Note: pay attentlon to the reasoning, arguments of my three fellow panelists. OK, one is a die-hard Zelensky regime supporter, but the Americans! Wow, folks who never pick up a mainstream newspaper to see how the war is really going, let alone look to alternative media. They are living in the post-factual world, a bubble of propaganda. Just a reminder: know the enemy!

Transcript submitted by a reader

NewsX: 0:00
Hello and welcome, I’m Joshua Barnes, and today we were having a insightful discussion on the actions and decisions to be made by US President Donald Trump to put an end to the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine. It was believed that the raging Russia-Ukraine war will be significantly impacted by the US administration. The new President, Donald Trump, had claimed to put an end to the war in just a day as soon as he took over office. Now, with his victory, he seems to be working on a– cracking a peace deal between the warring countries. Trump has called for Russian President Vladimir Putin to meet him immediately.

He also talked about the willingness of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to negotiate a deal. Replying to Trump’s request, the Kremlin say that Moscow was ready for a dialogue with Trump. What now awaits is the meeting of the two leaders. Trump has also said the Saudi nations and OPEC plus to reduce oil prices which according to him will be able to end the war sooner. Resultingly the oil prices fell down by one percent. With Trump’s repeated warnings to Russia for a peace deal and increasingly aggressive behaviour of Russia on Ukraine, the future of the war remains uncertain.

1:12
Joining us today we have Professor Olexiy Haran, who’s joining us from the Kiev Mohyla University in Kiev. We have John Rossomando, president of the Viking Research Associates and a geopolitical analyst in Washington. We have Gilbert Doctorow, a Russian affairs expert joining us from Brussels and finally Adrian Calamel, a Middle East expert joining us from New York.

Trump’s comments relating to oil, Gilbert Doctorow: he said that if the prices drop, then Russia’s ability to fight in this war will end. But the Kremlin have hit back within the last hour and said that wars are not built off oil, they’re built off security. So looking at the statement that the Kremlin has made, do you think that there is still some friction there between Trump and Putin’s administrations?

Gilbert Doctorow, PhD: 2:02
It’s not a question of friction. It’s a question of whether Mr. Trump and his advisors read the records in the State Department to see where the United States has been previously. I was just going over my own notes from April 2021 in the period preceding the first and only summit between Biden and Putin.

And Mr. Biden’s State Department did the same foolish and counterproductive things that Mr. Trump is doing now, threatening Russia, trying to establish negotiations from a position of strength, which is utterly unacceptable to the Kremlin. Mr. Putin stated clearly that they look for fair treatment and equal treatment and equal respect of the parties as they meet.

2:57
Before Biden met with Putin, they introduced new sanctions. They introduced various punishments to show who was calling the shots and that they thought they would bring Mr. Putin to heel. That’s exactly the mistake, the utterly foolish and ignorant position of Mr. Trump today.

When he says what he did about how World War II was fought and how the Russians helped the Americans to win the war, he is committing sacrilege from the standpoint of Russian public opinion and Russian elite opinion. They know that they won the war, not the United States, that the Wehrmacht, three-quarters of its strength, was pitted against Russia, not against the United States.

3:46
Mistakes like this are unacceptable. Mr. Trump is utterly unprepared for a summit with Mr. Putin, and I don’t believe it will take place shortly. The Russians are very close to totally destroying the frontlines of Ukraine, and they have no intention of pausing for a ceasefire to allow Mr. Zelensky to restore his order, to bring in new mobilized forces, and to get further arms equipment from the United States and its allies. This is out of order.

What the Russians want to discuss with Mr. Trump, and they do want to meet with him, is a division of the world order. They expect that Mr. Trump’s emphasis on the Monroe Doctrine, on reestablishing American total hegemony in the Western Hemisphere is balanced by the recognition that the United States cannot keep its arms around the whole world and should be sharing, must be sharing responsibility for step for global stability with the other two superpowers, China and Russia.

NewsX: 5:00
Yes, Professor Olexiy Haran, we have heard Gilbert Doctorow’s response; I’d like your response to Trump’s comments.

Haran:
Well, first of all if we’re talking about the course of Trump well … there’s a lot of uncertainty and on the one thing Trump is saying importance of settlement, importance of stopping the war, but the question is how and what should be the concessions from different sides. For example, if I hear new state secretary, Mr. Rubio, he said very right that, I am quoting him, that we know who is aggressor, aggressor is Russia, Ukraine is a victim. That’s very good.

However, then he’s talking that both sides, it’s important for both sides to make concessions. So my question is what kind of concessions from Ukraine? As far as I understand, Mr. Gilbert, you are apologetic about Mr. Putin.

You are talking that the United States are guilty of what’s going on. I think this is a typical, this is a propaganda from Kremlin. We know who started the war. We know what were the reasons for the war. Putin is not close to crush Ukraine, No.

But he may deliver a lot of troubles and a lot of victims. He doesn’t care about people’s lives at all. And the next, the aim of Putin is not just Ukraine. He would like to change the whole world. Yes, you are right in this sense.

He would like to destabilize the whole world. He would like to create the acts of evil, which will include Iran, North Korea, China, and maybe some other states which are inclined to aggression. So that’s the real aim of Putin. He’s talking about crushing the whole Ukrainian nation. He’s saying Ukrainians don’t exist.

Ukrainians do not exist. Is it the right approach, or this is the approach of aggressor? So here we have very difficult actually question how to proceed. And we Ukrainians we don’t believe in the policy of appeasement of aggressor. You may remember Munich agreement of 1938 at the expense of Czechoslovakia. This was appeasement of aggressor and what happened later? World War II.

7:51
Because aggressor didn’t stop. So this is the whole problem how to react. Yes we think that economic sanctions are not enough but there should be a combined approach of the whole civilised world to stop this crazy total unjustified aggression.

NewsX:
Yes, Adrian Calamel, I want to bring it back to potentially ending a conflict. You of course are a Middle Eastern expert and we’ve seen Donald Trump’s influence in ending one sort of war and one series of fights and catastrophes going on. What do you think that the impact can be of Donald Trump in this conflict. He of course has said in his first day that the war would end. We’ve had his first day, it hasn’t, but his strong rhetoric clearly is leaning towards trying to get this done as soon as possible.

Calamel: 8:44
Thank you for having me. I think we need to take a pause. It’s only been four days since he’s been put in, you know, sworn into office here. He does have a plan going forward. Trump has a approach of playing probably good cop, bad cop in a lot of places in the world. But he’s putting out messaging there for Zelensky, for Putin.

I think from Zelensky he wants clear, defined outcomes. What are we looking for? What are the objectives? And can we meet those? With Putin, we know that he is unwavering. He is not going to sign any type of agreement.

9:24
He wants to recreate a quasi-Soviet Union. He was the one who actually said that the fall of the Soviet Union was one of the greatest travesties of the 20th century. So what Trump needs to do is realize he has enormous leverage right now because North Korea, I mean, Russia is suffering from a manpower problem and a firepower problem. Didn’t have a fire problem before, but now they have both. Manpower problem, they’re bringing North Korean troops onto the battlefield ill-equipped, untrained, and being swooped up.

10:02
And they have a firepower problem that they were bringing in drones, ballistic missiles from the Islamic Republic, which thankfully the Israelis took out those factories. So Trump has a couple of options here, and I don’t think he’s going to sit down and play a game of poker, such as the Blinken administration did, or Blinken State Department, where you sit down with a full house and you act like you got a pair of deuces in your hand when you actually have a full house. Play from a position of strength. And that’s what we have here is we have enormous economic leverage over the Russians. And at this time, they are, they’re pressed militarily.

10:42
And I think at the end of the day, we need to put a NATO blanket. I know this is the thing that Putin will cry about, call foul over and over, but NATO is a defensive alliance and if Ukraine had been in NATO, I highly doubt whether this invasion would have happened because it would have triggered Article 5, and that’s what Putin’s afraid of. That’s why he doesn’t want Poland, didn’t want Poland. That’s why Finland joined because World War II, who did the Soviet Union invade? Finland. NATO is there for a reason.

NewsX: 11:14
John Rossomando, I’d like to bring it back to Trump’s comments about oil. Do you think that there may be an ulterior motive here? Of course, we know a comment that he made during his inauguration speech, “We are going to drill, baby, drill.” Do you think Trump’s comments on oil could be continued, specifically with him looking to work with Saudi Arabia and other oil producing nations?

Rossomando:
Well, if we look back to history, Ronald Reagan went to Saudi Arabia, I think it was like ’85 or something like that, and got the Saudis to ramp up their oil production, which destroyed the Soviet economy, contributing to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, because it couldn’t pay its bills. The number one thing that gave Vladimir Putin the wherewithal following the pandemic to not to second invasion of Ukraine, was the fact that oil and gas revenues started going up precipitously. And if you’re a country like Russia that has one major source of revenue, you know, it would really hurt the ability of the Russians to pay the Iranians, pay the Chinese, pay the North Koreans for whatever they’re getting for their arms and their weapons, and President Trump is hoping that this can be leveraged just as it was at the end of the Soviet period.

NewsX: 12:47
Gilbert, Doctorow, looking at the threats of sanctions that Trump has made and now the comments about dropping oil prices, how debilitating do you think this could be to Russia given the sanctions on other sectors in which they were generating funds and in a war that is depleting funds of the Russian nation?

Doctorow:
These sanctions will have no effect, and they have made Trump the laughing stock of Moscow elites in the last couple of days. The notion that raising tariffs on Russia’s sales of goods to the United States will cripple Russia — he’s failing to see that the total volume of sales in 2024 were 300 million dollars, mostly uranium, which the United States needs to keep its nuclear power plants running.

The United States has no leverage over Russia. Mr. Trump’s statement that “we have a lot of power over Russia” is totally misinformed. It’s bravado, and it hasn’t been researched, which makes him look like a fool. He is now repeating the same mistakes that Biden made only with a different personality and perhaps a more lively mind. But the end result is negative.

14:02
The United States has no leverage over Russia that it has not already exercised under Biden. And if there is more that it could do, it would have led to World War III. And that was perfectly well understood in Washington, which is why they held back. They don’t want to be killed. The only power the United States has over Russia is its nuclear missiles.

And Russia more than outdoes that in its hypersonic and other intercontinental ballistic missiles directed against the United States. So this notion of negotiating from strength is a non-starter and Mr Trump should step back, find some consultants who know something about Russia, which his do not.

NewsX: 14:48
Professor Haran, looking at any potential deal to end the war, if of course the frictions can be resolved and Trump can resume his promised role of mediator between the two warring nations, how do you think Zelensky might deal with a potential concession over land that has been taken by RussiaI

Haran:
I would like to throw the question back to you, Mr. Moderator. What will India do if it’s attacked and its territory is seized and next and the whole country is bombarded? What would be your position? I am sorry for this question. I hope it will never happen. But if it happens, what would you do? Will you agree, you know, to concessions to give part of your territory to other states?

NewsX:
Well looking at the situation where potentially Russia is advancing in Ukraine, there is potentially a thought that that could get worse and that appeasement as you’ve mentioned is not necessarily an option but ending the fighting ending the bloodshed. Do you think that’s something that Zelensky might lean towards if that does mean losing any territory at all?

Haran: 16:03
Look, the situation is difficult, definitely. Putin is moving very slowly and losing lots of Russians. That’s the story, but he is moving, though slowly. So what we need, we need support, we need more support. And it includes economic sanctions, and it includes also military support. If you are talking about economic sanctions, I would like to say the GDP of Russia, Mr. Gilbert do you know, it’s like the GDP of California or Spain or Italy, nothing else. So from economic point of view, Russia cannot compete with Western countries. The only thing Russia can do is nuclear blackmail. And this is what Putin is doing, and this is what you are repeating. Okay?

16:53
So, unfortunately, the West is afraid of nuclear blame, so here I should recognize that Putin’s strategy of blackmailing the West with nuclear catastrophe works. Now, and I think that the best approach should be, as I have said, from the very beginning of this war, you know, to stop Russian aggression. And it can, could be stopped by force, because Putin understands only the logic of force, and he is not a suicide. He doesn’t in reality want nuclear war because he would also die.

Now, regarding concessions, again, let me repeat. The situation is not easy. Now, so my prediction is no Ukrainian president as well as no civilized country would ever recognize annexations of part of Ukraine by Russia. Never ever. And you can see the results of voting in the General Assembly of the United Nations at the beginning of agggression. 140 countries in favor of territorial integrity of Ukraine. Only four countries actually supported Russia.

18:26
So, but there’s no question about legal recognition of annexation. But, you know, if there is approach to freeze the xxxx unfortunately it will mean de facto continued occupation of part of Ukrainian territory, and it would send wrong signals to any nuclear power. Because the signal would be that nuclear power can blackmail other countries and seize whatever territories they would like to seize. And this is true about China, this is true about Iran, even about North Korea. So unfortunately it will create huge precedent for the whole international [relations], not only in Europe, but also in other parts of the world. It would be very, very dangerous.

19:22
That’s why I think that we need to stick to international law, which is very clear. The international law is very clear about territorial integrity of Ukraine. Look, Russia recognized the territorial integrity of Ukraine. Russia had to be a guarantor of territorial integrity of Ukraine, of neutral Ukraine. And neutral Ukraine was attacked by Russia in a very [cynical] way.

So again there could be different scenarios, good ones, bad ones, some in the middle, but what is really important: to show to Russia as aggressor and to any potential aggression that their nuclear blackmail doesn’t work. That’s really important for the future of international relations.

NewsX: 20:13
Yes, and looking at that potential deal, I want to come back to the fighting, which of course is ongoing. The Ukrainian army, Ukraine themselves, the government have relied heavily on US support. Adrian Calamel, if Trump is, sort of wavers in that support, it could be devastating for Ukraine.

Whether a deal is struck within the next three to six months or not, the losses could be massive. So do you think that this is Trump trying to sort of end a conflict so he doesn’t have to fund it? And if he is looking at the financial implications for the US, what could him withdrawing those funds really do?

Calamel: 20:50
I think, great question, I think before Trump, the discussion withdrawing funds, etc., he needs to get some clear defined objectives. There’s been no end game to this war. There’s been counterattacks. There’s been counteroffensives. There’s been defensive measures taken. We see the American military aid that’s come in. It’s been the Ukraine asking for it six months before they actually get it. They’re begging for it. And it’s basically just been to stay in the fight. It’s not been to press the fight. Now, to press the fight, it’s going to be very difficult.

You know, there’s areas like Donbass, Crimea. I mean, the Russians have been embedded in there for years now. After they baloney-sliced– Putin has taken the Hitler version of foreign policy and baloney-sliced his way across Europe and waiting until someone stands up. Ukraine became the sort of Poland, I would say, in this case, where he went a step too far. So Trump needs clear defined objectives. He wants to find what Zelensky wants, what he needs.

21:55
And he needs to make sure at the end of the day, to end this war, it needs to be a type of outcome where Putin never feels like he can invade another sovereign nation again. And one of those ways to do that is for entrance into NATO and to make sure that he knows that he will be punished and he will be forced to pay for the damages, for the lives, and those types of things. Let’s look at the atrocities he’s committed. Why aren’t we talking about war crimes? You see all these things leveled against the Israeli government for their actions against a terrorist attack.

And then you have Putin invading another country and creating, using terrorist tactics, using these types of things. So this type of evil cannot be invited into the world. It needs to be stemmed off. And we also need to understand, Trump needs to understand that Russia, the Islamic Republic of Iran and China all coordinate. And you can’t compartmentalize them because you take your foot off Russia, play nice with them. And all of a sudden China says, “Oh, this is a green light.” And I just want to pivot back to something Gilbert said before. We need to lose the false binary narrative that it’s either peace, give Putin whatever he wants, or you got World War III. That’s not the situation.

That’s not the situation. That’s fear-mongering. And the United States has enormous leverage. I think we need to remember that. So I object to the fact that we don’t have leverage. And the binary narrative, it just doesn’t work. That’s what we heard with the JCPOA. It’s give the Islamic Republic a nuclear weapon, or it’s going to be World War III.

NewsX: 23:42
John Rossomando, just to finish off quickly, We’ve seen Trump almost dangle the carrot of a meeting with Putin and potentially looking like their relationship is going to be closer than it was between Biden and Putin, but he continues a rhetoric which is very strong in terms of imposing sanctions. Do you think that that meeting will happen and what do you think the result will be?

Rossomando:
Well, I think that there eventually will be a meeting between Putin and Trump. However, the outcome of that meeting is to be determined. I think that President Trump should consider things like sanctions against Kazakhstan, which has become kind of the external battery resource of the Russian economy in a way that the Chinese have been able to clandestinely provide goods and services to the Russian economy, and where Russian companies have been able to go to continue their operations and evade sanctions. So I think that everything needs to be on the table, and I think that the biggest problem we have with Ukraine, as Adrian was pointing out, there’s no strategy for victory. We’ve been just fighting a stalemate for years without any goals, without any offensives.

25:06
I mean, the biggest example that comes to my mind is the 1991 Persian Gulf War, in which the United States and its coalition kicked the Iraqis out of Kuwait. Russia’s using the same tactics, the same strategies, but no one has any strategy for the Ukrainians to knock the Russians out. The Russians aren’t leaving, So there needs to be some sort of pragmatic solution.

NewsX:
John Rossamando, thank you for your time. Thank you also to Professor Olexiy Haran. Thank you, Gilbert Doctorow. And finally, thank you, Adrian Calamel.

25:41
As this ongoing situation between Trump, Putin, Zelensky, and the ongoing war continues, we will bring you all of the latest from Russia, Ukraine, the USA and the rest of the world.

Vladimir Putin’s public response to the peculiarly Trumpian combination of insults, threats and warm invitation to a meeting directed at him in the past several days by the 47^th president of the United States made headline news yesterday and was commented upon favorably but not necessarily with discernment by several of my peers in alternative media. In what follows, I will put in my first thoughts on the subject and the recommendation that we all wait a bit to see and hear the full interview with Putin from which the headline news has been extracted.

What particularly struck CNN and other Western news outlets in the quotes from Putin’s off-the-cuff interview with Rossiya 1 journalist Pavel Zarubin was the Russian president’s agreeing to the Trumpian notion that had the 2020 US election not been ‘stolen’ and had Trump remained in office, the tragedy of the Russia-Ukraine war might never have occurred. Indeed, this obvious flattery of the ever-vain Trump could not be overlooked and is newsworthy. What was overlooked was other notes in the interview which were more subtle but also more telling about Russia’s intentions in going into a meeting with American president.

One of those other notes was Putin’s dismissal of the threat of more American sanctions if Russia should not conclude a truce now with Ukraine. After all, he said, Trump is a smart and pragmatic man, and additional sanctions on Russia could only harm the economy of the United States.

More importantly, when agreeing that it is highly desirable for American and Russian leaders to meet and consult and when remarking that the absence of such contacts was due to the policy of the previous American administration and not his responsibility, Putin went on to state clearly what Russia expects to discuss at a summit with Trump.

Yesterday’s issue of The Moscow Times has chosen a quote from the interviews that is overlooked by most major U.S. or UK based newspapers:

“It’s certainly better that we meet and, based on current realities, discuss calmly all areas of interest to both the U.S. and Russia…”

“Based on current realities”:  this means based on appreciation of the real state of the war on the ground in Ukraine, where the Russians have the upper hand and are daily pushing back the Ukrainian forces and freeing the Donbas in fulfillment of the objectives of the Special Military Operation. This is full rejection of the underlying assumption of Trump’s negotiating position that the war is a stalemate that is costing the lives of soldiers on both sides to no purpose.

“Calmly discuss all areas of interest”: this means that the war in Ukraine is only one subject which the Russians intend to discuss with Trump. The other subjects are the structure of international security, stability, the arms race.

Our media have said almost nothing about the context of this interview and about who was the Russian journalist involved. 

Please note that the journalist, Pavel Zarubin, is Putin’s shadow. He follows the Russian president on a daily basis and takes interviews with him in breaks between meetings with foreign dignitaries and on the street when Putin is on his way from one venue to another.  This is the same Pavel Zarubin who last fall stopped Putin just outside the Admiralty building of the Hermitage Museum to take down his response to Biden’s granting Kiev permission to use ATACMS missiles to strike targets deep inside the Russian Federation.  The snippets from yesterday’s interview will be better judged when we see the complete interview Sunday evening in the hour allotted to Zarubin for his program Moscow, the Kremlin, Putin which is bookmarked by Dmitry Kiselyov’s lengthy News of the Week program just before and the widely watched talk show Sunday Evening with Vladimir Solovyov just after.Pavel Zarubin is not just any reporter: he is a protégé of both Kiselyov, the chief of all Russian state television news and of Solovyov, the dean of Russian journalists. Every one of his seemingly spontaneous interviews has been carefully programmed in advance and fully represents the Kremlin policy of the day.

For the moment, let us concede that at the meeting with Putin Trump may get the truce that he has demanded going back to his pre-election campaign rallies.  However, that truce will surely be conditional on the Ukrainians retreating and freeing the still unconquered territories of the Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporozhie and Kherson oblasts that Putin set down as his precondition to truce and start of peace negotiations back in June 2024. It will be interesting to see how Trump sells this outcome to the American and European publics.

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One other very interesting development that his been featured in alternative media interview programs these past couple of days concerns the possibility that Trump has already shut the spigot of American aid to Ukraine at the same time that he has very publicly threatened Russia with sanctions if they do not sit down with the Ukrainians and conclude a truce agreement.

As readers of these pages will recall, I have argued against this notion because if it were true it would have elicited shrieks of backstabbing from Zelensky while he had the attention of the world this week during his stay in the Davos Economic Forum, and he has been silent.  Moreover, I can add here that one reader sent me a comment that his mother, who lives in Romania near the main highway used by trucks carrying US and Western military supplies to Ukraine reports that the trucks are still coming.

Some analysts link this alleged cut-off of aid to Ukraine to Trump’s imposition of a 90-day halt in all U.S. foreign aid programs. In theory that would be a brilliant move.  However, the orders yesterday by Secretary of State Rubio for all aid programs to suspend operations at once appear to affect only a very few lines of assistance to Ukraine: aid to healthcare establishments and to vaccination programs for children. This, per The Financial Times.  We are not aware of any orders directed through the Pentagon for military materiel headed to Kiev to be stopped.

I close this survey of miscellaneous Ukraine war related news to the latest public statements by Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orban in advance of the upcoming six-monthly vote by EU Member States to renew sanctions on Russia. He has said he will veto the measure, thereby killing it unless Kiev re-opens the Russian gas pipelines transiting Ukraine and supplying much needed natural gas to Central Europe. Finally, Orban’s longstanding threats to put a spanner in the works of EU policy towards Russia have found a worthy supporting argument.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2025

Translation below into German (Andreas Mylaeus)

Verschiedene aktuelle Entwicklungen zum bevorstehenden Trump-Putin-Gipfel

Wladimir Putins öffentliche Reaktion auf die eigentümliche Trump’sche Kombination aus Beleidigungen, Drohungen und herzlicher Einladung zu einem Treffen, die der 47. Präsident der Vereinigten Staaten in den letzten Tagen an ihn gerichtet hat, machte gestern Schlagzeilen und wurde von mehreren meiner Kollegen in den alternativen Medien positiv, aber nicht unbedingt mit Unterscheidungsvermögen kommentiert. Im Folgenden werde ich meine ersten Gedanken zu diesem Thema darlegen und empfehlen, dass wir alle noch etwas warten, um das vollständige Interview mit Putin zu sehen und zu hören, aus dem die Schlagzeilen stammen.

Was CNN und andere westliche Nachrichtensender in den Zitaten aus Putins improvisiertem Interview mit dem Rossiya-1-Journalisten Pavel Zarubin besonders beeindruckte, war die Zustimmung des russischen Präsidenten zu der trumpschen Vorstellung, dass die Tragödie des Russland-Ukraine-Krieges vielleicht nie stattgefunden hätte, wenn die US-Wahl 2020 nicht „gestohlen“ worden und Trump im Amt geblieben wäre. Tatsächlich konnte diese offensichtliche Schmeichelei für den immer eitlen Trump nicht übersehen werden und ist berichtenswert. Was übersehen wurde, waren andere Anmerkungen im Interview, die subtiler waren, aber auch mehr über die Absichten Russlands aussagten, mit dem amerikanischen Präsidenten ein Treffen abzuhalten.

Eine dieser anderen Anmerkungen war Putins Ablehnung der Androhung weiterer amerikanischer Sanktionen, falls Russland nicht jetzt einen Waffenstillstand mit der Ukraine schließen sollte. Schließlich sei Trump ein kluger und pragmatischer Mann, und zusätzliche Sanktionen gegen Russland könnten der Wirtschaft der Vereinigten Staaten nur schaden.

Noch wichtiger war, dass Putin zustimmte, dass es äußerst wünschenswert sei, dass sich die amerikanischen und russischen Staats- und Regierungschefs treffen und beraten, und dass das Fehlen solcher Kontakte auf die Politik der vorherigen amerikanischen Regierung zurückzuführen sei und nicht in seiner Verantwortung liege. Anschließend erklärte Putin deutlich, was Russland auf einem Gipfeltreffen mit Trump zu besprechen erwarte.

Die gestrige Ausgabe von The Moscow Times hat ein Zitat aus den Interviews ausgewählt, das von den meisten großen US-amerikanischen oder britischen Zeitungen übersehen wird:

„Es ist sicherlich besser, wenn wir uns treffen und auf der Grundlage der aktuellen Gegebenheiten alle Bereiche, die sowohl für die USA als auch für Russland von Interesse sind, in Ruhe besprechen …“

„Auf der Grundlage der aktuellen Gegebenheiten”: Dies bedeutet, dass man sich der tatsächlichen Lage des Krieges in der Ukraine bewusst ist, wo die Russen die Oberhand haben und die ukrainischen Streitkräfte täglich zurückdrängen und den Donbass in Erfüllung der Ziele der militärischen Spezialoperation befreien. Dies ist eine vollständige Ablehnung der zugrunde liegenden Annahme von Trumps Verhandlungsposition, dass der Krieg eine Pattsituation ist, die das Leben von Soldaten auf beiden Seiten sinnlos kostet.

„In aller Ruhe über alle Themen sprechen, die von Interesse sind”: Das bedeutet, dass der Krieg in der Ukraine nur eines der Themen ist, die die Russen mit Trump besprechen wollen. Die anderen Themen sind die Struktur der internationalen Sicherheit, Stabilität und das Wettrüsten.

Unsere Medien haben fast nichts über den Kontext dieses Interviews gesagt und auch nicht darüber, wer der russische Journalist war, der daran beteiligt war.

Bitte beachten Sie, dass der Journalist Pavel Zarubin Putins Schatten ist. Er folgt dem russischen Präsidenten täglich und führt in den Pausen zwischen den Treffen mit ausländischen Würdenträgern und auf der Straße, wenn Putin auf dem Weg von einem Ort zum anderen ist, Interviews mit ihm. Dies ist derselbe Pavel Zarubin, der Putin im vergangenen Herbst direkt vor dem Admiralitätsgebäude der Eremitage anhielt, um seine Antwort auf Bidens Erlaubnis an Kiew, ATACMS-Raketen zur Bekämpfung von Zielen tief im Inneren der Russischen Föderation einzusetzen, festzuhalten. Die Ausschnitte aus dem gestrigen Interview lassen sich besser beurteilen, wenn wir das vollständige Interview am Sonntagabend in der Stunde sehen, das Zarubin für seine Sendung Moskau, der Kreml, Putin vorgesehen hat und das in Dmitry Kiselyovs langer Sendung Nachrichten der Woche kurz davor und in der vielgesehenen Talkshow Sonntag Abend mit Vladimir Solovyov kurz danach ausgestrahlt wird. Pavel Zarubin ist nicht irgendein Reporter: Er ist ein Schützling sowohl von Kiselyov, dem Chef aller russischen Staatsfernsehen, und von Solowjow, dem Dekan der russischen Journalisten. Jedes seiner scheinbar spontanen Interviews wurde im Voraus sorgfältig geplant und spiegelt die aktuelle Politik des Kremls wider.

Lassen wir für den Moment gelten, dass Trump bei dem Treffen mit Putin den Waffenstillstand erwirken kann, den er gefordert hat, um zu seinen Wahlkampfveranstaltungen vor der Wahl zurückzukehren. Dieser Waffenstillstand wird jedoch sicherlich davon abhängig sein, dass die Ukrainer sich zurückziehen und die noch nicht eroberten Gebiete der Oblaste Donezk, Lugansk, Saporischschja und Cherson freigeben, die Putin als Vorbedingung für den Waffenstillstand und den Beginn der Friedensverhandlungen im Juni 2024 festgelegt hat. Es wird interessant sein zu sehen, wie Trump dieses Ergebnis der amerikanischen und europäischen Öffentlichkeit verkauft.

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Eine weitere sehr interessante Entwicklung, die in den letzten Tagen in alternativen Medien in Interviewprogrammen thematisiert wurde, betrifft die Möglichkeit, dass Trump die amerikanische Hilfe für die Ukraine bereits eingestellt habe, während er gleichzeitig Russland öffentlich mit Sanktionen gedroht hat, falls es sich nicht mit den Ukrainern an einen Tisch setzt und ein Waffenstillstandsabkommen abschließt.

Wie sich die Leser dieser Seiten erinnern werden, habe ich mich gegen diese Vorstellung ausgesprochen, denn wenn sie wahr wäre, hätte sie bei Selensky, der diese Woche während seines Aufenthalts beim Weltwirtschaftsforum in Davos im Rampenlicht der Weltöffentlichkeit stand, einen Aufschrei der Empörung über Verrat ausgelöst, aber er hat geschwiegen. Außerdem kann ich hier hinzufügen, dass ein Leser mir einen Kommentar geschickt hat, dass seine Mutter, die in Rumänien in der Nähe der Hauptverkehrsstraße lebt, die von Lastwagen benutzt wird, die US-amerikanische und westliche Militärgüter in die Ukraine transportieren, berichtet, dass die Lastwagen immer noch kommen.

Einige Analysten bringen diese angebliche Einstellung der Hilfe für die Ukraine mit Trumps Anordnung in Verbindung, alle US-amerikanischen Auslandshilfeprogramme für 90 Tage auszusetzen. Theoretisch wäre das ein brillanter Schachzug. Die gestrigen Anordnungen von Außenminister Rubio, alle Hilfsprogramme sofort auszusetzen, scheinen jedoch nur sehr wenige Hilfslinien für die Ukraine zu betreffen: Hilfe für Gesundheitseinrichtungen und für Impfprogramme für Kinder. Dies berichtet die Financial Times. Uns sind keine Anweisungen bekannt, die über das Pentagon erteilt wurden, um die Lieferung von militärischem Material nach Kiew zu stoppen.

Ich schließe diese Übersicht über verschiedene Nachrichten im Zusammenhang mit dem Ukraine-Krieg mit den jüngsten öffentlichen Äußerungen des ungarischen Ministerpräsidenten Viktor Orban im Vorfeld der bevorstehenden halbjährlichen Abstimmung der EU-Mitgliedstaaten über die Verlängerung der Sanktionen gegen Russland ab. Er hat angekündigt, dass er sein Veto gegen die Maßnahme einlegen und sie damit zu Fall bringen wird, es sei denn, Kiew öffnet die russischen Gaspipelines, die durch die Ukraine verlaufen und Mitteleuropa mit dringend benötigtem Erdgas versorgen. Schließlich haben Orbans langjährige Drohungen, die EU-Politik gegenüber Russland zu behindern, ein würdiges unterstützendes Argument gefunden.

Transcript submitted by a reader:

NewsX: 0:00
Russian President Vladimir Putin held talks with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, continuing the annual tradition to speak around the new year. In a video conference, Xi expressed his readiness to guide China-Russia relations to a new height. Meanwhile, Putin, calling Xi a dear friend, said Russia and China were building ties based on friendship, mutual trust and support, despite external pressure. Reiterating his intentions over a peace deal with Ukraine, Putin also told Xi that any settlement must respect Russian interests. Beijing has been accused by the US of building up Moscow’s war machine by providing critical components for the conflict in Ukraine.

0:43
The two leaders’ dialogue comes hours after Donald Trump swore in as the US president. The two leaders have each publicly expressed a hope to reset fraught relations with the US under the new administration. However, Trump has held different views. He has warned that Putin will– big trouble will come to Putin if he does not strike a deal to end the war in Ukraine. Additionally he has threatened tariffs on Beijing, calling it an abuser. Such complexities put the fate of the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war at stake.

For more on this discussion, the Russia-Ukraine conflict and President Trump, we are joined by two guests: Gilbert Doctorow, Russian affairs expert in Brussels; and Professor A.K. Pasha, international affairs expert here in New Delhi. Gilbert Doctorow, I wanted to come to you first. What have we found out about this discussion with Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin? And what does Trump’s response tell us?

Gilbert Doctorow, PhD: 1:51
The discussion, the telephone conversation, it was not just telephone, it was video as well. So it was a virtual meeting of the two. This was featured in last night’s state news on Russian television as being one of the most important developments of the day. Indeed, the two leaders were celebrating the achievements of 2024 when their mutual trade reached the figure of $245 billion, which was a new record, and really is quite impressive.

2:25
Russia is now the fifth-largest trading partner of China, and China is the single largest trading partner of Russia. This achievement is indicative of the hopelessness and foolishness of President Trump threatening either of these countries with punitive tariffs or with new sanctions, should they not come to heel and follow the dictates of Washington. The errors of the Biden administration, which had a foreign policy based– was values-based, so to speak, that foreign policy seems to be identical with the first moves of Donald Trump in what is supposed to be a realpolitik and interest-based foreign policy for the United States. So at the moment there’s no distinction.

3:23
Mr. Biden, by his pressure on both countries, forced them into one another’s arms. They were not natural allies, but they have become very warm colleagues in building a multi-polar world. I fear that Mr Trump has not learned the lesson of this, and in his using threatening language to both or either of these countries, he is working against American interests.

NewsX: 3:50
Professor A.K. Pasha, staying on Trump and his language as Gilbert was talking about, Trump has also said that Putin is destroying Russia in refusing a deal with Ukraine. In what sense, if in any sense, could this be seen as true?

A.K. Pasha:
Well, President Trump, even during his campaign, for the last six months, he has been highlighting the need to end the Ukraine war on a number of occasions, and he has given hopes and raised expectations of many people, not only in America, that this protracted war should come to an end. But now he seems to be under the influence of the so-called deep state which he wanted to contain.

4:52
But you see, the last four months, rigorous support by the former Biden administration of giving missiles and extraordinary support to Zelensky in his war efforts, the Kursk offensive, all that the American think tanks and other people were articulating that it has strengthened the hands of Zelensky in particular on the peace talks. But that doesn’t have, that has had no impact on Putin and the Russian offensive. So in that way, Russia is now dictating from a position of strength, or the inroads they have made in eastern Ukraine.

Secondly, you see the more pressure is brought or delayed the negotiations are, the more the bond between China and Russia will get strengthened. Even otherwise, even if the Ukraine issue is resolved, this is just as China has stood through thick and thin despite enormous pressure from the United States, to break the link. You know, once there is peace on the Ukraine front and sanctions are lifted, if and when, you know, this will only make the bond much stronger, because Asia has to pay back if there is pressure from the Trump administration on China, on Taiwan, or any other issue in the Indo-Pacific, South China Sea, et cetera.

6:34
So this bond, in fact, because of the contradictory policy of the Americans, both during Biden and now the unfolding policy from Trump, is not going to loosen or weaken the Russian-Chinese bond, more so because their policy of strengthening BRICS has become very attractive to countries across the world, from Latin America to Africa, Asia, etc.

So in that way, even Trump, with an attractive offer and the peacekeeping troops stationing, so on and so forth, will not, I think, remove the Russian doubts about what exactly Trump has in mind, if there is eventual peace talks and an agreement based on what Russia thinks are its prime national interest in Ukraine and on the assurances that NATO would not intrude into Ukraine and near its border to pose a direct threat on its borders.

7:47
And also more importantly is the new development in Europe, because more and more NATO countries, especially Germany, they want to have economic relations, gas and oil and exports with China. So in that way, Trump has to accommodate the NATO desire, EU desire. to have relations with both these antagonists, which American policy is trying to divide and separate.

NewsX: 8:18
Gilbert Doctorow, I just wanted to ask you one last question. Trump’s relationship with Putin was very public, especially in his first campaign. And we’ve even seen Trump now reach out to President Xi Jinping, including an invite to his inauguration, which he did not accept, but his VP attended. How do you see Trump’s relationship with these two leaders developing, especially with Trump’s such an unorthodox style?

Pasha:
No, this will only strengthen the relationship between–

NewsX:
Sorry, sorry, A.K. Pasha. I asked that question to Gilbert. Apologies.

Doctorow: 8:59
The alleged closeness between Putin and Trump in his first administration was propaganda, slanderous propaganda that was raised in the Hillary Clinton campaign, and that was supported by fake information that was passed to her campaign by the security, by the intelligence agencies in the United States. There was no closeness. And in fact, the period of Trump’s first administration was a constant downward spiral in the relationship.

The situation today, the notion that Trump has some kind of special gift for communication and personal rapport with Putin, his utter nonsense. You will note that among the relatively few foreign leaders that Donald Trump invited to the inauguration, the Russians refused to come. Not just Putin didn’t come, he didn’t send anybody. And that is a perfect statement of the actual relations between the two countries. They are at a nadir.

10:13
The notion that Mr. Trump can pull a rabbit out of a hat, can bring the two warring parties, Ukraine and Russia, to sit at a negotiating table– when one of these countries is headed by an illegitimate ruler whose signature on a treaty will be worthless, I mean, I’m speaking now about Zolensky, who outlasted his legitimate period in office– the notion that these two will sit together and conclude an agreement with Mr. Trump looking on and making his bid for a Nobel Peace Prize is utter nonsense. It’s a delusion.

And I think it’s rather sad that a man who has made his case to the American public on realpolitik and realism and pragmatism, has made his first moves in the direction of Russia on the same delusional information and misunderstanding of Russia that guided the Biden administration. Mr Trump–

NewsX: 11:20
Thank you very much, Gilbert Doctorow and Professor A.K. Pasha for that discussion.

In my essay earlier today entitled ‘Peace through strength and other American illusions,’ I made reference to a panel discussion this afternoon on the Indian global broadcaster News X. Here below is the video of this broadcast.

Such discussions are truly best conducted as video conferences rather than as in person events, because the atmosphere would be overheated and might end in fistfights. I note that the firebrand from Ukraine should sign up and go to the front to find appropriate application for his superpatriotism and enthusiasm to send his compatriots to an early grave.

Transcript submitted by a reader

Napolitano: 0:34
Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Wednesday, January 23rd, 2025. Today is Thursday, sorry, January 23rd, 2025. Professor Gilbert Doctorow joins us now. Professor Doctorow, a pleasure, my dear friend, and thank you for taking the time to join us.

Before we get into the latest from the Trump administration vis-à-vis Russia and the Kremlin reaction to it, in their swan songs at the State Department, former Secretary of State Tony Blinken and in the comparable swan song, former National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, each made the same claim that Ukraine is strong, stable, and on a path to joining NATO. Is this even remotely accurate?

Gilbert Doctorow, PhD: 1:35
No, it has nothing to do with reality, with the reality that you and I, and most of the viewers of these programs, know. This is a bubble, a Washington bubble. It’s what they say to their immediate subordinates and to congressmen. And it is based on a view of Russia that dates back to the mid-1990s when the country was flat on its back thanks to the brutal transition from a planned economy to a market economy that the US inflicted on them. This view of Russia as being a basket case, that underlies almost everything that Blinken and Sullivan have done during their time in office. They would be necessarily beholden to the propagandists in Kiev for support and for material that they could then pass along to journalists, who pass it along to the public at large. And that is precisely propaganda from Kiev. It is not news, it is not fake news, it is pure propaganda written by a state.

Napolitano: 2:55
I realize that we’re only three and a half days into the Trump administration, and he’s done a lot since noon on Monday, but do we know, Professor Doctorow, if the United States supply spigot to Kiev of cash and armaments has been turned off or if it’s still on?

Doctorow:
Well, this has been a rather interesting question the last couple of days. Larry Johnson cited information, not quite clear what the source was, but the essence of it was that the United States, the government has fired 50 or more Pentagon officials who were involved in the supply of military assistance to Ukraine during these past three years, and that the deputy secretary of defense has resigned.

3:53
The logic of this was that this is a pivot point, as Larry called it, and that possibly the Trump administration is going to stop deliveries. A well-known blogger called Simplicius has said that and added to it the idea that the United States government, Pentagon, have stopped opening bids or stopped requesting offers for logistical assistance for companies that have been doing logistics, arranging onward deliveries of American war materiel to Kiev, in Poland, in Zhechow, in Varna, in Bulgaria, and a couple of other places. Again, the implication is that the game is over, the United States is quietly stopping supplies. I can’t agree with that, and I agree rather with statements that were made on your show yesterday by Scott Ritter. Nothing of the sort is clear.

4:46
If indeed there were such goings on, and if they indeed, they meant the United States has already taken a decision to cut military supplies to Ukraine, then Mr. Zelensky would have been screaming at the top of his voice yesterday in Davos. The man is extremely sensitive to such questions, and he wouldn’t have been talking about the need for 200,000 Europeans to put boots on the ground in his country. He would have been talking about the American stab in the back. He wasn’t, So I don’t quite believe this.

Napolitano: 5:19
It sounds as though, inform me or correct me if I’m wrong. Pardon me. Even if Trump wanted to stop this, It’s not like throwing off a light switch. There are so many different levels of suppliers involved from so many different parts of the world that it would take a while to shut it down completely.

But your observation about President Zelensky at Davos is quite correct. He made a speech; some of it was absurd, saying Ukraine is [garbled] up in Syria, obviously if that’s true using American money, but there wasn’t the slightest complaint about the spigot being turned off.

Doctorow: 6:08
That’s the best case I can make. Of course, I don’t claim that I’m right and others are wrong. No one knows for sure what the Trump administration is doing. I’m not sure the president knows what he’s doing, because the words he had on his Truth Social platform about his ultimatum to Vladimir Putin to enter into negotiations right now with Zelensky, with Kiev, or face these very sharp increase in American sanctions — this was completely outpaced. It was completely inconsistent with his role, prospective role as a peacemaker, because he knows or should know that these proposals are non-starter with the Russians. Mr–

Napolitano: 6:54
Did he even know what he was talking about? Well, we don’t know what he knew. Did he sound as though he knew what he was talking about when he threatened President Putin? I mean, what sanctions remain? He’s going to put an embargo on uranium that American utilities need to operate power plants?

Doctorow:
Well, the notion of sanctions was ridiculed on Russian television, with good reason. They had a good laugh at his expense. He made a number of absurd statements yesterday, ignorant statements yesterday, which were almost on the level of Madame or Frau Baerbock, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Germany, who has been notorious during her time in his office for making–

Napolitano: 07:54
What did he say that was so absurd and laughable?

Doctorow:
One thing that he mentioned in passing, that Spain is a member of BRICS, He mentioned that Russia had helped the infamous … from the perspective of Russians, this was laughable: that Russia had assisted the United States to win the war. From the Russian perspective, three quarters, not just the Russian perspective, all experts know that three quarters of the Wehrmacht was engaged on the Eastern Front. So to speak about one helping the other, he’s got it backwards.

Then he spoke about 60 million lives lost in Russia; it was bad enough, 26 million was bad enough, but he pulled this number out of the sky. He should just be quiet because he doesn’t know what he’s talking about, and he makes a fool of himself. Now, I don’t want to leave the impression that Russians, Russian elites, because this is what we usually talk about, that they have, see no merit in Mr. Trump or entering his negotiations with him. They do. But they are fully aware of his weaknesses, of his vanity, and disregard for facts, and they show that up.

9:10
I’d just like to use this moment for a little side remark, because you know that I make heavy use of several key talk shows and analysis shows that are on Russian state television. People write to me, well, where did you get this from? They asked me for a link and I sent them the link. Then they complained, it’s just in Russian.

Well, I can tell you with great pleasure that today– this is the second time I see it, and I posted the link up on my Substack platform– one of the premier Russian programs, “60 Minutes”, which is hosted by a Russian Duma member, Evgeny Popov and his wife, that is now available in a voiceover. A voiceover that’s put up on YouTube maybe an hour or two after the Russian original goes on Russian state television. So I would urge people to look at that so they don’t just have to listen to Gil Doctorow’s rendition of what Russian news is saying.

10:09
Coming back to what they’re saying, they’re saying that Mr. Trump is doing them a great service by using a sledgehammer on the EU, because they know that he dislikes intensely super-national organizations, and he wants to deal with sovereign states, primarily with Germany in Europe.

And for the Russians, that’s a great service to them, because they also would like this solid block of 25 of the 27 EU member states that is anti-Russian, they’d like that broken up. They also see in Mr. Trump something else, a very big perspective for negotiations, not Ukraine. Ukraine, they’ll solve on their own, thank you very much. Probably in the next few weeks, frankly.

10:53
But they want to speak to Mr. Trump about Yalta 2. They would like to divide the world with the United States or let the United States offload those parts of the world which it can’t maintain because it doesn’t have the wherewithal.

Napolitano:
Very interesting, even fascinating that you would call this Yalta 2, or is that a Vladimir Putin phrase?

Doctorow:
No, no, it’s not his phrase. It’s what some commentators get on Russian television, experts are saying. And what they have in mind is that he cannot keep America’s arms around the whole world. America’s global hegemony is no longer feasible. And the people around Trump have persuaded him of that.

And that is what the whole logic is of his going, looking to take greater control of the Western Hemisphere in the tradition of the Monroe Doctrine. That’s what the Greenland escapade is all about. That is what his bid to take over Canada and his pressure on Mexico and his seizing or intended seizure of the Panama Canal. It’s to ensure that America has tight control over its hemisphere. And then it would negotiate with the other global powers of which there are two plus or minus India, the other two powers being Russia and China. So that a global settlement will be sought by Trump over the coming months with these two countries, recognizing their spheres of influence.

Napolitano: 12:33
Of course, he does have that hotspot headache slaughter going on in Gaza. The Iranians have entered into, maybe you can enlighten us on this, some sort of a defense agreement with the Russians.

Doctorow:
Well, I’d like to answer to that, because it bears again on the comments on discussion you had on your show yesterday, a very important discussion. Is Trump and his administration keen on a peace settlement with Iran?

Some people, Scott Ritter believes, I believe. Or is it what Lindsey Graham would like, an all-out war, and let’s finish it up using Israel as our assistant in this venture. The peace agreement, not peace agreement, the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership agreement that was signed last Friday in Moscow by the two presidents of Iran and Russia, that was a very peculiar document, and it strikes me as very odd that no commentators have detected that or brought it to attention. The Russians wouldn’t do it, I understand.

13:52
They spoke about it. There was one hint, something odd about it, that was covered on Sunday night by the head of Russian news, Mr. Kisilyov. Dmitry Kisilyov said in the very opening of his program, he put up on the screen Article 3 of this cooperation agreement, which is unlike any other I’ve seen. It says that the two contracting parties will not join any aggressor attacking the other country.

If that’s friendship, what do enemies do? The second point is that neither of these contracted parties will give assistance to destabilizing forces, to subversive forces active in the other country. Again, that is not what we usually think of.

Napolitano: 14:46
What happens if Israel and the United States attack Iran? What does Russia do under this agreement?

Doctorow:
Nothing. It doesn’t join them. That’s literally what you draw from this. The whole document was delayed, supposed to be signed, but all commentators were saying it would be signed when the Iranian president made his first trip to Russia, he came to the BRICS meeting in Kazan in October. And it was expected that they would sign it then. It wasn’t.

15:23
And they said there were technical things that had to be ironed out. Indeed, there were and still are technical glitches in this document, which will be ironed out over time now that it’s been signed. The main reason was, Russian uncertainty over Iran’s loyalty long term, loyalty in its ongoing confrontation with the United States and the US-led west. The new president of Iran in his opening statements made it clear that he was looking for an outreach to Washington to resolve their differences.

16:01
That was destroyed in a matter of a week or two when Israel murdered the head of Hamas who was attending the inauguration of the Iranian president. After that, Tehran pulled back, no longer interested in talking to the States, and was, would seem to be they were running after the Russians to conclude that agreement. But I believe there’s been some back channel from the Trump group after his election, to Tehran, an outreach saying, “Let’s talk.” Because the terms in this agreement are not only bizarre in Article 3, but they contain in them several articles further down, which look like they were written by Freedom House. It says that these contracting parties will do what they can to resist, to oppose international terrorism, extremism, international criminality, people trafficking or human trafficking, narcotics trafficking, valuables trafficking, all kinds of– that’s a whole shopping list of all what the baddies will do.

17:25
Oh yes, they will oppose taking hostages, they will oppose spread of nuclear arms. Well, there you have it. The Russians and the Iranians are on the same page as Washington, saying no expansion of a list of nuclear countries, including Europe, of course. So this is a bid to Washington.

Napolitano: 17:47
Tell me if you think that this Russia, the risk of raising your blood pressure, because this is a real harangue, tell me if you think that this advice from Senator Lindsey Graham will resonate with President Trump and what the Kremlin thinks when they hear a harangue like this. Cut number four.

Graham:
This war will never end with Hamas in charge of Gaza, politically or militarily. Their days are numbered. And the next question for the world is, what do we do about the Iran nuclear program? That’s where we’re going to move to next. There’s diplomacy, there’s a on- in-three chance you’ll degrade the Iranian nuclear program through diplomacy. There’s a 90 percent chance you’ll degrade it through military action by Israel, supported by the United States. So the next topic I will be engaging in with President Trump is to take this moment in time to decimate the Iran nuclear program because they’re–

Interviewer
What does that mean?

Graham:
so exposed. Help Israel–

Interviewer:
What does that mean?

Graham;
–deliver a knockout blow.

Interviewer:
What does that mean? You’re going to urge him to have Israel bomb Iran’s facilities that are underground and would require US military support to actually be effective?

Graham:
I’m going to urge the decimation of the Iranian nuclear program. I don’t think diplomacy works. This is a religious Nazi regime. They want to destroy the Jewish state. They want to purify Islam and drive us out of the Mid East, it would be like negotiating with Hitler. I am hoping there will be an effort by Israel to decimate the Iran nuclear program supported by the United States, and if we don’t do that, it will be a historical mistake.

Napolitano: 19:32
Hoo! What are your thoughts after listening to that?

Doctorow:
Well, as I mentioned before, viewers can now tune into “60 minutes” and hear a voiceover. They will find when they go to that program that Russian television spends a lot of airtime with rather lengthy video clips like the one you just put on screen, from Western media. And in that context, Lindsey Graham is well known to Russian audiences. Just read Satan over his name.

Napolitano: 20:15
Hopefully, he doesn’t have open access to President Trump’s ear, or World War III will be around the corner. Was there any reaction from the Kremlin– as opposed to Russian elites on “The Great Game” and “60 Minutes”, etc.– from the Kremlin to Trump’s threat to President Putin?

Doctorow:
No, none whatsoever. I don’t think they want to get into a war of words with Trump. I think they want to go easy on him and wait until the opportune moment to schedule the summit. I think the opportune moment will be after they crushingly defeat the Ukrainian forces when its front line crumbles. That can happen in the next few weeks. You don’t have to wait so long. After that, they could arrange a meeting with Trump, because the problem with Ukraine will be behind them.

Napolitano: 21:15
Professor Doctorow, thank you, my dear friend. Always a pleasure. You are our eyes and ears on the Kremlin and it’s so deeply appreciated. We’ll see you again next week.

Doctorow:
Right. Goodbye.

Napolitano:
Bye bye. Coming up, remaining today, at 12 noon, Senator Rand Paul. At one o’clock, Kivork Almasian. At two o’clock, Colonel Larry Wilkerson. At three o’clock, Professor John Mearsheimer. At four o’clock, Professor Jeffrey Sachs. And the worth-waiting-for at 4:30, Colonel Douglas Macgregor.

21:50
Judge Napolitano for “Judging Freedom”.

Peace through strength and other American illusions

Once again, I am grateful to an Indian broadcaster, for inviting me to participate in a round table discussion of Donald Trump’s latest remarks on settling the Russia-Ukraine war by calling for an ‘immediate’ meeting with Vladimir Putin at which he expects to negotiate from a position of strength.

I expect that the link to the video of this broadcast will be passed along to me in a day or two by News X and I will post it then. But what I came up with as I prepared for my moments before the microphone merit sharing without delay.

The touchstone of this interview was the quote from Trump that justified his enthusiasm for meeting with Putin NOW. I paraphrase: ‘We have real power over Putin.”  The logic is that in the prospective meeting the Russian leader will come to heel and agree to a cease fire without preconditions, placing Trump on his path to nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize.

By curious coincidence, earlier today I started the culling of my lengthy manuscript for my about to be published ‘War Diaries’ which open with essays I wrote in the early spring of 2021, when Washington expressed great concern over the 80,000 troops that the Russians had amassed at the Ukrainian border as a warning against a savage Ukrainian attack on the rebellious Donbas regions that seemed to be approaching.  The Biden team called for a meeting with Putin to defuse the tension and this led to their summit in Geneva in June 2021.  But at the start of the initiative for this summit, the United States rolled out new harsh sanctions on Russia which were intended to show beyond all doubt who had the upper hand.  It was to be ‘negotiations from a position of strength.’  Sound familiar? 

Sad to say, it would appear that Donald Trump and his advisers have not bothered to open the State Department files for the period before and during the Biden-Putin summit.  And if they did, they learned nothing.

From the day after the inauguration, Trump’s remarks about ending the war have shown utter ignorance not only about facts but about the culture and mindset of those with whom he proposes to negotiate. What he said about the Russians having been helpful in America’s winning WWII was taken as sacrilegious in Moscow. May 9^th is the most important day in the calendar of most Russians today as they celebrate THEIR victory over Nazi Germany. They know that three-quarters of the Wehrmacht forces were engaged on the Eastern Front against Russia.  Each and every Russian adult knows how many of their soldiers and civilians died in the war, and to hear Trump’s careless and ignorant statement on the subject could only undermine respect for him in advance of his planned meeting with the Russian leadership.

The notion implicit in Trump’s remarks today on how he will do a deal with Saudi Arabia to ensure that OPEC steps up oil exports to bring down the price and so force Russia to the negotiating table reveals his complete ignorance of economic realities, not to mention political realities.   We are not living in 1985 when Reagan did such a deal with the Saudis, when the price of a barrel fell to $12 and the USSR economy was devastated.  No, in today’s Russia, gas and oil revenues to the state are lower than the taxes it collects from the industrial economy, which are surging. Russia’s economy is far more diverse and healthier than it has been in more than 100 years. The balance of payments of Russia in 2024 was positive to the tune of $50 billion and there is little that Mr. Trump can do to change that fact.

Now, as for political realities, they are presently dictated by the military realities.  When the United States and its friends in the EU declared in the spring of 2023 that the conflict would be settled on the field of battle, they little knew how right they were.  IT IS BEING SETTLED THERE, definitively and in Russia’s favor.  Don’t take my word for it. Just pick up the daily editions of the Russia-hating Financial Times and you see the fulsome reports of how the Ukrainian forces are being pushed back along the whole line of confrontation in disarray and at great cost in casualties.  These are not debating points; they are incontrovertible facts that for some reason Mr. Donald Trump ignores.

Yes, there will likely be a summit between Trump and Putin. But the Russians are sure to insist that ‘sherpas’ from both sides prepare the way to ensure that something substantive will be achieved. And that something substantive will likely have nothing to do with Ukraine, which the Russians are solving without any help from Washington, thank you.  It will be about some Yalta 2.0 and the spheres of influence of the world’s three super powers:  the USA, Russia and China.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2025

This panel discussion on the Indian global broadcaster News X (ITV India) was taped two days ago, when Presidents Xi and Putin spent one and a half hours in a video conference that covered a variety of topics, chief among them the new record for bilateral trade achieved in 2024 and common positions with respect to the Trump administration following the Trump-Xi telephone call that had taken place hours before.

I call attention to the statements by my fellow panelist Professor AK Pasha in New Delhi, who clearly is a BRICS supporter, who has a correct reading on Russia’s victorious position in the Ukraine war, and who does not project the anti-Chinese bias that you find so often in Indian broadcasting.

Putin and Xi Strengthen Ties Amid Trump’s Tough Stance on Russia and China | NewsX

This panel discussion on the Indian global broadcaster News X (ITV India) was taped two days ago, when Presidents Xi and Putin spent one and a half hours in a video conference that covered a variety of topics, chief among them the new record for bilateral trade achieved in 2024 and common positions with respect to the Trump administration following the Trump-Xi telephone call that had taken place hours before.

I call attention to the statements by my fellow panelist Professor AK Pasha in New Delhi, who clearly is a BRICS supporter, who has a correct reading on Russia’s victorious position in the Ukraine war, and who does not project the anti-Chinese bias that you find so often in Indian broadcasting.

Transcript submitted by a reader

Nima R. Alkhorshid: 0:05
Hi everybody, today is Thursday, January 23rd, 2025. Our friend Dr. Gilbert Doctorow is back with us. Welcome back, Gilbert.

Gilbert Doctorow, PhD:
Thanks for having me.

Alkhorshid:
Let’s get started with what Donald Trump said about the conflict in Ukraine. And it seems that he’s trying to picture Russia as being weak politically, economically, militarily. What is the main reason behind this sort of mindset or this sort of rhetoric on his part in your opinion?

Doctorow: 0:43
Well, when he’s saying this, he’s playing up to the predominant view of the American public. The American public, thanks to the misdirection, the propaganda that’s been disseminated incessantly by a succession of administrations, believes that Russia is today what it was in 1995, that it’s still flat on its back and unable to look after its interests and has a weak economy which is based on oil and gas exports, which if interrupted, will bring the country to its knees.

All of this is the common property of the American political establishment. So Mr. Trump is not saying anything that would not go down well with his audience. But America– and most of his audience is intended to be United States. So he can say all kinds of inanities, which he has done in the last few days, without fear of being called out as a fool.

1:52
Americans believe those stupidities and ignorant statements that he’s made, and so he goes risk-free. There are a few of us, of course, who know better, and we appear on shows like yours. And we try to spread some light in the darkness, but darkness it is around us. And Mr. Trump is part of the darkness in many of the statements he makes and has made since his, let’s call it a coronation, inauguration, because when you look at the pomp and circumstance of the events in the rotunda with all of the official greeters taking one after another of these eminences to their seats.

When you look at the oligarchs who were set up in front of senators and foreign dignitaries, and you look at the costumes of the military escorts, you wonder, are you in Moscow or are you in Washington? Because the things that Europeans and Russians in particular love pomp and circumstance, It turns out that Washingtonians love the same thing. So we saw a lot. We saw invocations of God by various reverends and one rabbi, which disturbed, put noses out of joint of some people in the West in general because God is out of fashion, but is still very much in fashion in the circle around Trump and the presence of the eminent, most famous and most successful pastor in American history, Billy Graham, his son delivering one of those invocations at the start of the ceremony.

3:47
This was a very special event. And this is the atmosphere in which Trump lives. And he believes he can say most anything he wants and get away with it. And for the most part, he’s successful. And when he says that Spain is in BRICS, so what? And Spain, Schmain — for Americans, Spain is a nice resort on a vacation trip to Europe from one of those things in their list, their boxes to be ticked.

And so he thinks it’s in BRICS, so what? These little mistakes, which are not so little, which regrettably put him in a category of utter uneducation and ignorance that I thought we only saw in the German cabinet and personified by the Minister of Foreign Affairs Baerbock, unfortunately we’re seeing them now reproduced in the Oval Office. But you and I and your guests have an obligation to the audience to clarify what is real and what is nonsense. And there’s a lot of nonsense in what he’s been saying. As you remarked, speaking about Russia as having a weak economy or dependent on oil and gas to pay the bills for the war, this is to misunderstand the country entirely.

4:59
It’s to be blind to what they have achieved, particularly in the last three years, when they have gone all-in on national sovereignty, all-in on reindustrialization, and on developing their military strength to the level where it is out-producing, out-fighting all of NATO with the United States combined. So they have achieved a great deal, and if he’s blind to that, he’ll be awakened when the Russians proceed to trample Ukraine into the dirt. They’re well on their way. The latest news from Russian reporting and the images they show of the destruction they are wreaking across the Ukraine and specific parts of the line of confrontation, they indicate that they really have the upper hand, that Ukrainian soldiers really are surrendering or being slaughtered, and that they are surrounding urban areas which they must take possession of, but they’re doing it by cutting off all lines of supply to these areas to ensure that the defenders, Ukrainian defenders, will flee by night and not stand and fight. The city of Pokrovsk is in that situation.

6:34
I can say that they’re now doing it. It’s very quiet. And our newspapers are not giving the full picture, but they’re doing the same thing around Kharkov in the northeast of Ukraine. They are cutting it off from the west, they’re surrounding from the west, cutting it off from supplies, so the city will not be able to resist. They will not have to go in and fight building by building.

The Russians are advancing with great speed and also with brilliant generalship. The case of Pokrovsk is most notable and it’s pointed out by none other than the Russia-hating “Financial Times”. I have some readers of my blogs who say, oh, why would you follow the “Financial Times”? Well, why wouldn’t you, knowing their disposition to praise Ukraine and to curse Russia at every turn, when they put on front page their description of how the Russian generals have unexpectedly moved north, northwest, past Pokrovsk towards Dnepropetrovsk, cutting off all lines of supply to that city and avoiding urban warfare.

7:53
That’s the “Financial Times” saying that. So that’s it. game, set, match. It is quite remarkable what Mr. Putin is doing, and for Trump to say, to repeat this foolishness of his advisors who’ve been saying this in the last couple of weeks, but now we’re hearing it from the horse’s mouth, from Trump himself, that the war is at a stalemate. It is not at all a stalemate.

Alkhorshid: 8:28
The other thing that he said that was so amazing to me, It was Russia wanted to capture or subsume all of Ukraine in one week, which wasn’t the case during the xxxx. Never, we’ve never heard about that from Russians. And many people are arguing, there are some people arguing that he wants to force Russians into negotiations. But it’s if that’s the case — Russia was talking about negotiations all along this conflict.

Since before this conflict started, when they went into Ukraine with a hundred thousand forces, they started negotiating in Istanbul. And right now, with the Biden administration, they were trying, they’re open to negotiate with the United States any time. But here comes this attitude on the part of Donald Trump, and it seems that these people are trying to convince us that they’re trying to force Russia into negotiation. What is that all about, in your opinion?

Doctorow: 9:46
Self-delusion. They don’t get it. They simply don’t get it. They cannot imagine that Russia has the strength that it has, the political strength, the unity that it is showing in the face of an enormous challenge, existential challenge. They cannot take it in.

They are bamboozled by their own ideological points. And this takes in not just the Bidenites, but also the Trumpets. They don’t get it that Russia’s political system is not the same as theirs, but in its own way is democratic. In its own way, it has massive popular support. It plays the same political games that they do, by feeding the public to ensure that they are sated, satisfied, and not restive.

10:47
Even last night, Putin went on television to update the information about the inflation that the country experienced in 2024. It had been estimated to be eight and a half percent, and when the Russian legislature and the federal officials put up their cost of living adjustments for pensions and salaries, which took effect on January 1st, they used that one. Now the final number has come in from the Bank of Russia, and Mr. Putin went on air to say that indeed it was 10 percent, and accordingly he has promised that in the next payment of pensions and salaries that are covered by these cost-of-living adjustments, they will make good for the difference in real inflation suffered last year in the payments that will be adjusted as from the 1st of January. So this attention to the things that concern the public and that make you either popular or a villain among your citizens, they are very attentive to them.

12:06
So Mr. Putin is doing very well on the popularity ratings, far, vastly better than anybody in the so-called democratic countries of the West. I’m speaking to you from Belgium. You know that from June of 2024, when they had the federal elections, the legislative elections in Belgium– as all across Europe, most countries of Europe had their legislative elections together with the elections for the European Parliament in June– since June, up to a week ago, there was no government here.

Well, it was a government, a caretaker government. They were negotiating all that time how to put together an alliance, a coalition that could maintain majority in the parliament. These types of negotiations go on in most all of European states, with exceptions. France is one outstanding exception to this rule. But in general, Europe is ruled by coalitions, which is not a formula for democracy.

13:14
Well, that’s a separate discussion. But they believe that– that is in the States particularly and in Western Europe also– that they are democratic and Russia is not democratic, that democratic states are strong and that non-democratic states, or autocracies, are fragile and therefore are aggressive. This is a whole ideology which has no basis in fact whatsoever. But this is the way they approach Mr. Putin and believe that his regime, not government, but regime is fragile.

Well, it isn’t, it’s quite strong, more resilient than any of the Western European countries is today. They’re all very fragile. As we saw in the collapse of the German government and its elections coming up on February 23rd. And as we know from the French, these are two leading states in the EU, and they both are very fragile. So the misunderstanding of Mr. Putin’s situation comes from these deep-seated misunderstandings about Russia in general, about democracy in general, where it is and where it isn’t.

Alkhorshid: 14:26
What do we know about the arms supply to the regime in Kiev? Is that increasing, reducing?

Doctorow:
Well, when I said I’d like to emphasize that none of us has perfect vision, none of us has perfect information. And I am very happy to be in good company with some very outstanding military and political analysts who appear on your show and on one or two other leading talk shows and interview programs. And they are at odds. And nobody points that out. I may be a difficult personality because I do point out differences. I don’t believe that we in the alternative news media should be repeating exactly what we find so objectionable in mainstream, that is they’re all saying the same thing.

15:20
You don’t arrive at truth by looking over your shoulder and aligning yourself with what other people are saying. These two experts who I highly admire, I’m speaking about Scott Ritter and Larry Johnson, they were yesterday at odds in interpreting just the question you’re asking. Larry Johnson had produced information that so many people who were responsible, including the Deputy Secretary of Defense, who was responsible [for] oversight of all the military assistance to Ukraine, and has reportedly resigned, that she is joined by many dozens of officials who were fired by Trump’s orders. This, all of this suggesting that there’s going to be some tipping point in American aid to Ukraine. That is, Larry Johnson didn’t take that on fully as his own, but he was pointing in that direction.

15:20
At the same time, also yesterday, Scott Ritter was saying he doesn’t believe these numbers, but it’s improbable that dozens of people, 50 people or more, would be fired because very few of them actually had decision-making powers. They were simply executing orders and you don’t fire people for that. So he was undercutting those expectations and also undercut expectation coming from another widely listened to and read source, “Simplicius”, who was saying yesterday that contracts with logistics suppliers in Varnau, in Romania, who have been involved– in Poland, of course, Yeshov– who have been involved in transferring arms from the States and from Europe to Ukraine, that they have received no new requests for quotations or applications from the United States for continued services. The implication being that the United States is cutting off its arms deliveries to Ukraine.

17:24
Well, these were very welcome things to hear. When I first read it, I was quite impressed. But then Scott Ritter argued, and I think he was right, that this is disinformation, or it is misinterpreted, that this does not mean that the United States is cutting off arms. And indeed, if that were the case, what would we have heard from Zelensky yesterday in Davos? He wouldn’t have been talking about the need for 200,000 European soldiers to come and save the situation in Ukraine. He would have been screaming to the skies that he’s just been stabbed in the back by the United States.

And he’s not a fellow to mince words. He didn’t say anything about it. So we can assume fairly safely it did not happen. Or if it happened, It does not have the meaning that some people attribute to it, that this is the end of supplies to Ukraine. What is really going on? We don’t know. The only thing that we do know for sure is what we were talking about a few minutes ago, the foolish things that Mr. Trump was saying yesterday.

Alkhorshid: 18:36
And since you mentioned Zelensky in Davos, he went from Ukraine defending the West and to drawing a line between Europeans and the United States. It seems that right now he thinks that the United States is deciding about its policies separately from Europe. Why is he changing his rhetoric? Do you understand what he’s talking about?

Doctorow:
He’s a schemer. He will do anything to bully his talking partners in the West into doing his bidding in supplying arms and now requesting, supplying boots on the ground in Ukraine. And there are people like Macron who will say anything in front of a microphone to be sure that they’re on the day’s headline news, who will support this notion that we have to put boots on the ground, whether you call it peacekeepers or whatever.

19:46
The real fact is, and I think there may be a few people in Europe who still have their brains connected, their minds and their heads connected to their backbone and who understand that that is World War III. I don’t think Mr. Putin has to explicitly restate this to them. It’s pretty clear. If they put boots on the ground, then they will be attacked with Oreshniki and whatever else the Russians want to throw at them, because then they are co-belligerents in the full sense of the word, and they will deserve what they get.

20:19
Now, I don’t think anybody in Europe wants to deserve that. Certainly that is an invitation for them to be thrown out of office at the soonest opportunity, and then that becomes clear to the broad public. There is nobody around me here in Belgium who wants to put one toe on the ground in Ukraine and to enter into a war against Russia. That is nonsense. And therefore, I don’t think that will last very long.

When it becomes clear that Mr. Trump also doesn’t want to put boots on the ground, also is inclined to stop the supply of arms to Ukraine, then I think the European defense of Ukraine will disintegrate in a matter of days. The only thing that holds it together is the mistaken belief that Trump is on their side.

Alkhorshid: 21:14
Sersky pointed out that there is no air defense system in Ukraine to intercept or actually missiles. And two other points in his talk was that the mobilization is not going to solve the situation of the army, that the Ukrainian army is in right now. And they’re not going to go on offensive, because they don’t have the capabilities, the manpower and all of that. Do you think this sort of information on the part of Serski’s getting, are they finding their way to Washington and to Donald Trump?

Doctorow: 21:55
I’m sure they are, because I would guess that he is positioning himself as the next president. The question is whether or not Trump can or should permit a transition without elections in Ukraine. I think it would be very stupid to do that, because he has an opportunity now of an off-ramp by saying, “Go to elections, or we’ll stop supporting you, because we’re supporting a democratic country which you no longer can claim to be.” If he loses that opportunity, if he wastes that opportunity, then he will be making a vast mistake.

22:38
It’s one thing to say transfer power to Sierski, and I can do that. I think that what Siersky is saying, and other generals are saying, is preparing the stage for a coup d’etat and liquidation of Zelensky, either his physical liquidation or the liquidation of his power and his imprisonment. I think this has been prepared by statements like the ones you just gave.

But it would be a terrible mistake if the United States let things stand there just by replacing one villain by a hero who will be a hero for a couple of days and no further. Nobody in Ukraine can implement the mobilization down to 18. It is unworkable, and it will lead to some kind of disaster, civic disorder. It is so vastly unpopular.

Alkhorshid: 23:39
Finally, we had the comprehensive deal between Iran and Russia signed on January 17th. What are they talking about in the Russian media, and what is the importance of this deal in your opinion?

Doctorow:
Well, I have to say that my own comments about this are my own comments. I am not taking this from Russian media. Russian media have intentionally overlooked the aspects of this that I have written about and for obvious reasons. So I am being … I’m saying more than they dare say. But I say it anyway because nobody around me is saying it, which is very surprising. This plays very well into what Scott Ritter was saying yesterday when he was presented with the latest video of Lindsey Graham ranting, as usual, for trying to foment a war with Iran in the favor of Israel, with American support, which is essential, otherwise the Israelis can’t do the job. Well, what Scott Ritter was saying is that Trump is heading in absolutely the opposite direction and that he does not want to start a war with Iran.

25:01
That is precisely contradictory with what he said both before, during, and after his inauguration: that he is not looking to get into new wars. And I believe there have been some signals from the administration, from the incoming administration, certainly not from Biden, but from the incoming administration, from people around Trump to Tehran, that “Let’s talk.” This is not public, but it had to be private, and it certainly influenced the document which the Russians and the Iranians signed off last Friday. That is a very strange document, and it amazes me that no commentators here in the West have said anything about the strangeness that the Russians wouldn’t say. It is obvious because it is almost embarrassing what has happened.

26:07
It is contrary to the expectations of many people that these two countries, under pressure from the United States, would form a mutual defense pact similar to what Russia concluded with North Korea. This was supposed to be signed back in October at the BRICS summit in Kazan. It was not. It was delayed because of technical reasons, it was said at the time.

26:34
Well, the technical reasons certainly were there, and they still are there, by the way. That is to say, not everything has been resolved at the technical level, and I’ll explain in a minute why. But the technical issues were not what held up the agreement. It was the whole nature of the agreement, what they could agree upon. The Russians were obviously uncertain about the loyalty to the spirit of any cooperation agreement that they could expect from Iran, because of the flirtation with the West that was evident in the new president’s– the President of Iran– his opening statements when he took office were that he was looking for an accommodation with the West.

And that was destroyed. His policy was wrecked when Israel proceeded with killing of, it was Hamas I believe, an officer attending his, the President’s inauguration in Tehran. That made it impossible to proceed right then with any negotiations with the States, as the backers of Israel. However, I don’t think that in Moscow, they were satisfied that that was the end of the story.

28:08
They’ve had Mr. Putin’s team has had its own struggle with similarly-minded liberals with a capital “L” within the Russian elites who never were trustworthy and who were always looking for some kind of accommodation with the West for their own benefit, at the expense of the nation. Therefore there were Russian doubts. That’s the background. Now what immediately preceded this, I think that Tehran came clean and they said, “Yes, indeed, we are likely going to seek an accommodation with the United States, which puts an end to the sanctions which are so destructive in our economy.”

And the Russians cannot be unsympathetic to that reasoning, which is entirely logical. Mr. Putin and his team are realists. They don’t sit sore-minded, licking their wounds or dropping tears into their beer mug. They proceed with the facts as they are and try to make the best of it.

29:17
And that was what happened in the document that the two presidents signed in Moscow last Friday. It is the most peculiar strategic cooperation agreement I’ve ever seen. And even the Russian Sunday news wrap-up that is on Russian state television and it is directed by the chief manager of all Russian news — his program was opened with his reading Article 3 of this document, which he didn’t comment on, but it all speaks for itself. It states, I’m speaking by Dmitry Kusulaev, this article states that the two parties will not join forces with anyone who attacks the other one.

30:25
That is a very strange kind of mutual defense. “We will not join your enemy.” Okay. Then it goes on in similar vein than the next part of that same article, that they are not going to support subversive elements seeking to overthrow their fellow contracting party. Again, you never see such statements. This is in a cooperation agreement.

Then you go further down in this document, and you find articles which could have been written by Freedom House. They’re establishing both contracting parties as real upholders of the world order. They will both work to oppose international terrorism, international criminality, narcotics trafficking, human trafficking, all these worthy causes that America all pronounces, they both adopted it. Oh yes, and they both stand against the spread of nuclear weapons.

31:39
Now, “against the spread of…”, that’s as much as saying that both Russia and Iran stand against Iran’s obtaining nuclear weapons. These conditions were there only with one intent, from my view, and that is to assure Washington that Iran is ready for final peace negotiations, to end, to bury the hatchet.

And then there’s another clause, which is very important to the Russians. And I think this is the main reason why they signed this agreement. Assuming that it is likely, well possible, even likely that Iran and Washington will come to terms, that Washington will say that it is satisfied that Iran is not building nuclear weapons, and that it will duly raise the sanctions that have been crippling the Iranian economy for decades.

32:49
Under those conditions, Iran has a clause in its 20-year agreement with Russia, which is that neither side will sign up to sanctions of a third party against the other contracting party. That is saying, that’s telling Washington that if you think that you’re going to get Iran to sign up against Russia, the way that Russia was once induced to sign to sanctions against Iran, you’re mistaken. It won’t happen. So we will go into a friendship with the United States that is not directed against Russia.

So these are the terms, and they all, as I see it, this enforces the notion that there has been some background conversation between Tehran and Washington, which encourages Tehran– and the Russians with them– to believe that there will finally be a settlement, a peaceful settlement, to the differences between Iran and Washington and the United States that have existed since the Ayatollahs took over the country from the from the Shah in 1979.

Alkhorshid: 34:09
And I talked with Paul Craig Roberts the other day. He mentioned a very important point: that he believes that Iran is much more important than Ukraine for Russia, because of the extremism of these Wahhabis and these Islamists in the region. And it’s so important for the security of Russia. If there is a threat to Russia, that would be extremism coming from these sort of movements within the Islamic movements, extremism. Which is, by the way, it makes sense to me, because we know that Iran has the same sort of concern when it comes to these people.

If something happens– for Iran, the other important point is having some sort of balance between the East and the West. And Russia is the most important country in that view. Russia sees the same. Do you think that there are still the nature of the changes that are happening or is bringing these two countries together? Since the conflict in Ukraine started and the conflict in the Middle East.

But do you think the leadership in these two countries are not still getting to the point that they find, as you’ve mentioned, they have to be together, they have to work together in, I would say, a hundred percent, because the future would be brighter for them.

Doctorow: 35:52
Well, I don’t agree with Paul Craig Roberts on many things in geopolitics. He is an economist by his education and his professional life. I am a historian by my education. I come at these things with different analytical tools, and I arrive at different conclusions.

And most importantly, we are listening to different sources. I’m listening to first-hand sources, and he’s listening to second-hand sources. And that is, I think, his weakest point. He doesn’t have his own determination of things. He’s repeating what he gets from others.

So with all due respect, and he’s certainly has had an outstanding career, and I take nothing against that, he’s operating in an area that’s outside his competence. Let’s put that aside.

36:43
The issue that he raised is a real issue. I agree with that. But we are comparing apples and oranges. These are two threats to Russia that are very different. There is no question that the Russian Orientalists and political generalists will say that Russia has a great vulnerability in its southern borders, meaning the trans caucuses. In this respect, Paul Craig Roberts is right. But is it greater than the threat of the United States and NATO? No, I don’t believe so.

It is a hypothetical threat. It is not a real and present threat. What’s going on in the Ukraine war is a real and present threat. Moreover, the end result of this war, which we didn’t get to in our discussion, if it plays out as the Russians would like, is vastly more important to them than anything that can happen in relations with Iran. What am I talking about? Yes, the Russians have, the last two days, been having a good belly laugh at the follies of Donald Trump. They have been saying that reaching an agreement with this man on Ukraine is out of discussion.

38:05
However, they’re also saying, “Who needs him for Ukraine? We will solve Ukraine very nicely by ourselves, thank you. We still want to speak to Donald, but about something very different, about the other source of the present war, the NATO-Russia war, and that is security architecture of Europe.”

And that is Yalta 2. What they’re saying on Russian television, which your audience should appreciate, is that they see the limitations of American power, which they believe Donald Trump understands. He understands he wants to be a global hegemon, but he knows the United States does not have the wherewithal to keep its arms around the whole world. It doesn’t have the money, it doesn’t have the industrial base or whatever. It’s not 1945, when America counted 50% of global production. Those days are long, long past.

39:09
So what does Donald want to do? He wants to reassert Monroe Doctrine and establish the United States’ unrivaled, unquestioned hegemony over the Western hemisphere. That’s what the moves against Canada, Greenland, and Panama are all about. That’s what the Panama question, the angle of leveraging the Chinese out of the area is all about.

So what about the rest of the world? He is ready to do business with China and with Russia, who are the other– and MAYBE throw a bone to India– these are the other global powers, particularly China and Russia. India may be populous, but its military is not worth discussing, other than its nuclear bombs. China is, of course, the economic engine of the world and has a vast military of unknown capability.

40:17
Donald Trump is, in the view of these Russian analysts, ready for Yalta 2. That means we’d let Russia have buffers in Europe and elsewhere, and we’d let China have buffers, meaning South China Sea and all of this contested business about Taiwan would be set to one side. It’s entirely possible. I wouldn’t say probable or necessary, but these Russian analysts do have a point. It could come to that.

Alkhorshid: 40:55
Do you think that if Donald Trump decides to go and negotiate, go after some sort of negotiations with Russia, the European countries– it’s necessary to have European countries along with the United States doing that, or Donald Trump doesn’t care what the European countries want and he’s going to do whatever he wants, what is in his mind and for the benefit of the United States. Because as you know, the security architecture that Putin was talking about, it was between Russia and European countries. It’s not talking about, the United States is part of that politically, But it’s mainly about Russia and European countries.

Doctorow: 41:51
Well, in what I just was discussing, it’s more or less assumed that the United States would withdraw from NATO. But let me get to the bigger issue, because I omitted saying what else positive the Russians, let’s take Vladimir Solovyov, for example, have been saying about what is positive.

When you read the tea leaves or the coffee grounds, what is positive in an otherwise rather negative situation around Trump. What is positive is that he is looking not at the European Union. He always had a dim view of supranational organizations. Well, he’s pulling out of them wherever possible. His latest withdrawal from the Paris Accords and from the World Health Organization.

42:43
They believe that he has no respect for the EU. Of course, he never invited Ursula von der Leyen. That’s another proof of the esteem in which he holds the Brussels organization. He is interested in dealing with separate, sovereign European nations. And of course, the most sovereign of the nations are the leading economies in the EU.

And Germany may not be sovereign, really, as an occupied country, but he places a lot of emphasis on Germany. This suits the Russians fine. They’re very happy to see Mr. Trump approach Europe with a sledgehammer, break the conformity in the anti-Russian position that’s been dictated by these little Lilliputs, the Baltic states, pulling the big countries around by the nose to engage in anti-Russian– and finally into a war with Russia. So, for the Russian analysts who are saying this, they are delighted to see what the opportunity is to break up the common front in Europe, thanks to the sledgehammer of Donald Trump. That’s a positive thing.

44:05
Now as to these people like Solovyov, whose name I throw around and may not be so familiar to viewers of this program. I’d like to tell them to watch CNN. Watch CNN because they will see on the recent CNN, you know what they’re doing? They’re doing to Russia what Russia’s been doing to CNN and to Sky News and to Fox News for the last several years.

They’re putting up on the screen video spots from Solovyov’s program, from “60 Minutes”. Now, they’re unrepresentative and they’re very short. The Russians have very long excerpts from major news and they do it every day of the year, not just once or twice following the inauguration. But the CNN was, well, had a program which you can probably see today as well. What are the Russians saying about the inauguration? And they’re showing these programs. So they accept my basic premise that these particular, several leading talk shows are very good surrogates for what the Kremlin is thinking.

Alkhorshid: 45:15
Thank you so much, Gilbert, for being with us today. Great pleasure, as always.

Doctorow:
My pleasure as well. Thanks so much.

Alkhorshid: 45:22
Thank you.

P.S. – A very good Russian voice over video of this interview has just been posted on the Russian internet.

It was a pleasure as always to have a discussion with Judge Andrew Napolitano that focused on how the Kremlin sees the latest statements from Donald Trump on how the Ukraine war will be settled.  Indeed, while the Russian talk shows may mock Trump’s ignorant remarks and ultimatum to Putin in his Truth Social message yesterday, Vladimir Putin held back and remained silent. His last message to Trump was one of congratulations over his inauguration.

Putin is biding his time, ready to meet with Trump at an opportune time, most likely following the decimation of the Ukrainian armed forces that may well occur in the coming several weeks.

As readers of these pages know, I make extensive use of Russia’s leading news programs and political talk shows directed at their domestic audience for my presentations of what the country’s political elites are thinking. 

At times I have received reader comments asking me to provide links to given programs that I found especially worthwhile, and usually there was disappointment from those same readers that these programs were available on line only in the original Russian language.

Well, my friends, I am pleased to inform you that one of the best news and analysis shows, Russia’s own Шестьдесять минут or Sixty Minutes is now available on youtube in an English voice over edition. Here is what I just found. It appears to be the original’s morning broadcast from today.

I expect viewers to confirm my own conclusion that these programs are vastly more professional and valuable to those seeking out Russian positions on world events than is RT, where foreign guest journalists and producers always had an unduly large influence on programming.

A word about the co-hosts:  Yevgeny Popov has had a high-profile career in the Russian news group. He spent several years in New York as their bureau chief. Aside from his show time work, he is a member of the State Duma from the ruling party, United Russia. His wife, Olga Skabeyeva, is also a top-notch journalist though she can be fairly aggressive with panelists.

It is worth noting that in CNN’s latest news segment dedicated to ‘what Russian television is saying about the inauguration’ they have put up on the screen video spots taken from Sixty Minutes and also from the talk show Evening with Vladimir Solovyov.   But whereas CNN has produced this montage exceptionally, the Russian television program show lengthy video excerpts from Fox News, Sky News, Deutsche Welle and other American and European broadcasters.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2025