on Monday, they are primarily between an American working group and a Russian working group.

These are technical talks. They are going to be discussing, for example, free navigation in the Black Sea. There has already been a case of free navigation of the Black Sea; that was about a year and a half ago. It went on until finally the Russians said “Stop” because the Ukrainians were not delivering on their side of the bargain. And what will happen now is negotiations between technical people, security people, in Riyadh. In the same city, there will be a Ukrainian delegation, and it is reasonable to expect that Americans will be going back and forth between the Russian delegation and the Ukrainian delegation in Riyadh at the time.

5:54
Is there progress being made? Very definitely. What is the end result? The end result will be a peace in Ukraine, probably arrived at in several months from now, but in a context of a reset of American-Russian relations of dramatic scope. The last time we heard the word “reset” was in 2010, when Barack Obama said that he wanted to do a reset with the Russians in order to get through the New START Arms Limitations Treaty prolongation.

6:30
At that time, American policy was led by ideologists. Russia was a pariah state, and you could do business with it only on the few subjects that were of material interest to the United States. The reset that we’re about to witness is of a comprehensive nature that we have not seen since the time of Richard Nixon. That takes us back a long way into the 1970s. And the whole time since the 1970s, American foreign policy has been led by ideologists, not by realists. Nixon was a realist and Trump is a realist. These are new days.

NewsX: 7:07
Would you then see these latest attacks, though, as being a setback for peace efforts, or not quite?

Doctorow:
Absolutely not. War is war, and these attacks are fair under the rules of war. They are unpleasant, they are damaging, people lose their lives, but that’s what happens in wars. Mr. Trump’s insistence that this should come to an end sooner rather than later is a valuable contribution. His great engagement with this process is a very important and decisive factor, spelling its likely success. There are no certainties in this world. It may fail, but it has a high chance of success, and I would not be distracted by the ongoing daily fighting.

NewsX: 7:56
All right, Gilbert Doctorow, thank you very much for joining us with your perspective on that big story.

Yesterday at the conclusion of the 12 hours of negotiations between American and Russian working groups in Riyadh, the Russian side said it would publish a summary of what was achieved this morning at 11am Moscow time.  That deadline came and went. Finally, at 18.55 Moscow time, just ahead of the prime-time news broadcasts, a two-page summary appeared on the presidential website: http://kremlin.ru/events/president/news/76526

From backchannels, it appears that the delay in publication was caused by bickering with the Ukrainians over the deal, which finally was overcome.

The main points in the agreement have already been published in Western media, as for example The Washington Post:  https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/03/25/ukraine-russia-black-sea-agreement-ceasefire/?location=alert    However, their background information relating to the first unsuccessful agreement on freedom of navigation in the Black Sea dating from 2022 is seriously misleading, by which I mean that they refuse to recognize that the provisions were implemented back then in one direction only, to free Ukrainian grain exports while obstacles were left in place to frustrate Russian grain and fertilizer exports that should have been the counterparty to what was done for Kiev.  The problem in 2022 was that the deal was promoted by the United Nations and Turkey, but the USA and Europe were in no way committed to its implementation for the Russians. The whole emphasis was on ensuring that Ukrainian grain reached world markets under the false message that otherwise there would be famine in major grain importing countries which are among the world’s poorest.

The new U.S.-Russian agreement makes the U.S. a facilitator in even-handed treatment of both Ukrainian and Russian interests, and that will be of decisive importance.

As in 2022, Ukrainian export shipments of grain via the Black Sea will be unrestricted though each ship will be subject to inspection to ensure that commercial vessels are not being used to transport war materiel to Ukraine.

However, the deal takes effect ONLY AFTER the United States has ended the sanctions on Russian banks engaged in export of agricultural products, fish products and fertilizers. This means that Rosselkhozbank will be reconnected to SWIFT and correspondent accounts will be opened with U.S. and other banks to handle the respective transactions. Limitations on insurers for Russian flag vessels, restrictions on port services to these vessels will all be lifted. Still more:  sanctions will now be lifted on producer and  exporter companies in the sectors of agricultural, fish and fertilizer products.  Furthermore, Russia will now have sanction-free access to purchase abroad agricultural machinery and equipment needed for its fish and fertilizer production.

Clearly removal of all these restrictions on Russia will be a good down payment on removal of all sanctions of every kind on the country by the USA once a peace treaty is signed.

At the end of the recital of all these agreements relating to restoration of  commercial traffic in the Black Sea for Ukraine, there is mention of the intention of Russia and the USA to work out measures to implement the agreement of the presidents on prohibiting attacks on energy infrastructure of Russia and Ukraine for a period of 30 days starting from 18 March with possible prolongation and also with possible cancellation in case one of the parties violates the terms agreed.

The cherry on the cake is the final sentence:  “Russia and the USA will continue their work to achieve a solid and long-lasting peace.”

Amen

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2025

Translation below into German (Andreas Mylaeus)

„Grundlegende Ergebnisse des Treffens russischer und US-amerikanischer Expertengruppen“

Gestern, zum Abschluss der 12-stündigen Verhandlungen zwischen amerikanischen und russischen Arbeitsgruppen in Riad, kündigte die russische Seite an, sie werde heute Morgen um 11 Uhr Moskauer Zeit eine Zusammenfassung der Ergebnisse veröffentlichen. Diese Frist verstrich ungenutzt. Schließlich erschien um 18:55 Uhr Moskauer Zeit, kurz vor den Hauptnachrichten, eine zweiseitige Zusammenfassung auf der Website des Präsidenten: http://kremlin.ru/events/president/news/76526

Aus inoffiziellen Quellen verlautet, dass die Verzögerung bei der Veröffentlichung durch Streitigkeiten mit den Ukrainern über das Abkommen verursacht wurde, die schließlich beigelegt wurden.

Die wichtigsten Punkte des Abkommens wurden bereits in westlichen Medien veröffentlicht, wie zum Beispiel in The Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/03/25/ukraine-russia-black-sea-agreement-ceasefire/? location=alert

Allerdings sind ihre Hintergrundinformationen über das erste erfolglose Abkommen über die Freiheit der Schifffahrt im Schwarzen Meer aus dem Jahr 2022 äußerst irreführend, was bedeutet, dass sie sich weigern anzuerkennen, dass die Bestimmungen damals nur in eine Richtung umgesetzt wurden, nämlich zur Freigabe der ukrainischen Getreideexporte, während die Hindernisse für die russischen Getreide- und Düngemittelexporte bestehen blieben, die die Gegenleistung für das sein sollten, was für Kiew getan wurde. Das Problem im Jahr 2022 bestand darin, dass das Abkommen von den Vereinten Nationen und der Türkei gefördert wurde, die USA und Europa sich jedoch in keiner Weise für seine Umsetzung für die Russen eingesetzt haben. Der Schwerpunkt lag darauf, sicherzustellen, dass ukrainisches Getreide unter der falschen Botschaft, dass es sonst in den wichtigsten Getreideimportländern, die zu den ärmsten der Welt gehören, zu einer Hungersnot kommen würde, auf die Weltmärkte gelangt.

Das neue Abkommen zwischen den USA und Russland macht die USA zu einem Vermittler bei der gleichberechtigten Behandlung sowohl ukrainischer als auch russischer Interessen, und das wird von entscheidender Bedeutung sein.

Wie im Jahr 2022 wird der ukrainische Getreideexport über das Schwarze Meer nicht eingeschränkt, allerdings wird jedes Schiff einer Inspektion unterzogen, um sicherzustellen, dass Handelsschiffe nicht für den Transport von Kriegsmaterial in die Ukraine genutzt werden.

Das Abkommen tritt jedoch NUR IN KRAFT, NACHDEM die Vereinigten Staaten die Sanktionen gegen russische Banken, die am Export von Agrarprodukten, Fischprodukten und Düngemitteln beteiligt sind, aufgehoben haben. Dies bedeutet, dass die Rosselkhozbank wieder an SWIFT angeschlossen wird und Korrespondenzkonten bei US-amerikanischen und anderen Banken eröffnet werden, um die entsprechenden Transaktionen abzuwickeln. Die Beschränkungen für Versicherer von Schiffen unter russischer Flagge und die Beschränkungen für Hafendienste für diese Schiffe werden aufgehoben. Darüber hinaus werden die Sanktionen gegen Hersteller- und Exportunternehmen in den Bereichen Agrar-, Fisch- und Düngemittelprodukte aufgehoben. Außerdem wird Russland nun sanktionsfreien Zugang zum Kauf von landwirtschaftlichen Maschinen und Geräten im Ausland haben, die für die Fisch- und Düngemittelproduktion benötigt werden.

Die Aufhebung all dieser Beschränkungen für Russland wäre eindeutig eine gute Anzahlung für die Aufhebung aller Sanktionen jeglicher Art, die die USA gegen das Land verhängt haben, sobald ein Friedensvertrag unterzeichnet ist.

Am Ende der Aufzählung all dieser Vereinbarungen zur Wiederherstellung des Handelsverkehrs im Schwarzen Meer für die Ukraine wird die Absicht Russlands und der USA erwähnt, Maßnahmen zur Umsetzung der Vereinbarung der Präsidenten über das Verbot von Angriffen auf die Energieinfrastruktur Russlands und der Ukraine für einen Zeitraum von 30 Tagen ab dem 18. März mit möglicher Verlängerung und auch mit möglicher Aufhebung im Falle eines Verstoßes einer der Parteien gegen die vereinbarten Bedingungen auszuarbeiten.

Das Sahnehäubchen ist der letzte Satz: „Russland und die USA werden ihre Arbeit fortsetzen, um einen soliden und dauerhaften Frieden zu erreichen.“

Amen