Transcript submitted by a reader

PressTV: 0:00
Joining us now out of Brussels is Gilbert Doctorow, independent international affairs analyst, joining us for more on the story. Hello Mr. Gilbert Doctorow, hope you’re safe and doing well. Now there’s actually a crazy shift in alliances going on here. This is something quite unprecedented when you see the US president circumventing the Europeans going straight to Moscow to the Europeans, especially the Ukrainians chagrin, to try to etch out a peace deal.

Gilbert Doctorow, PhD: 0:30
I think it’s quite impressive how Donald Trump is conducting this restoration of normal relations with Russia and his approach to the war. There are a great many people in the United States, still more people in Europe, who do not appreciate Donald Trump’s ability to be tactful and to think strategically and to have very detailed and spontaneous approaches to resolving a complex issue like the Ukraine war.

1:04
What we have seen in the last seven days is a remarkable testament to the team that Donald Trump has put together, who are very intelligent, who are very experienced in human relations and dealing with people, which is essential to any diplomatic effort. I’m speaking now of Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State; of Steve Witkoff, who is President Trump’s personal emissary and longtime confidant and colleague in international business; and Mr. Walz, who is the national security advisor to the president.

1:47
They displayed acumen, they displayed tact and diplomacy, and they made a very positive impression on their Russian counterparts, which is this trust building that your coverage, that your reportage has just mentioned. This is essential for something as complex as the restoring relations between countries at the top, that have been at the top of the world in general as superpowers, restoring their confidence in one another. And I think that very wisely the delegations yesterday divided the tasks ahead of them into three separate baskets, we may call them. The first one is to restore normal diplomatic functioning, since the embassies of both Russia in Washington and the United States in Moscow are operating at a skeletal level, a minimal level.

2:43
The ambassadors have not been appointed. The staff has been drastically reduced. The Russians in the United States are handicapped by the cutoff of their access to normal banking relations, so they can’t even pay the staff properly. These abnormal conditions have to be reviewed and reversed. So if you have an operating diplomatic corps in the other country, you’re able to support very complex and difficult tasks that the parties have now to deal with, bigger issues of not just the Ukraine war, but as Mr. Trump’s team said, the geopolitical issues that they face.

PressTV: 3:27
Mr. Doctorow, over the last couple of decades, if any US President truly cared about peace in Eastern Europe, they would have respected the long-standing notion that after Gorbachev’s fall, that the US is not going to push eastward close to Russia’s borders. If any US president came along throughout this time and decided that look– And Ironically, when you do push close to Russia’s borders, that’s only going to create more conflict and lead to something like we’re witnessing today in Ukraine, because this could all been have been averted if anyone cared not to continue demonizing Russia to the point where they feel they need to pull up to its doorsteps.

4:04
They would have probably got along better with Russia and that respect could have been reciprocated, we wouldn’t be where we are today, and Ukraine would have never happened.

Doctorow:
This all goes back to the final days of Gorbachov, and what I’m about to say has a lot of relevance to the situation that Iran faces in restoring its relations with the United States and its position with the West in general.

The issue here is the lack– you cannot have trust in people who are untrustworthy. And the United States officials, going back to the George Bush senior administration, were untrustworthy. It’s easy. We have generally said that Mr. Gorbachev was politically very sophisticated in having his way within the Soviet power elite. And he feinted to the right, and he feinted to the left, keeping his opponents on both ends of the spectrum off balance, so that he could push through reforms which his opponents on both sides opposed or rejected.

5:07
Mr. Trump is also showing that kind of political balancing act and skill. But on the negative side, it was said about Gorbachov that a man who was so skillful in handling his colleagues in the Soviet Union was naive, even foolish in his dealings with the United States administration and with Germany and the Europeans in general, because he didn’t require a written agreement on what was being discussed, that is, not to move NATO lines to the east. That was just done on a handshake and without solemn documents.

5:44
Of course, that is admitting the fact, overlooking the fact, that a gentleman’s honor was worth something going back, say, to the days of John Kennedy, when his agreement with Krushchev that Russia would remove its nuclear arms in Cuba and the United States would remove its missiles, nuclear-capable missiles in Turkey and in Italy. That was done on a handshake, a verbal agreement. No more, no less than what Mr. Gorbachev sought. But John Kennedy was a man of honor.

6:17
The people around George Bush Sr., the people around the Clintons, they were dishonorable people. They weren’t fair; they were card cheats. And the United States administration under Joe Biden was constituted by card cheats. By definition, you cannot agree anything with these people, whether it’s oral or in writing.

6:40
Happy to say that the people whom Trump has appointed appear to be honorable people. They appear to be intellectually … competent and experienced. They have done deals, deals that have worked and lasted. So for you in Iran, I think it is very important to watch what’s going on.

PressTV:
Always a pleasure, Mr Gilbert Doctorow, independent international affairs analyst there joining us out of Brussels.

7:12
And viewers, this brings us the conclusion of this Press TV world news bulletin here. Thank you for tuning in, and bye-bye for now.

It was a pleasure to be invited by Press TV to comment on the negotiations in Riyadh to end the Ukraine war where the key word was “trust”.  As I point out, what is happening now between the Trump administration and the Kremlin is an effort to restore trust by a variety of immediate measures, starting with restoration of the respective embassies to full functionality. This also has direct bearing on the future of Iran’s relations with Washington and with the West more generally.  Under Joe Biden, the level of mutual trust between the two superpowers had continued its descent from the days of the Bush Jr. administration to the point of zero, just short of full severance of diplomatic relations. Now the task is first to restore mutual trust and then to proceed to solving specific complex tasks, including resolution of the war in and over Ukraine. Do the American negotiators appear to be credible? Are they capable of reaching durable agreements?

http://www.urmedium.net/c/presstv/132737

Transcript submitted by a reader

Nima R. Alkhorshid: 0:05
Hi everybody. Today is Wednesday, February 19th, 2025, and our friend Gilbert Doctorow is back with us. Welcome back, Gilbert.

Gilbert Doctorow, PhD:
Yes, it is a pleasure.

Alkhorshid:
Let’s get started with the reactions on the part of Russians to what has happened in Riyadh between the two delegations from the United States and Russia. What do we know about that?

Doctorow:
Well, I was following the body language as well as the statements made by the three American negotiators. And it was very– and then I followed, of course, what Sergey Lavrov said afterwards. And from this it was clear that the atmosphere was positive, constructive on both sides. It was diplomatic. I mean, we don’t think about Trump as being a diplomat or a subtle man, shall we say. But Rubio was. In that sense, he displayed one of the finer points of diplomacy, tact. He has a lot of it.

1:06
And that is a very important attribute for his job as Secretary of State. There are people who said in the days following his nomination by Donald Trump. “Oh, this man’s a lightweight. He doesn’t know anything about diplomacy. He’s just in the pocket of the Israeli lobby. He’s a pro-Zionist.”

And they were dismissive of him. But the people were dismissive of nearly all of the appointments or nominations that were made by Trump, except for a couple whom we knew to be good guys. So Tulsi Gabbard is the outstanding case. And maybe his defense secretary nominee. Anyway, the main thing is that we all saw that he appointed a lot of hawks, people who didn’t sound like they would be in keeping with his peacemaker approach to his second term.

2:01
And you know what? Now that we’ve seen what’s happened in the last week, it’s just a week that everything has been turned on its head, starting with the telephone conversation that Trump had with Vladimir Putin. Everything’s been turned on its head, and we look at each case. Who said what where? What after– Trump didn’t say much about the call. He let others speak for him. The first one to speak and speak really very loudly, importantly, was of course, Pete Hegseth.

And in his debut here, a speech in Brussels, to what’s called the Ukraine support group or the Ukraine Coordinating Organization. Well, the Hegseth said, one, there will not be Ukraine in NATO; and two, it’s unrealistic to talk about going back to the pre-war borders, that this is a new reality. That was picked up by Western press and observers as saying that Trump had already conceded the major points to Putin, before they ever sat at the table. Well, it isn’t quite like that. These were non-negotiable terms for the Russians.

3:30
And either you’re going to accept them and you’ll proceed to peace negotiations, or you’ll reject them and there are no talks. So I don’t think that he was conceding anything if he was intent on taking this to talks. And the things that came out between the appointment of these power ministers or advisors to Trump and what we saw in the last seven days, almost everything is different. And you have to ask why. Is this the same Trump or is something else going on?

Well something else is going on. Those of us– and I include myself among them. I don’t stand above my peers in being so very perceptive– no, no, we all were taken in by these strange appointments of Trump. And we say, my goodness, does he know what he’s doing? My goodness, how are these people going to implement his plans, when they personal orientation is quite different?

4:31
And we misunderstood what he was doing and why. He appointed these people, including General Kellogg, knowing that they would say things that would be directly contradicting what we all expected. But in keeping with what some other people expected or hoped for, crossing their fingers, that they had Trump once again in a barrel, that he once again, his assistants would betray him and they would get what they want. So all his opponents in Capitol Hill, in the press, in the academic establishment of war, the war keepers, they all were very happy with these appointments, even if we in the alternative media were cringing that maybe we made our own bet on Trump.

5:30
That was a game, that was a charade. And you know, we were all taken in on both sides of the aisle. Here in the alternative media, I think all my peers were taken in. We were all discussing, gee, you know what happened? Trump is getting the same false intelligence from the CIA as Biden was getting.

They got a complete wrong reading. They’re saying the war is a stalemate, as Kellogg did. They’re saying, as Kellogg was saying, we’ve got to have a stick and a carrot for the Russians, we’re going to beat the hell out of them if they don’t sit down on the table and conclude a peace as we think it should be, or we’re going to raise the arms into Ukraine, we’re going to raise the sanctions against Russia, we’re really going to show who’s boss. Well, that was Kellogg before his wings were clipped. He was saying what Trump wanted him to say, to make all of Trump’s enemies quiet, and allow him to proceed with what would overwhelm them all before they had a chance to react.

6:37
And that overwhelming is what we saw in the last week. No, we didn’t have to wait for Tulsi Gabbard to come with her candle into the dark room and light it all up for Trump, to show him who’s who and what’s what. He had that all down perfectly. Now, we got used to speaking about the collective Biden. Well, I put it more kindly and speak of Team Trump.

It comes to the same thing. The presidency is more than one man. And not because Trump needs some mental assistance, no, no. The guy’s quite sharp, as sharp as anyone could be in that position. So that isn’t the issue. The question is how much can you master?

And how much should you master as the chief executive? And how much can you and should you delegate to your assistants who are delegating in turn to their assistants the way things work in any large organization of any kind, not just a government organization, but any private organization, any business, any educational institution, that’s how people work.

7:45
And so Trump, even if he’s not a universal genius and who expects that, to find that in the oval office, he has by his personal intuition found implementers of first-quality intelligence and talent. And I include in there Marco Rubio, whom some of, some very authoritative and serious people, were saying, my goodness, Rubio is shallow, Rubio has no real international experience, he’s not a diplomat, he’s not up to the job, how can he sit at negotiations with the doyen of international diplomacy Sergei Lavrov? Well, he did yesterday and it looked quite all right.

8:34
The main thing was tact, diplomacy, respect, notions which had disappeared from American foreign policy and diplomatic implementers for at least three years and maybe for 30 years. This suddenly reappeared. My point is that if you look at each of the developments in the last week, you find that they were meticulously planned and executed. And let’s go over them. I just think of one, since I’m in Brussels and all around me, there’s news of JD Vance’s speech to the Munich Security Conference.

9:18
And then follow on that, the news that already at the start of this week, on Tuesday in fact, there would be a high-level meeting between the Americans and the Russians to initiate talks about the peace agreement in Riyadh, without the presence of either the Ukrainians or the Europeans. And my goodness, what a to-do there was here. Everyone was talking about a seat at the table. And the Europeans here, well, they also read English. And they also know the American political wisdom that if you don’t have a seat at the table, it means you’re on the menu.

10:01
And they understood very well that they were on the menu. And they were very uncomfortable. Even “Le Monde”, “Le Monde” which has Sylvie Kaufman, who was for a number of years their editor in chief, for a number of years was their New York bureau chief, who is printed in op-ed pages of “Financial Times” and of the “New York Times” regularly. Sylvie Kauffman was fulminating. And in an article that was published yesterday, a long article, in “Le Monde”, which I believe she was a contributor to, if not the main author of, they called Vance’s speech hostile and fascist.

10:44
Note the word “fascist”. The American vice president is a fascist. This is coming out of the mouths of leftist European politicians. Well, that wasn’t an accident. He wanted them, Trump wanted them to see what the relations between us on the Ukrainian war really [are], that we are in opposite camps, that the Europeans are all the war camp and America is now in the peace camp.

11:13
So he alienated them, as he intended to do. Wasn’t an accident. It was a very well planned speech in which they were denounced for being their own greatest threat to their security, by being undemocratic and have nothing to defend or fight for, because they were behaving like Soviet nomenklatura. They were behaving in a way that deprives their population of freedom of speech and deprives substantial portions of the population in the populist parties in the right and left of the right to participate equally in political life. So Vance’s speech was main, a major point.

11:57
And then the announcement that there would be a meeting in Riyadh without the likes of Zelensky or Starmer or all the other warriors who wanted to frankly speak and foil the negotiations before they even could get going. So this was [a] master stroke. And there was an addition to that, also on the weekend, that the State Department sent out a questionnaire to all European countries saying, well, yeah, please tell us, send us back information on how many troop formations and what military materiel you’re going to supply, if you are going to take part in a peacekeeping mission to Ukraine to enforce the peace that may be signed. And Macron rode to the rescue. He convened six, seven country leaders, including of course Germany and Spain and Italy and the United Kingdom.

13:11
And there was also Mr. Rutte on behalf of NATO and there was Da Costa on behalf of the European Council, that is the governing body of the European institutions, which consists of the 29 heads of government. Da Costa was there. And of course, the inescapable, unavoidable Ursula von der Leyen. They all came, all the worthies came.

And you know what, after four and a half hours, they couldn’t agree on anything. So they left without answering the questionnaire from the States and validating the whole exercise. What was it about? It was to show that they are nobody, that there’s nobody home in Europe, and they’re all counting on getting the United States running the show and taking all the risks and expenses of enforcing the peace treaty. So these were not idle and separate actions.

14:20
They were all interconnected, and they had a mission of ensuring the success of the first high- level meeting between the United States and Russia in three, more than three years. So this is why the Russians first looked at Trump and they looked at what we were seeing, whom he appointed to these power ministries. And they said, my goodness, this fellow is not going to give us much comfort in his administration. And they looked at the same time at Elon Musk and the wrecking-ball activities that were also reflected in Trump’s first decrees upon taking office. And they said, you know, this fellow looks like our own Mikhail Gorbachev.

15:14
We had, just remember it’s a change of generation. Well, in the case of the States, it’s a three-year difference between Trump and Biden, but nonetheless, he’s surrounded himself with younger people, none younger, than his own vice president. And so it is indicative of a forthcoming change in generations. But most importantly, it’s the wrecking ball. This is what Gorbachov brought in with him.

It was a wrecking ball. And the consequences were, unfortunately for Russia, quite bad because he destroyed the economy by various measures that were ill-considered, and he destroyed the political structure by other measures that were ill-considered. And the political commentators on the talk show that I, one of the two main talk shows that I follow, this is “Evening with Vladimir Solovyov”, they were saying, the Americans are headed for the same chaos that we had. And they were sort of laughing about it. But they were serious at the same time.

16:20
It sounded familiar. We’d been there before. Just as they knew the case of Biden, they’d been there before also. They had their own problem of superannuated, senile or physically disabled leaders going from the end of the 70s into the first years of the 80s before Gorbachov, a new young generation, vital generation came to power. So they had seen that, and these are the negatives.

16:53
Then what I see now on the same show by the same panelists is they’re again saying, “This man is like Gorbachov”, but they’re putting Gorbachov in a much kinder light. This is Gorbachov, the peacemaker. Gorbachov, who at the same time, showed political skills which nobody else had. He was able to, because he was not a dictator in the sense of running the show himself. He had to deal with his fellow Communist Party officials at the very apex of the power structure of the Soviet Union, who could stymie his initiatives.

17:40
And so he shifted balance from the right side of opposition to himself, to the left side of opposition to himself. He kept his political opponents off balance, each side for a while thought that he was in their pocket,, and so they didn’t attack him. And he put through measures which none of them expected or really wanted in any way, because they saw what it was leading to, the end of the Soviet Union. Well, here we see the same talent of a feint to the right, a feint to the left, fooling all of us, including the whole lot of us in alternative media who think we’re pretty clever. And Trump got the better of us.

18:27
The man whom– it’s easy to say that he’s just a, you know, a hot-air artist, and he’s got his venal interests in being in the Oval Office because he’s going to get this deal or that deal for himself. All of these rather small-minded criticisms which are with us today as well. A colleague of mine told me about an article today in German press criticizing Trump for having plans to exploit Russia for bringing in the head of the Russian foreign investment organization because they want to speak about American investments, meaning exploitation in Russia. These people are missing the point intentionally. And I had a moment hesitation to say that. What Trump is doing now was utterly brilliant. It’s much more than I got for my lottery ticket when I voted for him in November.

You’re on mute.

Alkhorshid:
When you look at Donald Trump and the way that he’s talking about Zelensky right now, he says that Zelensky’s approval rating is now at four percent.

And I like him personally, but that doesn’t matter. These are huge statement on his part and the way that he sees Zelensky, it seems that he sees the same way that Russia sees Ukraine today. There has to be a presidential election in Ukraine because they don’t recognize Zelensky if Zelensky wants to be part of any sort of negotiation at any stage in the process of negotiating with Russia. How do you see the way that Donald Trump is literally destroying Zelensky by his comments?

Doctorow: 20:19
Let’s leave Russia out of it. I was listening to the BBC commentary this morning, and they were saying, “Ah yes, and Vladimir Putin is laughing at Europe over this” and so on. And my answer is, so what? And besides, did you see him laugh? He didn’t. That is an absolutely fake-news account. If they had said that he must be laughing, I could begin to accept that.

But when they say he is laughing, that’s fake news. It didn’t happen, they didn’t see it. And what is the relevance of that? The only thing that should be relevant is what Trump’s saying, true or not, Does this represent the real situation, or is it invented and artificial?

21:05
Now, the four percent, that’s an exaggeration. That’s in the range of, the Pinocchio-measurement range of Trump’s statements that the “Washington Post” has been carrying since his first term. However, what do you say about the 52-percent approval rating of Zelensky that the “Financial Times” publishes today, saying that it comes from a sociological institute in Kiev? Don’t we know how much that is worth? I would say less than nothing. Therefore, I forgive Trump for his exaggeration, because it’s merited by the utter propaganda that calls itself mainstream.

21:44
Whether the Russians like this or not is not relevant. The question is, is it true? Of course it’s true, what he was saying. Of course that he’s saying there have to be elections. Well, yes, Putin is saying that, but is Trump repeating it because he likes what Putin says?

No, he’s repeating it with a simple statement of legal fact. The man is an illegitimate dictator right now. I’m speaking of Zelensky. His term in office, oh yes, again, the British “Financial Times”, so how can you leave out the elected president of a sovereign state? “Sovereign” is an interesting word for Ukraine, which can’t live for two weeks without Western financial assistance and military assistance.

So sovereignty is fake news. And democratic, how can he be democratic if by their own constitution it’s almost a year that his legitimacy expired. So what Trump is doing, if he is saying the same things as Putin, it’s because Putin is saying what is true. And if you think that it is bad because Putin says it or likes it, then you have no interest in truth, justice or ending the war. You are only a belligerent.

23:16
And that is where all of Europe sits today. The whole damned elite structure, parasitical structure that calls itself European leadership, with two exceptions, Slovakia and Hungary, they have to be voided out of office. And that’s going to happen. As the peace process goes forward, there’s no way these people can present themselves as the war party. They will not have popular support.

Nobody wants to be interested in politics here. The indifference, passivity in Europe is manifest, because it seems like a vote counts for nothing. Here in Belgium, we had elections last June. It took them eight, nine, 10 months to constitute a new government on which the public had no expression, no vote. It’s all done behind closed doors between, I’d say, hereditary rulers here.

24:21
Therefore, the attack that Vance made on European democracy was much more true than he understood. I don’t think he knows what I know, because he doesn’t live here. He was dealing with some things that he could pick up correctly. What happened in Romania, that was scandalous and everybody knew about it. The exclusion of the Alternative for Deutschland and Jelinka from attendees at the Munich Security Conference, that is clear as day to JD Vance. So he didn’t need any coaching to understand that these countries are not democratic.

25:03
But it’s not– they’re much less democratic than he knows. Because as I say, he doesn’t live here. He doesn’t know anything about the structure of the European institutions. The, I mean, the general mantra in, among well-meaning people is the problem with European institutions is that they’re bureaucratic and the parliament does not really have power, that the executive, the Commission has the power and was not elected by people. That’s not true, That’s only partially true.

I’ve been in the European Parliament. I know how it works. And the problem is the Parliament itself, which is a top-down organization. Its composition is mandated by the heads of the leading centrist parties in Europe, particularly in Germany. And how everybody votes in the parliament is not on their own conscience. It’s dictated by the party leaders in Germany, France, and a few other countries who are told they’re given 150 items to vote on in one day, and they told, check, check, check, check, this is how you’re going to vote. And that’s what they do.

26:07
So Europe is a big problem in democracy, much more than JD Vance knows. But that’ll come out eventually as this wrecking ball continues to move.

Alkhorshid:
Europeans want to impose more sanctions, a new set of sanctions on Russia, which Rubio was talking about, that he said that we’re not going to support that in the process of negotiation with Russia.

On the other hand, today we’ve learned, “Financial Times” reported that 6 billion euros they’re going to send to Ukraine to support, in terms of military aid to Ukraine. What is with Europe, Gilbert, when you look at Europe today? They’re so in panic right now. And Macron tried to invite, as you’ve mentioned, four or five countries, and one of them is out of the European Union is United Kingdom. Czech, Czech Republic and Romania Slovenia were complaining that they were not invited to the first summit in Paris. And how can we understand the way that they’re trying?

Are they really clueless about what’s going on? Because without daddy being there, I’m talking about the United States, it seems that they don’t know what to do, they don’t know what to, how they can deal with the situation they’re in right now.

Doctorow: 27:40
You’re putting national interests and a leader’s interests as being aligned. I disagree, they’re not aligned. These people are concerned about themselves the same way that Netanyahu is concerned about himself, not about the fate of Israel.

They are concerned about holding onto power. That’s all they care about. The whole system here in Belgium, in Belgium I take it as an example, because I live here and I know the ugly details, but I assure you they’re not prettier in the other countries around us. The details are, as I said, division of power between the various parties that in no way reflects the popular vote. We have, there’s a lot of cynicism in the States and in other democracies about the value of vote.

28:23
Frankly speaking, when my wife and I registered for absentee ballots in the state of New York and we knew whom we were going to vote for and we knew the state is overwhelmingly democratic, we knew that our votes would have no reflection in the allowance of electors that New York has when the decision was made on who won. However, our votes counted in the overall popular vote, which gave Trump more than 50 percent. So we made our own little contribution to his getting more than 50 percent. Here in Belgium, we have very progressive– and other countries around us. They all operate on coalition governments, because they all have protections for minorities.

29:16
I don’t mean color or gender minorities, I mean minority political platforms. And so you have a lot of little parties that take away votes from the major parties. You don’t have a first-past-the-post system of voting. You have fractional voting, fractional results. Fractional results, it sounds wonderfully democratic, but ends up being extremely undemocratic.

Because they form coalitions and they allocate ministerial portfolios without asking the public, and without counting on the competence of the ministerial, ministers for the portfolios assigned to them. So we have– that is called institutionalized corruption, and it is manifest in almost all of the countries of the European Union. There are exceptions. France is an exception. It has mostly a dual competition for electoral victory.

30:24
Although the last elections didn’t work that way. And it wasn’t a single party, but a majority. Nonetheless, my point is that the positions of these leaders [have] nothing to do with national interests or what their voters think. It is– there is such a passivity that in the general population, which comes out even when the BBC gives people a microphone here on the street, that they don’t give a damn about any of these issues, because they know they have no control over the government policies. Their votes count for nothing, even if the votes are [mandated] that you have to vote or face fines, as is the case here in Belgium.

31:04
Therefore, I only look at these statements as being statements from the war party who are desperately afraid that the war will end and that party will be over. And they will no longer be invited for hot dogs on the 4th of July, on the lawn in front of the White House. The happy days may be coming to an end for them. And I say good riddance. These people have to go.

Alkhorshid: 31:34
How about putting troops? They’re talking about Europeans. Do you see the way that they’re talking about putting troops in the aftermath of any sort of permanent solution for the conflict in Ukraine. Is that acceptable? Did they talk about this things in the Russian media, on the Russian part, that Europeans really want– At least Starmer was talking about it, putting troops, 25 to 30,000 troops, on the ground in Ukraine.

Doctorow: 32:04
There are two issues where I can say that Trump has performed a master stroke. This is one of them. He didn’t say no to them, to the Europeans. You want to put in troops? Oh, yeah, of course, of course.

Let’s see, tell me how many you’re going to put up. First you have Starmer saying that this doesn’t work if we don’t have American backing, American logistical support and so forth. So there’s so much for their troops. Then they couldn’t reach agreement on whether they should send troops. You’ve got Germany saying, no, it’s premature, said Mr. Scholz. It’s inappropriate, said Mr. Scholz. The Spanish said, no, we don’t like this. Well, it fell apart.

32:51
And so Trump didn’t have to destroy it. He let them destroy it themselves. Because he knew very well that the Russians, for the Russians, this is unacceptable. But he didn’t say to the Europeans, this is unacceptable to the Russians. He said, “Okay, guys, show, put up or shut up.”

And the end result is shut up. Therefore, that is one case. Another case is the whole story of the mineral rights. Now there’s been an enormous discussion of this mineral rights question. People who otherwise want to present themselves as being peaceniks and on the right side of the angels are attacking Trump because we all know that he’s a buffoon, He’s self-interested, he’s materialistic, crass, vulgar, you name it.

So they want to say that, “Oh, you see how it is with Trump and demanding the rare earths of Ukraine? He just wants to exploit and hand out parcels of money to his good friends.” Well, my friends, you missed the point entirely. Trump did this because he knew that Zelensky would refuse. And he made this a condition of further American assistance.

We didn’t stop the assistance, will say Washington. Zelensky did, because he didn’t agree to give us guarantees. Now is that the move of a master politician or not? I say it is.

You’re muted.

Alkhorshid: 34:21
I don’t know if you saw the article in the Bloomberg. It says that Ukraine doesn’t have rare earth minerals.

Doctoeow:
Well look, they were just going to the same sources that I was using. It’s not correct to say they don’t have them. They have rare earth deposits in many different places, not just in the occupied, Russian-occupied eastern part.

By the estimates of Russian geological information, maybe 30 percent of those deposits are in the territory that the Russians now occupy. But that’s not the point. It’s not commercially viable. That’s the point. There are deposits of oil and gas around the whole world and dinosaurs didn’t all die in one place.

35:08,
Or vegetation didn’t all die in one place, that you have coal deposits only here or there. No, they’re all over the place on the planet Earth. But only in some places is it commercially viable to exploit them. And so it is with the rare earth in Ukraine.

Alkhorshid:
Yeah. You think that the way that Europe is trying to put pressure on Donald Trump or his administration. To what extent are they capable of changing the policy in Washington? Is that possible? Is that achievable in their mind? I’m talking about the mind of Europeans, I’m not talking about the way that Donald Trump sees Europe.

Doctorow: 35:53
Remember, Russians are still Europeans, right? And I can tell you what the Russians are saying on television. They’re saying, “Donald, watch your back.”

Alkhorshid:
But after all, Europe is– Do you think that these two summits, the first summit and Macron is just preparing for the second summit, inviting more countries to talk with. What would be the outcome of these political moves on the part of Europeans? Is there any sort of outcome in terms of influencing the decision makers in Washington?

Doctorow:
Well, they can certainly influence people in Washington, but they’re not the key decision-makers today. Lindsey Graham will go along with anything they say, that’s for sure, and he’s not alone in that. But he isn’t calling the shots any more. And I’d say, if he ever did.

And so let them invite Slovenia. How many troops to Slovenia have? They have some policemen, I understand that, but where’s their army? Around Europe, there are very few countries that have anything significant.

37:10
Here in Belgium, we have a navy. And we even have a head of the navy. I don’t know, we have five or six boats. Mostly they’re dredging. They’re not real naval vessels capable of warfare.

How many vessels do the Swedes, the Danes have to enforce their blockade of Russia in the Baltic Sea. These armies are mirage. Estonia, who would complain very loudly about being included? Of course, the Baltic states. Of course, Estonia complained.

“We weren’t there.” Although nominally, Denmark was supposed to represent them at the meetings in Paris on Monday. Nonetheless, that wasn’t good enough. Of course they went in. And these are the barking dogs.

These are the ones who want to insist that Putin cannot be trusted, that we have to enforce anything with our armies on the ground. Where’s their army? Who are they going to send? It is farcical. So the instincts of Macron in the beginning were correct.

He invited those countries that have a big enough army pool to actually contribute something. Now, what is contributing something? Even 20 or 30 thousand, I mean, that can be taken out by one tactical nuclear weapon, OK? All at one go.

38:45
Mr. Zelensky was talking about 200,000. There isn’t any 200,000 army force in Europe to locate there if you want to have any troops left in the homeland to protect you against the riots that are going to follow. I mean, the armies in most of these countries, including the one I live in, basically are there for domestic security as they always were. I remember very well when I first traveled to France in the 1970s, and every government building had special units of the military with submachine guns at the ready, day and night, 24 hours. That was the way it was.

39:31
And if you think it was different here in Belgium, you’re wrong. That was also the case in the 1970s. Now these are less visible today, but that’s what you have an army for, to protect you against your own people, not to go out and fight the Russians in Ukraine. Let’s be serious about it.

Alkhorshid: 39:47
Gilbert, the way that the administration in Washington, again, is talking about Keith Kellogg being in charge of negotiations with Russia. And Keith Kellogg, in his sort of talk at the Munich Security Conference said, not only the issue in Ukraine, but also the relationship or the partnership between Russia, North Korea, Russia, Iran, and Russia and China, these three countries, should be considered in any sort of concession that Russia would make for the United States. How is that realistic in your opinion when it comes to this sort of idea on their part?

Doctorow: 40:33
Well, let me break your question into two questions. One is who is Keith Kellogg today? Number two is what is the relationship between the geopolitical questions and the peace in Ukraine?

Mr. Kellogg, it’s been clear that he has been sidelined. He is in the game, but he’s in the game that doesn’t really count. He has been given responsibility for maintaining relations with the European Union and with Ukraine, and Zelensky. That’s to say to watch them, keep them, hold their hands so that they believe that some Americans really care about them. That’s it.

41:16
The actual serious negotiating side, to be carried out with the Russians, for that the presidential envoy or emissary is Witkoff. And Witkoff is a different creature from Kellogg entirely. He’s very diplomatic. He understands how negotiations can proceed with the Russians.

And all the fussing and foot stomping of the Ukrainians or of anybody here in European Union [doesn’t] count for anything. So that … part of it is pretty clear, who is who. What was the second side of it again?

Alkhorshid:
The partnership between Russia and three countries.

Doctorow: 42:06
Right. That comes under the heading of geopolitical discussions. And if you notice carefully what was said by the three negotiators, I forget which one just addressed this precisely yesterday. That is phase three, not phase one, not phase two. It is not, I did not have a sense that this is linked to the signing of a peace accord over Ukraine.

Now, what is phase one? Phase one is beginning immediately, that is restoration of normal functioning of the respective embassies and diplomatic corps of the United States and Russia in Washington. [It] probably means return to Russia of the stolen and illegally expropriated Russian properties in the United States, the reopening of consulates, although that is less pressing. The most pressing thing is allowing for the normal functioning of the embassies.

43:20
So they can’t function normally if they don’t have ambassadors. That is neither the United States nor Russia has its own ambassador in the other country. So there’s immediate discussion of who’s going to be sent by the States and who’s going to be sent by Russia to fulfill this task. Secondly, there is these little things that the United States was doing everything possible to make life miserable for the Russians. They called off all the bank accounts, including those of the diplomatic mission in the United States.

43:49
They cannot pay any salaried workers or any expenses they incur on American soil, because they don’t even have a working bank account. So all of these things have to be fixed at once. And that is why working teams for that [events] are being assigned presently. So that’s stage one. You can’t proceed with such a complex negotiation to reestablish the general points of interest between these two countries if there’s no diplomatic mission.

44:22
Point number two will be to proceed to discussion of a peace in Ukraine. As became clear from the press conference yesterday, the American delegation understood this is not going to be achieved in one week, two weeks or more. It also, eventually it’s going to bring in both the Ukrainians and the European Union. I believe that if you put it on a six-month timeline, then the Americans expect that there’ll be elections and that Zelensky will be legitimately gone without the need to assassinate him or do the other things that Americans have done for regime changes in the past. He’ll be voted out of office.

45:04
And then somebody who was voted in office, whoever it is, it could be, doesn’t mean there is going to be some hero, some white knight here, could be Poroshenko, who’s a little devil with his own horns, but it won’t be Mr. Zelensky. And that person will have the legitimate authority to sign whatever peace has to be signed. So I think it’s within the same time frame there’ll be elections and it’ll be the processing of the peace.

45:28
Then the third thing which can occur simultaneously but more likely in a longer range, is the geopolitical accommodation. It wasn’t called accommodation. It was just called geopolitical issues by Rubio and Witkoff and the national security advisor Mike Waltz. The three of them, I forget which one brought it up, but it was in their list. So that– and what does that mean? Let’s decode that. It means exactly what you’re saying. It means the United States wants to break the very close semi-alliance between Russia and China and with the other countries whom it has befriended and with whom it is actively working sanctions now or not like North Korea, Russia is [coughing] sanctions and proceeding at a very full-throated, very vital cooperation.

46:39
So the United States wants to break all that. The chances of success? It’s difficult to say what kind of accommodation, what kind of agreements the Russians can make, but it’s a hundred percent clear they will not break relations with China. That’s a hundred percent clear. That’s also a non-negotiable point. So– but as you’ll notice, that is not a precondition for the solution to the Ukraine war, that meets most, if not all of Russia’s primary objectives.

47:13
These are separate, they have been separate, three boxes here, obviously with different working groups on each of them. That there will be a meeting between Trump and Putin, probably in Riyadh, probably in the early days of March, I’d say that’s almost a certainty. How much they can sign off? I think they can sign off on issues relating to restoration of diplomatic missions, possibly relief from some of the sanctions. This will definitely include relieving certain banks from their present cutoff from SWIFT.

47:54
Some Russian banks will now, I think in stage one, at the time of the summit, they will be restored to operations as a sign of good faith by the Americans. Good faith is a key to it all. Going back to the issue of Mr. Gorbachev, which we started this discussion on, Gorbachev was extremely sharp, shrewd,
I’d say merciless in pursuing the implementation of his own program for reforming the Soviet Union and for out-foxing his immediate peers in the Soviet leadership. He seemed to be very naive and foolish in his dealings with the West.

48:48
And in particular, he has been held in contempt for not defending Russia’s national interests in matters like the return of the Soviet armed forces from their deployment in the Warsaw Pact countries. And for his handshake agreements with the American leadership on NATO not moving one inch to the east. He said, what kind of a fool, why didn’t he get written agreements? But looking at this from today’s perspective and from what is about to happen now between the United States and Russia, we have a lot of people on the sidelines including especially in the alternative media camp saying, “Ah, the Russians can’t trust the Americans about anything, and no written document be worth anything.” And that is only partially true.

49:48
The question is which Americans can you trust. And there has been a real disastrous decline in the level of personal morality and personal trustworthiness among people in high office in the United States. Mr. Gorbachev could well have assumed that a handshake was enough when you’re dealing with gentlemen. And he could make reference to the agreement between Khrushchev and Kennedy at the end of the Cuban Missile Crisis, which was only on a handshake, well, verbal commitment by Kennedy that if the Russians withdrew their forces from, their nuclear weapons from Cuba, America would withdraw its nuclear-enabled missiles in Turkey and Italy.

50:41
That was not public knowledge. If he wanted to double-cross Khrushchev, Kennedy had every possibility, but he didn’t, he kept his word. And I think that with a reference like that, Gorbachev also had a verbal agreement with the Americans who turned out to be card cheats. So I think you have to take people one by one and not generalize that every last American is a card cheat and that is not a very helpful way to proceed. And possibly Mr. Putin will be neither naive nor so cynical that he deprives himself of the peace.

Alkhorshid: 51:25
Gilbert, comparing Gorbachev to Putin. Gorbachev, when he tried to solve the issue with the West and to get better, to get closer to the West, he wasn’t Russia, so Soviet Union wasn’t that powerful in those days, military and economically. The situation today in Russia is totally different. They’re stronger, their economy is doing much better than it did before the conflict in Ukraine started.

These are huge guarantees for Russia, on the part of Russians, that the West has to abide by any sort of agreement that they’re going to reach in the future with Russia. This is the part– because when I talk with Jeffrey Sachs about Gorbachev, he said that in the United States they were arguing that Russia is defeated. Why we should have any sort of agreement with them? Why we should understand them? We have to put a lot of pressure on them right now.

52:27
But Russia today is not the way that it was during Gorbachev. It’s totally different. That would bring a huge, a significant change in any sort of talk or security agreement between the West and Russia. Russia is getting stronger economically and militarily. That’s a huge change that Gorbachev didn’t have in those days.

Doctorow: 52:56
Look, size is very important and this concerns Mr. Saxe included. Mr. Saxe was responsible and had a very important role in the transition to a market economy in Poland. He took lessons from that experience, which was fairly positive, although I have my reservations about how positive, that’s a separate issue.

Still for the public view, it looked very successful. And he took these to Russia, but Russia is a different scale from Poland. The economy was vastly larger, the territory is infinitely larger. And so all these parameters were different, and he didn’t take that into account. And so it is today when we speak about Russia having– Russia was on its back in the 1980s, 1990s I mean, and the Americans could well scorn it.

53:47
And certainly, Clinton did, despite the fact that even Yeltsin told him to his face that Russia will come back. Nobody believed it. I was in Russia in 1998. I was there when the economic collapse, the financial collapse, as a result of the financial crisis in Southeast Asia, it became global. Companies, Western companies, in the course of a year, fired half of their staff. Half of their staff.

I was in a company where I was spared, because I was overseeing the shutdown of our company or the half, a lot of our staff disappeared. And my eventual replacement was an Indian who was making one third of what I made and who counted for nothing in the company’s internal politics. The estimation was, looking at Thailand, that Russia would take 10 years to recover. Russia took two years to recover. And that was without Mr. Putin running the show. The country has vast potential, vast wealth and a vast number of very high quality managers, both in corporate life and government life.

55:00
Therefore, the estimations that were made in the 1980s and 1990s about Russia on the spiral down– and I include our Mr. John Mearsheimer in those who have disparaged Russia until the last few weeks– were saying for 10 years that Russia is, again, what mainstream was saying in the States, that Russia is just a spoiler, that Russia is on its way down, and the only country that counts is China. So a lot of very, very smart and very authoritative people were saying the same thing, that Russia is on a one-way track and therefore we don’t have to give them anything. And you know something? They were all wrong.

55:42
Of course, nobody could count on a man of genius in his own way and charisma in his own way. And who knew what he wanted from the beginning. And I’m speaking now about Vladimir Putin. Nobody could count on a national savior, which is what he turned out to be. But even absent Mr. Putin, in those two years from the financial collapse of 1998, when we foreign companies fired half of our staff in Russia because we felt the country had no prospects, we were all wrong. Two years later, Russia was back. We weren’t back, but they were back. So these things have to be taken into account. And again, I don’t mean to make criticisms of people with such renown as John Mearsheimer or my slight criticism here of Jeffrey Sachs.

56:34
I don’t mean any disrespect. I just mean to say universal geniuses don’t exist and it’s unreasonable to expect that any one of us will be a universal genius.

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

Doctorow:
Well, I appreciate your having me and a chance to, to set out some non-mainstream, non-conformist views.

‘Dialogue Works’ edition of 19 February: Trump OBLITERATES Zelensky with SHOCKING Comments

Today’s session with host Nim Alkhorshid covered the waterfront of issues from the past week, including the headline title assigned to this video on youtube.

A substantially larger part was devoted to fleshing out the argument I presented in my latest essay on how and why the political skills that Donald Trump has exhibited since taking office are reminiscent of the terrific powers of political manipulation that Mikhail Gorbachev demonstrated till he finally lost his balance domestically and was forced to resign his presidency.

Trump has outwitted us all, for which I say kudos!  And this is being done for the sake of peace, not for the petty reasons of self-enrichment or glorification that his many detractors in the alternative media share with the dominant voices in mainstream.

And what do the Russians in the political talk shows now say about Trump?  “Watch your back!”

Translation below into German (Andreas Mylaeus)

„Dialogue Works“-Ausgabe vom 19. Februar: Trump VERNICHTET Selensky mit SCHOCKIERENDEN Kommentaren

In der heutigen Sitzung mit Gastgeber Nima Alkhorshid wurden die wichtigsten Themen der vergangenen Woche behandelt, einschließlich des Titels, der diesem Video auf YouTube zugewiesen wurde.

Ein wesentlich größerer Teil war der Ausarbeitung des Arguments gewidmet, das ich in meinem neuesten Essay darüber dargelegt habe, wie und warum die politischen Fähigkeiten, die Donald Trump seit seinem Amtsantritt unter Beweis gestellt hat, an die großartigen Fähigkeiten der politischen Manipulation erinnern, die Michail Gorbatschow unter Beweis stellte, bis er schließlich innenpolitisch das Gleichgewicht verlor und gezwungen war, sein Amt als Präsident niederzulegen.

Trump hat uns alle überlistet, und dafür sage ich: Hut ab! Und das alles für den Frieden, nicht aus den kleinlichen Gründen der Selbstbereicherung oder Selbstverherrlichung, wie seine vielen Kritiker in den alternativen Medien gemeinsam mit den dominierenden Stimmen im Mainstream sagen.

Und was sagen die Russen in den politischen Talkshows jetzt über Trump? „Pass auf dich auf!“

Donald Trump:  the Gorbachev of our times

A couple of weeks ago, Russian political commentators were saying on the Evening with Vladimir Solovyov talk show that from his avalanche of first decrees upon his inauguration it seemed that this man was an American version of their own president Mikhail Gorbachev.

This was not meant as a compliment. The side of Gorbachev they had in mind was his wrecking ball approach to the Soviet economy and political order.  They looked upon Trump and especially his attack dog Elon Musk as creating chaos by his disruptive works that will lead to very strong reaction from his political opponents, finally neutralizing his reforms and weakening the country.

As of last night, panelists on this talk show were still comparing Trump to Gorbachev but in a very different, much more favorable way. They now focus on Trump’s apparently genuine efforts to bring about peace and also to his remarkable political skills which no one, in Russia or here in the West ever suspected.

That brings me back to what I and virtually everyone else in alternative media was saying about Trump shortly after he named his ‘power ministers,’ Michael Waltz as National Security Advisor, Marco Rubio as Secretary of State and Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense. The appointments were first explained by the fact that all of the appointees were rabid Zionists, in the pocket of the Israeli lobby. Then they were said to be incompetent. Some analysts in the alternative media remarked that Rubio is a lightweight, a man who could never be a match for the doyen of world diplomacy, Russia’s Sergei Lavrov.

Further compounding our confusion and initial disappointment with Trump’s nominations was his appointing General Keith Kellogg as his personal emissary to lead talks with the Russians and Ukrainians for a peace. No sooner was he named than Kellogg made utterly daft public statements on how he would bring the Russians to sue for peace on U.S. terms by threats to dramatically intensify the sanctions being applied to Russia and by supplying new, awesome offensive weapons to Kiev if Moscow did not come to heel.

Kellogg and several others in the Trump entourage said that the war was at a stalemate and that lives were now being lost daily for no purpose.

At a stalemate? we in the Opposition to the Washington narrative asked.   This suggested that Team Trump was receiving the same Kiev propaganda from their daily CIA input as had the Biden administration before it. The only glimpse of hope we remarked was that the lady carrying a candle of truth in the darkness, Tulsi Gabbard, would be confirmed as Director of National Intelligence, would kick the intelligence agencies in the butt and insist on their providing unbiased and well-founded daily reports for her to present to the President.

All of these suppositions about Trump have in the past week been proven to be dead wrong. What we have seen is the Donald Trump 90-minute phone conversation with Vladimir Putin agreeing on the path to a summit meeting that will resolve the Ukraine war in the context of a full re-set of US-Russian relations. We heard Pete Hegseth tell the Ukraine Coordinating organization in Brussels that NATO membership for Ukraine is improbable and that return of the country to its pre-war borders would not happen. We watched as Vice President J.D. Vance directly criticized the European Union member states for undermining their own security by their authoritarian, Soviet-like attacks on free speech at home, by their denial of political legitimacy to their own populist parties on the Right and on the Left, who represent millions of their fellow citizens, by their encouraging the Romanian authorities to cancel their latest presidential elections because the candidate favoring normal relations with Russia came out first.

The rift that Vance opened with the Europeans was widened to a broad chasm when matched with breaking news that US and Russian delegations would be meeting in Riyad yesterday to prepare the way for a resolution of the Ukraine war and that neither the Ukrainians nor the Europeans were invited to the table.  Nor would General Kellogg be present, because he was sidelined by Trump to look after relations with Ukraine and with the Europeans, while the presidential emissary to the talks with the Russians would be Trump confidant and recent facilitator of the Israeli-Hamas truce Steve Witkoff.

As Vance and Trump surely anticipated, the Vice President’s speech left the European high officials in the Munich Conference flustered, unbelieving, horrified.  The European press called his speech a diatribe, the worst attack on the West since Putin’s 2007 speech at the same venue. Yesterday’s Le Monde, a Left-leaning publication which generally is contemptuous of the Rightist domestic agenda of Trumpites, described the Vance speech as ‘hostile’ and ‘fascist’ in nature. There was the realization that Europe is on its own in its defense on the Continent, that the U.S. now is a questionable friend and an unreliable ally.

Washington did not invite the Europeans to the talks, but by way of ‘consultation’ invited them to fill out a questionnaire that demanded figures on troops and equipment that they were prepared to send to Ukraine as ‘peace-keepers’ to provide for Ukrainian security following conclusion of a peace treaty. This prompted Emmanuel Macron to invite the leaders of the key European supporters of Ukraine to a meeting in Paris on Monday to issue a joint statement on their contribution to peace-keeping.

Over the weekend, there was talk all around the European chanceries about ‘a place at the table’ of the peace talks that they were being denied.  I imagine they all were aware of the American political saying that ‘if you do not have a seat at the table, it means you are on the menu.’

As we now know, the European leaders, plus von der Leyen from the Commission, De Costa from the European Council and Mark Rutte representing NATO all failed to agree in Paris on putting together a contingent of peace-keepers.  Most remarkably Germany, Poland and Spain all said Nyet.  Sweden came up with a feeble ‘maybe.’  End of story. When pressed for a decision, the Europeans chose to shut up and not to put up, as poker players would say.  And I have little doubt that this was precisely what Team Trump expected to happen when it sent out the questionnaire.

At the press conference in Riyadh at the conclusion of their four and a half hour talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and with Presidential Foreign Policy advisor Yuri Ushakov, Rubio, Waltz and Witkoff spoke very well. They were very diplomatic, very much in control of the discourse with aggressive, unfriendly journalists from the press. They showed themselves to be loyal, shall we say deferential to the President whose will they were carrying out. They also appeared to be fully up to the task.

From what the American negotiators said and to what Lavrov added in his own remarks to Russian journalists when the talks were over, we understand that the first issue that they addressed was to restore normal staffing and operating procedures at the respective diplomatic missions in Washington and Moscow which had been cut to nearly zero under the Biden administration. This begins with the appointment and confirmation of ambassadors on each side. This is a precondition for successful work to prepare a summit of the national leaders that will address the many separate issues of common interest including peace in Ukraine.

The isolation of Russia, the arms’ distance approach of dealing with a pariah state: that is all finished, kaput.

Evidently the repair work on state-to-state relations will proceed in parallel and not be held up by talks on ending the war, which is now acknowledged as something that will take some time. The U.S. side recognizes that a permanent and broad relationship with Russia is essential to deal with global issues of interest to both nations.

This will bring the relationship to the third phase of talks:  about ‘geopolitical’ issues.  Here we may expect the U.S. to try to drive a wedge between Russia and China, and to try to agree on what role BRICS will have in the coming multipolar world while not fundamentally threatening U.S. interests.

The cherry on the cake was the press conference later yesterday that Donald Trump held at Mar a Lago. In answer to reporters’ questions on why Zelensky was excluded from the talks, he said that Zelensky had been at the table for three years, with no positive results.  As even today’s Financial Times recognizes in its article on the press conference, Trump was wholly dismissive of Zelensky and clearly wants to see him gone, removed by elections that the U.S. wants to be held within the context of the coming peace settlement. Trump remarked that Zelensky’s popularity rating in Ukraine has fallen to 4%. Compare that to the 52% support which the FT mentions with reference to polls by a sociological institute in Kiev.

                                                                         *****

What sense do I make of all the foregoing?

The negotiating methods that Trump used from inauguration day to present are a perfect example of the alternating feint to the right, feint to the left methods that Mikhail Gorbachev used from early in his presidency to keep his fellow members of the collective Soviet leadership submissive. This is what the panelists in Solovyov’s show understood from their close experience with this at home.

It is high time for Americans and Europeans now to appreciate these consummate political skills within Team Trump, and to wish him well.

Those in the alternative media, just like those in mainstream who try to kick the tires, saying that Trump is motivated by narrow financial interests or other personal considerations that come from his vanity are being small-minded and are intentionally missing the big picture.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2025

Translation into German below (Andreas Mylaeus)

Donald Trump: der Gorbatschow unserer Zeit

Vor ein paar Wochen sagten russische politische Kommentatoren in der Talkshow „Abend mit Vladimir Solovyov“, dass dieser Mann aufgrund der Lawine von ersten Dekreten nach seiner Amtseinführung wie eine amerikanische Version ihres eigenen Präsidenten Michail Gorbatschow wirke.

Das war nicht als Kompliment gemeint. Die Seite von Gorbatschow, an die sie dachten, war sein radikaler Ansatz zur Zerstörung der sowjetischen Wirtschaft und politischen Ordnung. Sie betrachteten Trump und insbesondere seinen Kampfhund Elon Musk als jemanden, der durch seine zerstörerische Arbeit Chaos stiftet, was zu einer sehr starken Reaktion seiner politischen Gegner führen wird, wodurch seine Reformen schließlich neutralisiert und das Land geschwächt werden.

Gestern Abend verglichen die Diskussionsteilnehmer in dieser Talkshow Trump immer noch mit Gorbatschow, aber auf eine ganz andere, viel positivere Weise. Sie konzentrieren sich nun auf Trumps scheinbar aufrichtige Bemühungen, Frieden zu schaffen, und auch auf seine bemerkenswerten politischen Fähigkeiten, die niemand in Russland oder hier im Westen je vermutet hätte.

Das bringt mich zurück zu dem, was ich und praktisch alle anderen in den alternativen Medien über Trump sagten, kurz nachdem er seine „Machtminister“ ernannt hatte, Michael Waltz als Nationalen Sicherheitsberater, Marco Rubio als Außenminister und Pete Hegseth als Verteidigungsminister. Die Ernennungen wurden zunächst damit erklärt, dass alle Ernannten fanatische Zionisten seien, die von der israelischen Lobby gekauft seien. Dann hieß es, sie seien inkompetent. Einige Analysten in den alternativen Medien bemerkten, dass Rubio ein Leichtgewicht sei, ein Mann, der dem Doyen der Weltdiplomatie, dem Russen Sergej Lawrow, niemals das Wasser reichen könne.

Unsere Verwirrung und anfängliche Enttäuschung über Trumps Nominierungen wurde noch verstärkt, als er General Keith Kellogg zu seinem persönlichen Abgesandten ernannte, der die Friedensgespräche mit den Russen und Ukrainern leiten sollte. Kaum war er ernannt worden, gab Kellogg völlig dumme öffentliche Erklärungen darüber ab, wie er die Russen dazu bringen würde, um Frieden zu US-Bedingungen zu bitten, indem er drohte, die gegen Russland verhängten Sanktionen drastisch zu verschärfen und neue, beeindruckende Angriffswaffen an Kiew zu liefern, falls Moskau nicht einlenken würde.

Kellogg und mehrere andere aus Trumps Gefolge sagten, dass der Krieg in einer Sackgasse stecke und dass nun täglich Menschen sinnlos ihr Leben lassen müssten.

In einer Sackgasse? – fragten wir in der Opposition zum Washingtoner Narrativ. Dies deutete darauf hin, dass das Team Trump die gleiche Kiew-Propaganda aus dem täglichen CIA-Input erhielt wie zuvor die Biden-Administration. Der einzige Hoffnungsschimmer, den wir bemerkten, war, dass die Frau, die eine Kerze der Wahrheit in der Dunkelheit trug, Tulsi Gabbard, als Direktorin des Nationalen Nachrichtendienstes bestätigt werden würde, den Geheimdiensten in den Hintern treten und darauf bestehen würde, dass sie ihr unvoreingenommene und fundierte tägliche Berichte vorlegen, die sie dem Präsidenten vorlegen kann.

All diese Annahmen über Trump haben sich in der vergangenen Woche als völlig falsch erwiesen. Wir haben gesehen, wie Donald Trump in einem 90-minütigen Telefongespräch mit Wladimir Putin den Weg für ein Gipfeltreffen ebnete, das den Ukraine-Krieg im Rahmen einer vollständigen Neuordnung der Beziehungen zwischen den USA und Russland beilegen soll. Wir hörten, wie Pete Hegseth der Koordinierungsorganisation für die Ukraine in Brüssel mitteilte, dass eine NATO-Mitgliedschaft der Ukraine unwahrscheinlich sei und dass eine Rückkehr des Landes zu seinen Vorkriegsgrenzen nicht stattfinden werde. Wir sahen, wie Vizepräsident J.D. Vance die Mitgliedstaaten der Europäischen Union direkt dafür kritisierte, dass sie ihre eigene Sicherheit untergraben, indem sie zu Hause autoritäre, sowjetähnliche Angriffe auf die Redefreiheit verüben, indem sie ihren eigenen populistischen Parteien von rechts und links, die Millionen ihrer Mitbürger vertreten, die politische Legitimität verweigern, indem sie die rumänischen Behörden ermutigen, ihre jüngsten Präsidentschaftswahlen abzusagen, weil der Kandidat, der normale Beziehungen zu Russland befürwortet, als erster daraus hervorging.

Die Kluft, die Vance zwischen den Europäern aufgerissen hatte, wurde zu einem tiefen Abgrund, als bekannt wurde, dass sich die Delegationen der USA und Russlands gestern in Riad treffen würden, um den Weg für eine Lösung des Ukraine-Krieges zu ebnen, und dass weder die Ukrainer noch die Europäer an den Gesprächen teilnehmen würden. Auch General Kellogg war nicht anwesend, da er von Trump davon entbunden wurde, sich um die Beziehungen zur Ukraine und zu den Europäern zu kümmern, während der Gesandte des Präsidenten für die Gespräche mit den Russen der Trump-Vertraute und jüngste Vermittler des Waffenstillstands zwischen Israel und der Hamas, Steve Witkoff, sein sollte.

Wie Vance und Trump sicherlich erwartet hatten, hinterließ die Rede des Vizepräsidenten bei den europäischen Spitzenbeamten auf der Münchner Konferenz Verwirrung, Unglauben und Entsetzen. Die europäische Presse bezeichnete seine Rede als Schmährede, als schlimmsten Angriff auf den Westen seit Putins Rede 2007 am selben Ort. Die gestrige Le Monde, eine linksgerichtete Publikation, die die rechte innenpolitische Agenda der Trump-Anhänger im Allgemeinen verachtet, bezeichnete die Rede von Vance als „feindselig“ und „faschistisch“. Es wurde erkannt, dass Europa bei seiner Verteidigung auf dem Kontinent auf sich allein gestellt ist und dass die USA nun ein fragwürdiger Freund und ein unzuverlässiger Verbündeter sind.

Washington lud die Europäer nicht zu den Gesprächen ein, sondern forderte sie im Rahmen einer „Konsultation“ auf, einen Fragebogen auszufüllen, in dem Zahlen zu Truppen und Ausrüstung abgefragt wurden, die sie bereit waren, als „Friedenstruppen“ in die Ukraine zu entsenden, um nach Abschluss eines Friedensvertrags für die Sicherheit der Ukraine zu sorgen. Dies veranlasste Emmanuel Macron, die Staats- und Regierungschefs der wichtigsten europäischen Unterstützer der Ukraine am Montag zu einem Treffen in Paris einzuladen, um eine gemeinsame Erklärung über ihren Beitrag zur Friedenssicherung abzugeben.

Am Wochenende war in allen europäischen Kanzleien von einem „Platz am Tisch“ der Friedensgespräche die Rede, der ihnen verweigert wurde. Ich kann mir vorstellen, dass sie alle das amerikanische politische Sprichwort kannten: „Wenn du keinen Platz am Tisch hast, bedeutet das, dass du auf der Speisekarte stehst.“

Wie wir jetzt wissen, konnten sich die europäischen Staats- und Regierungschefs sowie von der Leyen von der Kommission, De Costa vom Europäischen Rat und Mark Rutte als Vertreter der NATO in Paris nicht auf die Aufstellung eines Kontingents von Friedenstruppen einigen. Bemerkenswerterweise sagten Deutschland, Polen und Spanien alle „Njet“. Schweden kam mit einem schwachen „Vielleicht“. Ende der Geschichte. Als sie zu einer Entscheidung gedrängt wurden, entschieden sich die Europäer dafür, den Mund zu halten und nicht den Einsatz zu bringen, wie Pokerspieler sagen würden. Und ich habe kaum Zweifel, dass das genau das war, was das Team Trump erwartet hatte, als es den Fragebogen verschickte.

Auf der Pressekonferenz in Riad zum Abschluss ihrer viereinhalbstündigen Gespräche mit dem russischen Außenminister Sergej Lawrow und dem außenpolitischen Berater des Präsidenten, Juri Uschakow, haben Rubio, Waltz und Witkoff sehr gut gesprochen. Sie waren sehr diplomatisch und hatten die Diskussion mit aggressiven, unfreundlichen Journalisten aus der Presse sehr gut im Griff. Sie zeigten sich loyal, sagen wir, respektvoll gegenüber dem Präsidenten, dessen Willen sie ausführten. Sie schienen auch der Aufgabe voll und ganz gewachsen zu sein.

Nach den Aussagen der amerikanischen Unterhändler und den eigenen Bemerkungen Lawrows gegenüber russischen Journalisten nach Abschluss der Gespräche zu urteilen, war das erste Thema, das sie ansprachen, die Wiederherstellung der normalen Personal- und Betriebsabläufe in den jeweiligen diplomatischen Vertretungen in Washington und Moskau, die unter der Biden-Regierung fast auf Null reduziert worden waren. Dies beginnt mit der Ernennung und Bestätigung von Botschaftern auf beiden Seiten. Dies ist eine Voraussetzung für die erfolgreiche Vorbereitung eines Gipfeltreffens der Staats- und Regierungschefs, bei dem die vielen verschiedenen Themen von gemeinsamem Interesse, einschließlich des Friedens in der Ukraine, erörtert werden.

Die Isolierung Russlands, der Ansatz des distanzierten Vorgehens im Umgang mit einem Paria-Staat: Das ist alles vorbei, kaput (sic!).

Die Reparaturarbeiten an den Beziehungen zwischen den Staaten werden offensichtlich parallel fortgesetzt und nicht durch Gespräche über die Beendigung des Krieges aufgehalten, von dem man jetzt weiß, dass er noch einige Zeit andauern wird. Die USA erkennen an, dass eine dauerhafte und umfassende Beziehung zu Russland unerlässlich ist, um globale Fragen zu behandeln, die für beide Nationen von Interesse sind.

Damit tritt die Beziehung in die dritte Gesprächsphase ein: die Gespräche über „geopolitische“ Fragen. Hier können wir erwarten, dass die USA versuchen werden, einen Keil zwischen Russland und China zu treiben und sich auf die Rolle zu einigen, die BRICS in der kommenden multipolaren Welt spielen wird, ohne dabei die Interessen der USA grundlegend zu gefährden.

Das Sahnehäubchen war die Pressekonferenz, die Donald Trump gestern später in Mar a Lago abhielt. Auf die Frage der Reporter, warum Selensky von den Gesprächen ausgeschlossen wurde, antwortete er, dass Selensky drei Jahre lang am Tisch gesessen habe, ohne dass es zu positiven Ergebnissen gekommen sei. Wie selbst die heutige Financial Times in ihrem Artikel über die Pressekonferenz einräumt, hat Trump Zelensky völlig abgelehnt und möchte ihn eindeutig loswerden, indem er durch Wahlen entfernt wird, die die USA im Rahmen der bevorstehenden Friedensregelung abgehalten sehen wollen. Trump bemerkte, dass Zelenskys Beliebtheitswert in der Ukraine auf 4 % gesunken ist. Vergleichen Sie das mit der 52-prozentigen Unterstützung, die die FT unter Berufung auf Umfragen eines soziologischen Instituts in Kiew erwähnt.

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Was bedeutet das alles für mich?

Die Verhandlungsmethoden, die Trump seit seiner Amtseinführung anwendet, sind ein perfektes Beispiel für die abwechselnden Finten nach rechts und links, die Michail Gorbatschow seit Beginn seiner Präsidentschaft einsetzte, um seine Kollegen in der kollektiven sowjetischen Führung gefügig zu halten. Das ist es, was die Diskussionsteilnehmer in Solowjows Show aus ihrer eigenen Erfahrung damit zu Hause verstanden haben.

Es ist höchste Zeit, dass Amerikaner und Europäer diese vollendeten politischen Fähigkeiten im Team Trump zu schätzen wissen und ihm alles Gute wünschen.

Diejenigen in den alternativen Medien, genau wie diejenigen im Mainstream, die versuchen, Trump auf den Zahn zu fühlen, indem sie sagen, dass er von engen finanziellen Interessen oder anderen persönlichen Überlegungen, die aus seiner Eitelkeit resultieren, motiviert ist, sind kleingeistig und lassen absichtlich das große Ganze außer Acht.

Translation below into Spanish (Chod Zom)

Donald Trump: el Gorbachov de nuestro tiempo

Hace un par de semanas, los comentaristas políticos rusos decían en el programa de entrevistas Evening with Vladimir Solovyov que, por su avalancha de primeros decretos tras su toma de posesión, parecía que este hombre era una versión americana de su propio presidente Mijaíl Gorbachov.

Esto no pretendía ser un cumplido. El lado de Gorbachov que tenían en mente era su enfoque de bola de demolición de la economía soviética y el orden político. Consideraban que Trump, y especialmente su perro de presa Elon Musk, estaban creando el caos con sus obras disruptivas, que provocarían una reacción muy fuerte de sus oponentes políticos, neutralizando finalmente sus reformas y debilitando al país.

A partir de anoche, los panelistas de este programa de entrevistas seguían comparando a Trump con Gorbachov, pero de una manera muy diferente, mucho más favorable. Ahora se centran en los esfuerzos aparentemente genuinos de Trump por lograr la paz y también en sus notables habilidades políticas que nadie, ni en Rusia ni aquí en Occidente, sospechó jamás.

Eso me lleva de vuelta a lo que yo, y prácticamente todos los demás en los medios alternativos, estábamos diciendo sobre Trump poco después de que nombrara a sus ‘ministros del poder’, Michael Waltz como Asesor de Seguridad Nacional, Marco Rubio como Secretario de Estado y Pete Hegseth como Secretario de Defensa. Los nombramientos se explicaron primero por el hecho de que todos los designados eran sionistas rabiosos, en el bolsillo del lobby israelí. Luego se dijo que eran incompetentes. Algunos analistas de los medios alternativos señalaron que Rubio es un peso ligero, un hombre que nunca podría estar a la altura del decano de la diplomacia mundial, el ruso Sergei Lavrov.

Lo que agravó aún más nuestra confusión y decepción inicial con las nominaciones de Trump, fue el nombramiento del general Keith Kellogg como su emisario personal para dirigir las conversaciones de paz con rusos y ucranianos. aún más nuestra confusión y decepción inicial con los nombramientos de Trump. Tan pronto como fue nombrado, Kellogg hizo declaraciones públicas totalmente tontas sobre de cómo haría para que los rusos pidieran la paz en los términos de Estados Unidos, mediante amenazas de intensificar drásticamente las sanciones aplicadas a Rusia y mediante el suministro de nuevas e impresionantes armas ofensivas a Kiev si Moscú no se doblegaba.

Kellogg y varias otras personas del entorno de Trump dijeron que la guerra estaba en un punto muerto y que ahora se perdían vidas a diario sin ningún propósito.

¿En un punto muerto? preguntamos nosotros en la oposición a la narrativa de Washington. Esto sugería que el equipo de Trump estaba recibiendo la misma propaganda de Kiev en su informe diario de la CIA, como antes lo había hecho la administración de Biden. El único atisbo de esperanza que apuntábamos, era que la dama que lleva una vela de verdad en la oscuridad, Tulsi Gabbard, fuera confirmada como Directora de Inteligencia Nacional, y diera una patada en el trasero a las agencias de inteligencia e insistiera en que le proporcionaran informes diarios imparciales y bien fundamentados para que ella se los presentara al Presidente.

La semana pasada se demostró que todas estas suposiciones sobre Trump eran totalmente erróneas. Lo que hemos visto es la conversación telefónica de 90 minutos de Donald Trump con Vladimir Putin acordando el camino hacia una cumbre que resuelva la guerra de Ucrania en el contexto de un replanteamiento total de las relaciones entre Estados Unidos y Rusia. Hemos oído a Pete Hegseth decir a la organización coordinadora de Ucrania en Bruselas que el ingreso de Ucrania en la OTAN es improbable y que el retorno del país a sus fronteras anteriores a la guerra no se produciría. Hemos visto cómo el vicepresidente J.D. Vance criticaba directamente a los Estados miembros de la Unión Europea por socavar su propia seguridad con sus ataques autoritarios, de tipo soviético, contra la libertad de expresión en sus países, con su negación de dar legitimidad política a sus propios partidos populistas de derecha e izquierda, que representan a millones de sus conciudadanos, con su aliento a las autoridades rumanas para que anularan sus últimas elecciones presidenciales porque el candidato partidario de unas relaciones normales con Rusia salió primero.

La brecha que Vance abrió con los europeos se ensanchó hasta convertirse en un amplio abismo cuando coincidió con la noticia de última hora de que delegaciones estadounidenses y rusas se reunirían ayer en Riad para preparar el camino hacia una resolución de la guerra de Ucrania y que ni los ucranianos ni los europeos estaban invitados a la mesa.  Tampoco estaría presente el general Kellogg, porque fue marginado por Trump para que se ocupe de las relaciones con Ucrania y los europeos, mientras que el emisario presidencial a las conversaciones con los rusos sería el confidente de Trump, y reciente facilitador de la tregua entre Israel y Hamás, Steve Witkoff.

Como seguramente anticiparon Vance y Trump, el discurso del vicepresidente dejó a los altos cargos europeos en la Conferencia de Múnich desconcertados, incrédulos, horrorizados. La prensa europea calificó su discurso de diatriba, el peor ataque a Occidente desde el discurso de Putin en 2007 en el mismo lugar. Ayer, Le Monde, una publicación de tendencia izquierdista que generalmente desprecia la agenda interna derechista de los trumpistas, describió el discurso de Vance como de naturaleza «hostil» y «fascista». Se constató que Europa está sola en su defensa del Continente, que Estados Unidos es ahora un amigo cuestionable y un aliado poco fiable.

Washington no invitó a los europeos a las conversaciones, sino que, a modo de «consulta», los invitó a rellenar un cuestionario que pedía cifras sobre las tropas y el equipo que estaban dispuestos a enviar a Ucrania como «fuerzas de paz» para garantizar la seguridad ucraniana tras la conclusión de un tratado de paz. Esto llevó a Emmanuel Macron a invitar a los líderes de los principales partidarios europeos que apoyan a Ucrania, a una reunión en París el lunes, para emitir una declaración conjunta sobre su contribución al mantenimiento de la paz.

Durante el fin de semana, en todas las cancillerías europeas se habló de «un sitio en la mesa» de las conversaciones de paz ,que se les estaba negando. Imagino que todos conocían el dicho político estadounidense de que «si no tienes un sitio en la mesa, significa que estás en el menú».

Como ahora sabemos, los líderes europeos, además de von der Leyen de la Comisión, De Costa del Consejo Europeo y Mark Rutte en representación de la OTAN, no lograron ponerse de acuerdo en París para formar un contingente de fuerzas de paz. Lo más destacable es que Alemania, Polonia y España, todos, dijeron «Nyet». Suecia respondió con un débil «tal vez». Fin de la historia. Cuando se les presionó para que tomaran una decisión, los europeos optaron por callar y no poner, como dirían los jugadores de póquer. Y no me cabe duda de que esto era precisamente lo que el equipo de Trump esperaba que ocurriera cuando envió el cuestionario.

En la rueda de prensa en Riad al término de sus conversaciones de cuatro horas y media con el ministro ruso de Asuntos Exteriores, Sergei Lavrov, y con el asesor presidencial de Política Exterior, Yuri Ushakov, Rubio, Waltz y Witkoff hablaron muy bien. Estuvieron muy diplomáticos, controlaron muy bien el discurso con periodistas agresivos y poco amistosos de la prensa. Se mostraron leales, digamos deferentes, al Presidente cuya voluntad cumplían. También parecieron estar plenamente a la altura de la tarea.

Por lo que dijeron los negociadores estadounidenses y por lo que Lavrov añadió en sus propias declaraciones a los periodistas rusos cuando terminaron las conversaciones, entendemos que la primera cuestión que abordaron fue restablecer la dotación normal de personal y los procedimientos operativos en las respectivas misiones diplomáticas en Washington y Moscú, que se habían reducido casi a cero bajo la administración Biden. Esto comienza con el nombramiento y la confirmación de embajadores en cada lado. Se trata de una condición previa para preparar con éxito una cumbre de los líderes nacionales en la que se aborden las numerosas cuestiones de interés común, incluida la paz en Ucrania.

El aislamiento de Rusia, el enfoque de poner distancia para tratar con un Estado paria: todo eso está acabado, kaput.

Evidentemente, el trabajo de reparación de las relaciones entre Estados se llevará a cabo en paralelo y no se verá retrasado por las conversaciones sobre el fin de la guerra, que ahora se reconoce que llevará algún tiempo. La parte estadounidense reconoce que una relación permanente y amplia con Rusia es esencial para tratar cuestiones globales de interés para ambas naciones.

Esto llevará la relación a la tercera fase de las conversaciones: sobre cuestiones «geopolíticas».  Aquí cabe esperar que Estados Unidos intente abrir una brecha entre Rusia y China, y que trate de ponerse de acuerdo sobre el papel que tendrán los BRICS en el próximo mundo multipolar sin amenazar fundamentalmente los intereses estadounidenses.

La guinda del pastel fue la rueda de prensa que Donald Trump ofreció ayer en Mar a Lago. En respuesta a las preguntas de los periodistas sobre por qué Zelensky fue excluido de las conversaciones, dijo que Zelensky había estado en la mesa durante tres años, sin resultados positivos. Como reconoce incluso el Financial Times de hoy en su artículo sobre la rueda de prensa, Trump se mostró totalmente despectivo con Zelensky y claramente quiere verlo fuera, eliminado por unas elecciones que EE.UU. quiere que se celebren en el contexto del próximo acuerdo de paz. Trump señaló que el índice de popularidad de Zelensky en Ucrania ha caído al 4%. Compárese con el 52% de apoyo que menciona el FT en referencia a las encuestas de un instituto sociológico de Kiev.

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¿Qué sentido tiene todo lo anterior?

Los métodos de negociación que Trump utilizó desde el día de la toma de posesión hasta el presente son un ejemplo perfecto de los métodos de alternar con una finta a la derecha, y una finta a la izquierda que Mijaíl Gorbachov utilizó desde el principio de su presidencia para mantener sumisos a sus compañeros de la dirección colectiva soviética. Esto es lo que los panelistas del programa de Solovyov entendieron por su experiencia cercana con esto en casa.

Ya es hora de que los estadounidenses y los europeos aprecien estas consumadas habilidades políticas dentro del Equipo Trump, y le deseen lo mejor.

Los que en los medios alternativos, al igual que los que en la corriente dominante, que intentan patear los neumáticos[1], dicen que Trump está motivado por estrechos intereses financieros u otras consideraciones personales que provienen de su vanidad, son de mente estrecha y están pasando por alto intencionalmente el panorama general.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2025

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[1]Figurativo. ”try to kick the tires” = probar o examinar algo detenidamente antes de comprarlo.

Both Le Monde and The Financial Times this evening are reporting that the meeting  earlier in the day of the heads of government of the most interested EU member states, the secretary general of NATO, the president of the European Council, the head of the European Commission and her Commissioner for External Relations to discuss their response to Trump’s request to list the number of units and equipment they are ready to deploy in Ukraine as peacekeepers and enforce a peace settlement with Russia ended only in discord.

To be sure, Keir Starmer of the United Kingdom said he was ready to deploy troops. The Swedes were more circumspect, saying they ‘do not exclude’ such a possibility.   However, German Chancellor Scholz put a firm Nein! to the idea which he called ‘very inappropriate’ and ‘premature.’  Most surprisingly, the viscerally anti-Russian prime minister of Poland Donald Tusk also said his country is not ready to deploy. Tusk knows better than anyone else among his neighbors the might of the Russian armed forces and the wholly underprepared state of Polish military assets.

The meeting in Paris lasted 3 hours and appears to have adjourned without any joint statements, meaning it was a failure for Europe.

Where there are losers on one side, there are winners on the other side. The failure of the Europeans represented a victory for President Trump. When the moment came to ‘put up or shut up’ as poker players say in the States, Europe just shut up. Quite possibly this is precisely what Trump expected when he demanded not generalities about their values but solid commitments of men and materiel from the European allies.

Prime Minister Starmer, who was hoping to speak for Europe when he visits the White House shortly and to play the role of intermediary, now will arrive in Washington with empty hands.

For the Russians this failure removes one headache in their talks with the Americans which open in Riyadh tomorrow. The Kremlin was staunchly opposed to any NATO boots on the ground in Ukraine, saying it would violate the basic principle over which they have fought their war in and over Ukraine these past three years.

The outcome of Paris talks was unknown when the authoritative Russian talk show The Great Game was taped late in the afternoon Moscow time. However, host Vyacheslav Nikonov elicited some interesting and useful comments from his panelists on what the meeting of the U.S. and Russian delegations in Riyadh tomorrow will be working on.

The Russians expect the talk will start with the respective American and Russian views of what a New World Order will look like, and only when that is out on the table and, hopefully, agreed can they proceed to discuss a settlement in Ukraine. They anticipate that there will be very tough talk about that World Order, because surely Team Trump wants to draw Russia away from Iran, North Korea and, most importantly, China.  For their part, the Russians insist that it is naïve on the American part to think they can drive a wedge between Russia and China.  Another tough issue will be BRICS, which Trump would like to destroy but which the Russians treasure as a major achievement in moving the world towards multipolarity. And multipolarity has already been conceded as The Next Big Thing by Marco Rubio.

Per Nikonov’s panelists, the Kremlin also expects that a key subject for discussion will be restoring normal state to state relations which have been nearly entirely severed during the Biden years. As a related matter, they will try to identify major issues in the international agenda where they can cooperate constructively. Presumably the situation in West Asia, and in particular the Iran nuclear program would be such subjects.

I close this brief update by sharing what Dmitry Peskov said today about the Russian delegation on its way to Riyadh for talks with the Americans.  The head of the delegation is, of course, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, whose counterpart on the American side is Marco Rubio. The second figure named is Yuri Ushakov, whose title as Assistant to the Russian President. In terms of rank, that puts him together with Steve Witkoff, Trump’s personal emissary.

Who is Ushakov?  Wikipedia tells us everything we need to know. Obviously, he enjoys the full trust of Vladimir Putin, because he has been an assistant to the president since 2012.  But that is only a small part of the story.  Ushakov is a consummate diplomat who graduated from the prestige Moscow Institute of International Relations (MGIMO) that produces the vast majority of Russian senior diplomats. He has a doctorate in history.  More to the point, for 10 years beginning in 1998, he was the Russian ambassador to the United States. He is fluent in English and Danish.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2025

Translation below into German (Andreas Mylaeus)

Treffen in Paris ist ein Flop: Keine Einigung über die Entsendung von Friedenstruppen in die Ukraine

Sowohl Le Monde als auch The Financial Times berichten heute Abend, dass das Treffen am frühen Morgen der Regierungschefs der am meisten interessierten EU-Mitgliedstaaten, des NATO-Generalsekretärs, des Präsidenten des Europäischen Rates, des Leiters der Europäischen Kommission und ihres Kommissars für Außenbeziehungen, um ihre Antwort auf Trumps Bitte zu besprechen, die Anzahl der Einheiten und Ausrüstung aufzulisten, die sie bereit sind, in der Ukraine als Friedenstruppen einzusetzen und eine Friedensregelung mit Russland durchzusetzen, nur in Zwietracht endete.

Keir Starmer aus dem Vereinigten Königreich erklärte sich zwar bereit, Truppen zu entsenden. Die Schweden waren vorsichtiger und sagten, sie würden eine solche Möglichkeit „nicht ausschließen“. Bundeskanzler Scholz erteilte der Idee jedoch eine klare Absage und bezeichnete sie als „sehr unangemessen“ und „verfrüht“. Überraschenderweise erklärte auch der zutiefst antirussische polnische Ministerpräsident Donald Tusk, sein Land sei nicht bereit, Truppen zu entsenden. Tusk kennt die Macht der russischen Streitkräfte und den völlig unzureichenden Zustand der polnischen Militäranlagen besser als jeder andere seiner Nachbarn.

Das Treffen in Paris dauerte drei Stunden und wurde offenbar ohne gemeinsame Erklärungen vertagt, was bedeutet, dass es für Europa ein Misserfolg war.

Wo es auf der einen Seite Verlierer gibt, gibt es auf der anderen Seite Gewinner. Das Scheitern der Europäer war ein Sieg für Präsident Trump. Als der Moment kam, in dem man „put up or shut up“ („mitgehen oder aufgeben“) musste, wie Pokerspieler in den USA sagen, hat Europa einfach aufgegeben. Möglicherweise ist es genau das, was Trump erwartet hat, als er von den europäischen Verbündeten keine allgemeinen Aussagen über ihre Werte, sondern konkrete Zusagen von Männern und Material forderte.

Premierminister Starmer, der gehofft hatte, bei seinem bevorstehenden Besuch im Weißen Haus für Europa zu sprechen und die Rolle des Vermittlers zu übernehmen, wird nun mit leeren Händen in Washington ankommen.

Für die Russen bedeutet dieses Scheitern eine Sorge weniger in ihren Gesprächen mit den Amerikanern, die morgen in Riad beginnen. Der Kreml war strikt gegen jegliche NATO-Truppen vor Ort in der Ukraine und erklärte, dies würde das Grundprinzip verletzen, für das sie in den letzten drei Jahren in der und um die Ukraine gekämpft haben.

Das Ergebnis der Pariser Gespräche war noch nicht bekannt, als die renommierte russische Talkshow „Das grosse Spiel“ am späten Nachmittag Moskauer Zeit aufgezeichnet wurde. Moderator Vyacheslav Nikonov entlockte seinen Diskussionsteilnehmern jedoch einige interessante und nützliche Kommentare zu den Themen, die morgen bei dem Treffen der US-amerikanischen und russischen Delegationen in Riad auf der Tagesordnung stehen werden.

Die Russen erwarten, dass das Gespräch mit den jeweiligen amerikanischen und russischen Ansichten darüber beginnt, wie eine neue Weltordnung aussehen wird, und erst wenn dies auf dem Tisch liegt und hoffentlich vereinbart ist, können sie mit der Diskussion über eine Lösung in der Ukraine fortfahren. Sie gehen davon aus, dass es sehr harte Gespräche über diese Weltordnung geben wird, denn das Team Trump will Russland sicherlich vom Iran, von Nordkorea und vor allem von China weglocken. Die Russen ihrerseits bestehen darauf, dass es von amerikanischer Seite naiv ist, zu glauben, sie könnten einen Keil zwischen Russland und China treiben. Ein weiteres schwieriges Thema werden die BRICS sein, die Trump gerne zerstören würde, die aber von den Russen als große Errungenschaft bei der Entwicklung der Welt in Richtung Multipolarität geschätzt werden. Und Multipolarität wurde bereits von Marco Rubio als „The Next Big Thing“ bezeichnet.

Laut den Diskussionsteilnehmern von Per Nikonov erwartet der Kreml außerdem, dass die Wiederherstellung normaler Beziehungen zwischen Staaten, die während der Biden-Jahre fast vollständig abgebrochen wurden, ein zentrales Diskussionsthema sein wird. In diesem Zusammenhang werden sie versuchen, wichtige Themen auf der internationalen Agenda zu identifizieren, bei denen sie konstruktiv zusammenarbeiten können. Vermutlich wären die Situation in Westasien und insbesondere das iranische Atomprogramm solche Themen.

Ich schließe dieses kurze Update mit einem Zitat von Dmitry Peskov, das er heute über die russische Delegation auf dem Weg nach Riad zu Gesprächen mit den Amerikanern gemacht hat. Der Delegationsleiter ist natürlich Außenminister Sergei Lavrov, dessen Amtskollege auf amerikanischer Seite Marco Rubio ist. Die zweite genannte Person ist Juri Uschakow, der den Titel eines Assistenten des russischen Präsidenten trägt. Damit ist er rangmäßig mit Steve Witkoff, Trumps persönlichem Abgesandten, gleichgestellt.

Wer ist Uschakow? Wikipedia sagt uns alles, was wir wissen müssen. Offensichtlich genießt er das volle Vertrauen von Wladimir Putin, denn er ist seit 2012 Assistent des Präsidenten. Aber das ist nur ein kleiner Teil der Geschichte. Uschakow ist ein vollendeter Diplomat, der sein Studium am renommierten Moskauer Institut für Internationale Beziehungen (MGIMO) abgeschlossen hat, das die überwiegende Mehrheit der russischen Spitzendiplomaten hervorbringt. Er hat einen Doktortitel in Geschichte. Noch wichtiger ist, dass er ab 1998 zehn Jahre lang russischer Botschafter in den Vereinigten Staaten war. Er spricht fließend Englisch und Dänisch.

Translation into Spanish below (Chod Zom)

Fracaso de la reunión de París: no hay acuerdo sobre el envío de tropas para mantener la paz en Ucrania

Tanto Le Monde como The Financial Times informan esta tarde de que la reunión de los jefes de gobierno de los Estados miembros de la UE más interesados, el secretario general de la OTAN, el presidente del Consejo Europeo, el presidente de la Comisión Europea y su comisario de Relaciones Exteriores, para debatir su respuesta a la petición de Trump de que enumeren el número de unidades y equipos que están dispuestos a desplegar en Ucrania como fuerzas de paz y de que hagan cumplir un acuerdo de paz con Rusia, acabó en discordia.

El británico Keir Starmer se mostró dispuesto a desplegar tropas. Los suecos se mostraron más circunspectos y diciendo que «no excluyen» esta posibilidad.   Sin embargo, el canciller alemán, Olaf Scholz, dió un rotundo Nein! a la idea, que calificó de «muy inapropiada» y «prematura».  Lo más sorprendente es que el visceralmente antirruso primer ministro de Polonia, Donald Tusk, también dijo que su país no está preparado para el despliegue. Tusk conoce mejor que nadie entre sus vecinos, el poderío de las fuerzas armadas rusas y el estado de absoluta falta de preparación de los activos militares polacos.

La reunión de París duró tres horas y parece que se levantó sin declaraciones conjuntas, por lo que se considera un fracaso para Europa.

Donde hay perdedores por un lado, hay ganadores por el otro. El fracaso de los europeos representó una victoria para el presidente Trump. Cuando llegó el momento de «levantarse o callarse», como dicen los jugadores de póquer en Estados Unidos, Europa se calló. Muy posiblemente esto es precisamente lo que Trump esperaba cuando exigió a los aliados europeos no generalidades sobre sus valores, sino compromisos sólidos de hombres y material.

El primer ministro Starmer, que esperaba hablar en nombre de Europa cuando visite próximamente la Casa Blanca y desempeñar el papel de intermediario, llegará ahora a Washington con las manos vacías.

Para los rusos, este fracaso elimina un quebradero de cabeza en sus conversaciones con los estadounidenses, que comenzarán mañana en Riad. El Kremlin se oponía firmemente a la presencia de la OTAN en Ucrania, alegando que violaría el principio básico sobre el que han librado su guerra en el país durante los últimos tres años.

Se desconocía el resultado de las conversaciones de París cuando se grabó a última hora de la tarde, hora de Moscú, el autorizado programa de entrevistas ruso The Great Game. Sin embargo, el presentador Vyacheslav Nikonov suscitó algunos comentarios interesantes y útiles de sus panelistas sobre lo que se tratará en la reunión de mañana en Riad entre las delegaciones estadounidense y rusa.

Los rusos esperan que la conversación comience con los respectivos puntos de vista de Estados Unidos y Rusia sobre cómo será un Nuevo Orden Mundial, y sólo cuando esto esté sobre la mesa y, es de esperar, acordado, podrán pasar a discutir un acuerdo en Ucrania. Prevén que habrá conversaciones muy duras sobre ese Orden Mundial, porque seguramente el Equipo Trump quiere alejar a Rusia de Irán, Corea del Norte y, sobre todo, China. Por su parte, los rusos insisten en que es ingenuo por parte estadounidense pensar que pueden abrir una brecha entre Rusia y China. Otro asunto difícil será el BRICS, que Trump querría destruir pero que los rusos valoran como un logro importante en el avance del mundo hacia la multipolaridad. Y Marco Rubio ya ha admitido que la multipolaridad es «The Next Big Thing».

Según los panelistas de Nikonov, el Kremlin también espera que un tema clave de debate sea el restablecimiento de unas relaciones normales de Estado a Estado, rotas casi por completo durante los años de Biden. Como asunto relacionado, tratarán de identificar los principales temas de la agenda internacional en los que puedan cooperar de forma constructiva. Es de suponer que la situación en Asia Occidental, y en particular el programa nuclear iraní, serían esos temas.

Termino esta breve actualización compartiendo lo que ha dicho hoy Dmitry Peskov sobre la delegación rusa que se dirige a Riad para mantener conversaciones con los estadounidenses. El jefe de la delegación es, por supuesto, el ministro de Asuntos Exteriores Sergei Lavrov, cuyo homólogo en el lado estadounidense es Marco Rubio. La segunda figura nombrada es Yuri Ushakov, cuyo título de Asistente del Presidente ruso. En términos de rango, eso le sitúa junto a Steve Witkoff, el emisario personal de Trump.

¿Quién es Ushakov? Wikipedia nos dice todo lo que necesitamos saber. Obviamente, goza de la plena confianza de Vladimir Putin, porque es asistente del presidente desde 2012. Pero eso es solo una pequeña parte de la historia. Ushakov es un diplomático consumado que se graduó en el prestigioso Instituto de Relaciones Internacionales de Moscú (MGIMO) que produce la gran mayoría de los diplomáticos rusos de alto rango. Tiene un doctorado en Historia. Más concretamente, fue embajador ruso en Estados Unidos durante diez años a partir de 1998. Habla con fluidez el inglés y el danés.

Update: More and more European leaders will gather in Paris this morning. To discuss exactly what?

The latest news on the meeting of European leaders that Emmanuel Macron will convene in Paris this morning published in The Financial Times online edition presents many questions that are not now unanswerable, but which should be identified at once if we are to make sense of the announcements made at the end of this gathering.

First, it would now appear that the leaders present will be more numerous than originally stated. Besides Germany, Poland, Italy and the United Kingdom, who were named initially, it seems that the heads of government from Spain, the Netherlands and Denmark will be there. Moreover, and very importantly, we can expect NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte to have a seat, which is quite extraordinary given that Team Trump stated explicitly that any peace-keeping force provided under the terms of an eventual peace settlement will not be a NATO mission.

Extraordinary as it may be, it fits in with the concept that the Europeans seem to share, that the ‘peace keepers’ are there to protect Ukraine from some expected attempt by the Russians to renew their aggressive war and seize more territory at some date in the future. That is to say, they willfully ignore the possibility, shall we say the likelihood that violations of any cease-fire and agreed borders will come from the revanchist Ukrainian side. That is precisely what happened during the positioning of OSCE monitors at the Donbas-Ukraine line of confrontation to enforce the Minsk-2 agreements.

The OSCE monitors were rapporteurs, nothing more. But their reports in the weeks prior to the Russian invasion in February 2022 clearly showed that the Ukrainian side was greatly increasing the frequency of its artillery barrages directed at the civilian population on the ‘rebel’ Donbas side in what could be construed as a ‘softening up operation’ ahead of the massive armed attack on the Donbas that the Kremlin feared was coming, and against which it had prepared its own 150,000 soldiers stationed at Ukraine’s borders.

If the peace-keeping force that the Europeans will propose today, specifying at their meeting in Paris the numbers of soldiers and equipment available for the mission, is intended to look only one way, at Russian violators of the peace terms, then indeed war will break out again. Under this protective cover, the Ukrainians may start lobbing missiles and artillery shells over their heads against the Russian settlements on the other side of the border. In short, that would be a self-fulfilling prophecy of Russian ‘aggression’ to come and is precisely the opposite of what Team Trump’s stated objective is – namely a definitive end to hostilities and normalization of relations with Russia.

As I have written in the past week, the mention by Team Trump of a ‘non-European’ contingent in the future peace-keeping force is precisely to ensure that the force is not a NATO mission. The reason is clear: Vladimir Putin surely told Trump that the Russians will not accept a NATO presence in Ukraine whatever it may be called. Full stop.

The sad reality is that the European leaders assembling today in Paris are diehard enthusiasts for precisely the situation that Team Trump rejects: they do not want a durable peace with Russia and a revision of the European security architecture that brings Russia in from the cold.  The sense of their insistence that Ukraine be a party to the negotiations from the start is that Ukraine would be allowed to present yet again its claims to recovery of all its lost territory and to receive war reparations from Russia. In short, they want to receive at the peace table what Ukraine and the US-led West have lost on the battlefield. This runs directly against the thinking of Team Trump and we may expect a harsh clash between the sides in the coming week or so.

Proof of my formulation of the problem is to be found in the latest statements of Antonio Costa, head of the European Council, who will also be participating in the Paris meeting at the invitation of Emmanuel Macron. He is cited in today’s FT thus:

The negotiations on the new security architecture need to take into account that Russia is a global threat, not only a threat to Ukraine

To this the FT adds:

Costa cited Russia’s aggressive stance towards the Baltic states Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which are EU and Nato members, and occupation of territory in states on the EU’s eastern flank as reasons why Brussels needed to be part of the talks.

And it then quotes Costa directly again:

Russia is clearly a threat to Baltic sovereignty, to our eastern border…They have a military presence in Moldova, in Georgia.

What I am saying is that Costa, and likely the heads of the  EU member states gathering in Paris today, are planning for a continuation of the ongoing Cold War not for its final resolution. For this they want and expect to receive US logistical and other support that is critically needed if their troops on the ground in Ukraine can be viable.

And that is where the European retrogrades and Team Trump will be in a direct clash.

Watch this space…

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2025

Translation below into German (Andreas Mylaeus)

Update: Immer mehr europäische Staats- und Regierungschefs werden sich heute Morgen in Paris versammeln. Um genau was zu besprechen?

Die neuesten Nachrichten über das Treffen der europäischen Staats- und Regierungschefs, das Emmanuel Macron heute Morgen in Paris einberufen wird, wurden in der Online-Ausgabe von The Financial Times veröffentlicht und werfen viele Fragen auf, die zwar nicht alle sofort beantwortet werden können, die aber sofort geklärt werden sollten, wenn wir die Ankündigungen am Ende dieser Versammlung verstehen wollen.

Zunächst scheint es, dass die anwesenden Staats- und Regierungschefs zahlreicher sein werden als ursprünglich angegeben. Neben Deutschland, Polen, Italien und dem Vereinigten Königreich, die ursprünglich genannt wurden, werden anscheinend auch die Regierungschefs von Spanien, den Niederlanden und Dänemark anwesend sein. Darüber hinaus, und das ist sehr wichtig, können wir davon ausgehen, dass NATO-Generalsekretär Mark Rutte einen Sitz haben wird, was ziemlich außergewöhnlich ist, da das Team Trump ausdrücklich erklärt hat, dass es sich bei einer Friedenstruppe, die im Rahmen einer eventuellen Friedensregelung entsandt wird, nicht um eine NATO-Mission handeln wird.

So außergewöhnlich es auch sein mag, es passt zu dem Konzept, das die Europäer zu teilen scheinen, dass die „Friedenswächter“ dazu da sind, die Ukraine vor einem erwarteten Versuch der Russen zu schützen, ihren Angriffskrieg zu erneuern und irgendwann in der Zukunft weiteres Territorium zu erobern. Das heißt, sie ignorieren absichtlich die Möglichkeit, sagen wir, die Wahrscheinlichkeit, dass Verstöße gegen einen Waffenstillstand und vereinbarte Grenzen von der revanchistischen ukrainischen Seite ausgehen werden. Genau das ist passiert, als OSZE-Beobachter an der Konfrontationslinie zwischen dem Donbass und der Ukraine stationiert wurden, um die Vereinbarungen von Minsk-2 durchzusetzen.

Die OSZE-Beobachter waren Berichterstatter, mehr nicht. Aber ihre Berichte in den Wochen vor dem russischen Einmarsch im Februar 2022 zeigten deutlich, dass die ukrainische Seite die Häufigkeit ihrer Artillerie-Sperrfeuer auf die Zivilbevölkerung auf der „Rebellenseite“ des Donbass stark erhöhte, was als „Aufweichungsoperation“ vor dem massiven bewaffneten Angriff auf den Donbass ausgelegt werden kann, den der Kreml befürchtete und auf den er seine eigenen 150.000 an den Grenzen der Ukraine stationierten Soldaten vorbereitet hatte.

Wenn die Friedenstruppe, die die Europäer heute vorschlagen werden, indem sie auf ihrem Treffen in Paris die Anzahl der für die Mission verfügbaren Soldaten und Ausrüstung festlegen, nur auf eine Art und Weise auf russische Friedensbrecher blicken soll, dann wird tatsächlich wieder ein Krieg ausbrechen. Unter diesem Schutzschild könnten die Ukrainer beginnen, Raketen und Artilleriegeschosse über ihre Köpfe hinweg auf die russischen Siedlungen auf der anderen Seite der Grenze zu feuern. Kurz gesagt wäre dies eine sich selbst erfüllende Prophezeiung einer bevorstehenden russischen „Aggression“ und genau das Gegenteil dessen, was das erklärte Ziel von Team Trump ist – nämlich ein endgültiges Ende der Feindseligkeiten und eine Normalisierung der Beziehungen zu Russland.

Wie ich in der vergangenen Woche geschrieben habe, soll die Erwähnung eines „nicht-europäischen“ Kontingents in der zukünftigen Friedenstruppe durch das Team Trump genau sicherstellen, dass es sich bei der Truppe nicht um eine NATO-Mission handelt. Der Grund dafür ist klar: Wladimir Putin hat Trump sicherlich gesagt, dass die Russen eine NATO-Präsenz in der Ukraine, wie auch immer sie genannt werden mag, nicht akzeptieren werden. Punkt.

Die traurige Realität ist, dass die europäischen Staats- und Regierungschefs, die sich heute in Paris versammeln, eingefleischte Befürworter genau der Situation sind, die das Team Trump ablehnt: Sie wollen keinen dauerhaften Frieden mit Russland und keine Revision der europäischen Sicherheitsarchitektur, die Russland aus der Isolation holt. Ihr Beharren darauf, dass die Ukraine von Anfang an an den Verhandlungen beteiligt sein muss, soll dazu dienen, dass die Ukraine erneut ihre Ansprüche auf die Rückgewinnung all ihrer verlorenen Gebiete geltend machen und Kriegsentschädigungen von Russland erhalten kann. Kurz gesagt, sie wollen am Verhandlungstisch das erhalten, was die Ukraine und der von den USA angeführte Westen auf dem Schlachtfeld verloren haben. Dies widerspricht völlig der Denkweise des Trump-Teams und wir können in der kommenden Woche oder so mit einem heftigen Konflikt zwischen den beiden Seiten rechnen.

Ein Beweis für meine Formulierung des Problems findet sich in den jüngsten Äußerungen von Antonio Costa, dem Vorsitzenden des Europäischen Rates, der auf Einladung von Emmanuel Macron ebenfalls an dem Treffen in Paris teilnehmen wird. In der heutigen Ausgabe der Financial Times wird er wie folgt zitiert:

Bei den Verhandlungen über die neue Sicherheitsarchitektur muss berücksichtigt werden, dass Russland eine globale Bedrohung darstellt, nicht nur eine Bedrohung für die Ukraine.

Dazu fügt die FT hinzu:

Costa nannte Russlands aggressive Haltung gegenüber den baltischen Staaten Estland, Lettland und Litauen, die EU- und NATO-Mitglieder sind, und die Besetzung von Gebieten in Staaten an der Ostflanke der EU als Gründe, warum Brüssel an den Gesprächen teilnehmen müsse.

Und dann zitiert sie Costa erneut direkt:

Russland ist eindeutig eine Bedrohung für die Souveränität des Baltikums, für unsere Ostgrenze … Sie haben eine militärische Präsenz in Moldawien und in Georgien.

Was ich damit sagen will, ist, dass Costa und wahrscheinlich auch die Staats- und Regierungschefs der EU-Mitgliedstaaten, die sich heute in Paris versammeln, eine Fortsetzung des anhaltenden Kalten Krieges planen und nicht dessen endgültige Beendigung. Dafür wollen und erwarten sie logistische und andere Unterstützung von den USA, die dringend benötigt wird, wenn ihre Truppen vor Ort in der Ukraine lebensfähig sein sollen.

Und genau hier prallen die europäischen Rückschrittler und das Team Trump direkt aufeinander.

Bleiben Sie weiter dran …

Translation below into Spanish (Chod Zom)

Actualización: Cada vez más líderes europeos se reunirán en París esta mañana. Para discutir exactamente qué?

Las últimas noticias sobre la reunión de líderes europeos que Emmanuel Macron convocará esta mañana en París publicadas en la edición digital de The Financial Times presentan muchas preguntas que ahora no son incontestables, pero que conviene identificar de una vez si queremos dar sentido a los anuncios que se hagan al término de este encuentro.

Primero, ahora parece que los líderes presentes serán más numerosos de lo que se dijo en un principio. Además de Alemania, Polonia, Italia y el Reino Unido, nombrados inicialmente, parece que estarán presentes los Jefes de Gobierno de España, los Países Bajos y Dinamarca. Por otra parte, y muy importante, podemos esperar que el Secretario General de la OTAN, Mark Rutte, tenga un asiento, lo cual es bastante extraordinario dado que el Equipo Trump declaró explícitamente que cualquier fuerza de mantenimiento de la paz proporcionada bajo los términos de un eventual acuerdo de paz no será una misión de la OTAN.

Por extraordinario que sea, encaja con el concepto que los europeos parecen compartir, que los «guardianes de la paz» están ahí para proteger a Ucrania de algún intento posible por parte de los rusos de renovar su guerra agresiva y apoderarse de más territorio en alguna fecha en el futuro. Es decir, ignoran inencionadamente la posibilidad, digamos la probabilidad, de que las violaciones de cualquier alto el fuego y de las fronteras acordadas provengan de la parte ucraniana revanchista. Eso es precisamente lo que ocurrió durante el posicionamiento de los observadores de la OSCE en la línea de confrontación entre Donbás y Ucrania para hacer cumplir los acuerdos de Minsk-2.

Los observadores de la OSCE eran relatores, nada más. Pero sus informes de las semanas previas a la invasión rusa de febrero de 2022 mostraban claramente que la parte ucraniana estaba aumentando enormemente la frecuencia de sus descargas de artillería dirigidas contra la población civil del lado «rebelde» de Donbás, en lo que podría interpretarse como una «operación de ablandamiento» previa al ataque armado masivo contra Donbás que el Kremlin temía que se avecinaba, y contra el que había preparado a sus propios 150.000 soldados estacionados en las fronteras de Ucrania.

Si la fuerza de mantenimiento de la paz que los europeos propondrán hoy, especificando en su reunión de París el número de soldados y equipos disponibles para la misión, tiene como objetivo mirar sólo en una dirección, a los violadores rusos de los términos de paz, entonces sí que estallará de nuevo la guerra. Bajo esta cobertura protectora, los ucranianos pueden empezar a lanzar misiles y proyectiles de artillería sobre sus cabezas contra los asentamientos rusos al otro lado de la frontera. En resumen, eso sería una profecía autocumplida de la «agresión» rusa por venir y es precisamente lo contrario de lo que es el objetivo declarado del Equipo Trump – a saber, el fin definitivo de las hostilidades y la normalización de las relaciones con Rusia.

Como he escrito en la última semana, la mención por parte del Equipo Trump de un contingente «no europeo» en la futura fuerza de mantenimiento de la paz es precisamente para asegurar que la fuerza no sea una misión de la OTAN. La razón es clara: Vladimir Putin seguramente le dijo a Trump que los rusos no aceptarán una presencia de la OTAN en Ucrania, se llame como se llame. Y punto.

La triste realidad es que los líderes europeos reunidos hoy en París son intransigentes entusiastas precisamente de la situación que el Equipo Trump rechaza: no quieren una paz duradera con Rusia ni una revisión de la arquitectura de seguridad europea que traiga a Rusia desde el frío.  El sentido de su insistencia en que Ucrania sea parte de las negociaciones desde el principio es que se permitiría a Ucrania presentar una vez más sus reclamaciones de recuperación de todo su territorio perdido y recibir reparaciones de guerra de Rusia. En resumen, quieren recibir en la mesa de negociaciones lo que Ucrania y el Occidente liderado por Estados Unidos han perdido en el campo de batalla. Esto va directamente en contra del pensamiento del Equipo Trump y podemos esperar un duro enfrentamiento entre las partes en la próxima semana más o menos.

Prueba de mi formulación del problema se puede encontrar en las últimas declaraciones de Antonio Costa, jefe del Consejo Europeo, que también participará en la reunión de París invitado por Emmanuel Macron. Así se le cita en el FT de hoy:

Las negociaciones sobre la nueva arquitectura de seguridad deben tener en cuenta que Rusia es una amenaza global, no sólo una amenaza para Ucrania».

A esto el FT añade:

Costa citó la postura agresiva de Rusia hacia los Estados bálticos Estonia, Letonia y Lituania, que son miembros de la UE y de la OTAN, y la ocupación de territorio en Estados del flanco oriental de la UE como razones por las que Bruselas debía formar parte de las conversaciones.

Y a continuación vuelve a citar directamente a Costa:

Rusia es claramente una amenaza para la soberanía del Báltico, para nuestra frontera oriental… Tienen presencia militar en Moldavia, en Georgia…».

Lo que quiero decir es que Costa, y probablemente los jefes de los Estados miembros de la UE reunidos hoy en París, están planeando la continuación de la Guerra Fría, no su resolución definitiva. Para ello quieren y esperan recibir el apoyo logístico y de otro tipo de EE.UU. que es críticamente necesario si sus tropas sobre el terreno en Ucrania pueden ser viables.

Y ahí es donde los retrógrados europeos y el Equipo Trump entrarán en un choque directo.

Mira este espacio…

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2025

Europe in disarray. Macron rides to the rescue

I offer in this essay a brief update on this past week’s progress towards a Russia-Ukraine peace agreement.

Apart from the stunning news at midweek about the 90 minute telephone conversation between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin the week was notable for the indications of what end game in the war may look like as set out by U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth at his maiden speech to the Ukraine Coordination group in Brussels and by the proceedings at the Munich Security Conference which opened on Friday.

The MSC proceedings were dominated by the remarkable address delivered by U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance, who called into question the democratic credentials of the European allies, saying that this internal threat posed a greater risk to their security than the external risks posed by Russia or China. This was followed the next day at a luncheon speech by General Kellogg, who made it crystal clear that the Europeans are not being invited to participate in negotiating the terms of peace in the Ukraine war because too many participants would make the process unworkable.

The comments from the Conference’s German hosts which followed soon upon Vance’s speech showed mixed emotions of shock and confusion, anger and a scramble to summon a suitable response to the Americans. EU Commissioner for External Relations Kaya Kallas tried to seize the initiative, calling for European foreign ministers to convene in Brussels today, Sunday, for consultations. That itself was a curious development since one would have expected her boss, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, to rush into the limelight. But VDL obviously saw that she would do better to let others fight on behalf of her prerogatives in such a fraught atmosphere.

French President Emmanuel Macron, as always, would not let a good crisis go to waste and elbowed the Brussels worthies aside. He called for an emergency meeting in Paris tomorrow of the heads of government of the most interested EU Member States to plan a response to America’s taking full control of the unfolding peace process for Ukraine. There is no time to lose. After all, Team Trump already has agreed to start peace talks with the Russians in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia during the coming week. Trump’s team of Rubio, Waltz and Witkoff are on their way. These will be bilateral US-Russian talks to which the Ukrainians will eventually be brought in, whereas the Europeans will not.

The avalanche of news coming from Washington has given rise to a new concept here in Europe. It is called “Trump Time” and means at once!

And so tomorrow the leaders of Germany, Italy and Poland will gather in Paris at Macron’s invitation. With a nod to the EU institutions which in principle set foreign policy, rather than any given coalition of Member States, Macron also invited Antonio Costa the president of the European Council, the top policy setting body of the EU consisting of heads of government of all 27 member states.  But then in violation of the same principles, UK prime minister Keir Starmer will also be attending. Given that Britain, France and Poland are the countries most eager to send their troops to Ukraine as “peacekeepers,” it is safe to say that the first task of Macron’s little group will be to respond directly to the urging of General Kellogg that the Europeans prepare their own proposals for participating in the security arrangements for post-war Ukraine.

The very fact that only a few European Union leaders will convene in Paris tomorrow puts in question the notion of pooled sovereignty. It demonstrates that the 29-member supranational body is in disarray and coming apart at the seams. Meanwhile, in parallel, NATO is in disarray because the member country that enables all its military missions, the United States, has now stated unequivocally that it will not allow European peacekeepers or warriors against Russia, should the conflict in Ukraine continue, to claim NATO protection.

                                                                       *****

Now let us examine what some major European newspapers have to say about the situation on the Old Continent following the shock treatment they all received at the hands of Trump Administration officials these past three days.

Let us begin with one of the most authoritative papers in Germany, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, which had a lengthy article devoted to the Conference.

I quote from their remarks regarding the senior host of the event, Chancellor Olaf Scholz:

The incumbent Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) was absent when Vance declared Germany a Soviet-like semi-democracy and recommended the AfD for the chancellorship. It was only the next morning, in front of a poorly attended Security Conference and without any real momentum, that the Chancellor of the strongest European power found a few words of resistance: “That’s not proper, especially not among friends and allies”. After all.

Nevertheless, he immediately promised to continue buying weapons in America. And then Scholz talked about the necessary growth in the defense budget, which he himself had blocked for three years. The applause was restrained, the interest moderate. While Angela Merkel was still seen as a leader of the value-oriented West during Trump’s first term in office, the Chancellor in Munich resembled a chicken that had long since been decapitated and was still running a few meters. [emphasis mine].

The FAZ had similarly uncomplimentary things to say about Germany’s Defense Minister Pistorius:

Boris Pistorius, who was the first to confront Vance’s strange remarks with his usual openness, had a similar experience. Behind the scenes, Pistorius must also try to make the best of the difficult situation. The promise that the imminent (partial) withdrawal of the US military will not take place in “Trump time”, but that at least a timetable will be agreed, is already considered a success.

The article concludes on a dismal note.

Kellogg and Germany critic Richard Grenell, who was also present, must have had a great time, as did Vance’s entourage. The horror of the Europeans in the Bayerischer Hof had the same effect on their mood as several cans of Red Bull pick-me-up.

Curiously, the conservative French daily Le Figaro today has absolutely nothing to say about the Munich Security Conference or about the meeting that Macron is convening in Paris tomorrow. I suppose they are waiting for word from the Élysée Palace on what spin to give this news.

However, the Left of Center Le Monde does have on its online edition today a couple of articles devoted to the Munich Conference, both of them co-authored by Sylvie Kauffmann, who is named as their ‘Special Correspondent’ in Munich.

Kauffmann may be well known to American readers today because she is a featured opinion article contributor to The New York Times.  In the past, going back to the early 1990s she spent several years working as the paper’s New York bureau chief. Earlier in her career, in 1988, she spent a year in Moscow and is considered to be knowledgeable about things Russian. Later, in the new millennium she spent a number of years on the editorial board of Le Monde, including as editor-in -chief.

One of the two Le Monde articles is headlined by the remark that the USA has no intention of inviting Europe to the negotiating table. Its subtitle informs us that “After the Munich Security Conference which has put the spotlight on the pit that now separates Washington and the European Union, the Élysée Palace is convening a European mini-summit on Monday”.

The journalists speak of “the hostility in the speech of the American Vice President J.D. Vance” and tell us that on the second day of the Conference “the Europeans has to swallow a whole new bag of tricks” when General Kellogg, President Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine explained very clearly that Europe would not be invited to the negotiations to end the war in Ukraine. Consequently, per Le Monde, “many top managers of the Old Continent took satisfaction from the proposal for the leaders of the European countries most involved to come to a meeting organized by the Élysée on Monday morning.”

The second article in the same newspaper bears the title “In Munich, J.D. Vance declares an ideological war on Europe.”  They go on to say:

There are now two dates in the history of the Munich Security Conference: 2007 and 2025. Two dates, two hostile speeches which caused symmetrical shock among the elites of defense and diplomacy who gather each year in the Bavarian capital: the one by Vladimir Putin and the one by U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance.

In 2007, the Russian president, invited for the first time to Munich, stunned the Western world by a very offensive speech directed against the United States, whom he accused of wanting to establish a unipolar world order. Retrospectively, this speech has been considered as one of the turning points of the post-Cold War period, the first warning by Putin’s Russia to the West.

On Friday, 14 February, it was the great American ally who turned against its European partners, splitting the West: ‘Washington has a new sheriff in town’ warned the teammate of President Trump, before launching into a virulent diatribe against the European democracies, whom he accused of snuffing out freedom of speech and freedom of religion.”

That is pretty steamy stuff, hinting at stormy seas ahead for the Transatlantic Alliance.

Here in Belgium, the French-speaking press, which I follow, did not devote many linear inches to the Munich Conference or to the Ukraine war generally this weekend. Instead, their reporting was directed to issues close to home, namely the expected changes to tax policies and cuts to social welfare of the newly installed Flemish led coalition government of Bart de Wever. Indeed, the big news here on Thursday was not the visit of Pete Hegseth to the Ukraine Coordinating Group in Brussels but the national strike that brought 60,000 workers out on the streets to protest against the new wave of austerity that is coming soon. The only relevance of all this to the Ukraine situation is that such political turmoil makes it unthinkable that the Belgian government would consider sending forces to the peace-keeping mission in Ukraine or to raising the level of its military budget.

Today’s online Libre Belgique has not a word about Munich or Ukraine.  The larger circulation Le Soir has a tiny article under the title “Ukraine and Europe demand a seat in the ‘Yalta’ of Trump-Putin.”

At NATO, the American Secretary of Defense serving Donald Trump is trying to reassure jus that he has the best negotiator in the world at the table [Trump]! But the Europeans are worried about a possible ‘bad peace’ which would give too much to the Kremlin. With the risk of seeing Moscow return to combat sooner or later.

As for the war of attrition in Ukraine, is the provisional epilogue in view? Is the camp for a peace made at the price of defeatism and giving all advantages to the Kremlin going to win out over the camp for justice, for whom the law of the strong should not win out over the sovereign and democratic hopes of a people?

It should come as no surprise that the British press has a great deal to say about Munich and about the Team Trump approach to a peace settlement in Ukraine.

Today’s Financial Times online carries three major articles on these subjects. In two, one of the chief contributors is their Riga-based bureau chief for Russia Max Seddon. The third is co-authored by another regular contributor on Russian matters, Henry Foy.

One article is devoted to the phone conversation that had just taken place between U.S. Secretary of State and his Russian counterpart, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov:

The call between Rubio and Lavrov is a significant sign that substantive work has begun on negotiations and the two nations are in regular contact again, with diplomacy normalizing. Saturday’s call was the firs time the US and Russia had spoken at that level in nearly two years, although they have maintained back-channel communications.

By the language which the sides used to characterize the subject matter of the telephone call, the FT concludes there is “an apparent indication that the US was prepared to roll back sanctions against Moscow over the invasion.”

The FT further informs us that “Washington sent a questionnaire to European governments to scope out the continent’s willingness to protect Kyiv after the war, and gauge the price Europe is willing to pay in exchange for a seat at the negotiating table with Moscow.”

Given the anti-Russian prejudices of the FT in general, I would call this article remarkably factual and devoid of ‘spin.’

A second article entitled “US demands Europe set out arms and troops support for postwar…” gives us the further very curious information:

‘I’ve not seen [the questionnaire] myself, but I can totally understand that it would help to basically focus the conversation,’ said Mark Rutte, Nato’s secretary general.’

There you have it:  Washington has cut the Nato secretary general off from the deliberations about security in post-war Ukraine!  That is news all by itself which the FT has chosen not to comment upon.

This FT article was also interesting for its explanation of the ‘two track process’ in Trump’s team whereby Steve Witkoff is looking after the Russian lane and General Kellogg has the Ukrainian and European lane.

The FT quotes unnamed ‘former senior Kremlin officials’ for its appreciation of who is who between Kellogg and Witkoff:

‘The serious talks, as you know, are with Moscow and you need serious people for that,’ the person said. Kellogg ‘is there to talk to the Ukrainians, talk to the Europeans, go on TV.’

In short, the FT appears to agree with another Russian on Kellogg’s role being ‘largely ceremonial.’

Overall, the FT article is informative, factual journalism without any of the usual interference of the editorial board.

The third article of today’s FT devoted to Ukraine was also good journalism. It laid out what Vance said at the Conference, what Pistorius said. To be sure, it characterized Vance’s speech as a ‘diatribe.’

The Left-leaning Guardian also had a substantial article on the Munich Security Conference and the Trump Team’s steps to meet with the Russians without any European participation.  Here, too, the account relates the different perspectives of various actors without obviously taking sides. The main distinction from the FT reporting is greater attention here to what Keith Starmer is thinking and doing.

And with that I close this discussion of our press reporting on the week past.  The coming week promises to be as filled with newsworthy developments. Stay tuned…

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2025

Translation below into German (Andreas Mylaeus)

Europa in Aufruhr. Macron eilt zur Rettung

In diesem Essay gebe ich einen kurzen Überblick über die Fortschritte der vergangenen Woche auf dem Weg zu einem Friedensabkommen zwischen Russland und der Ukraine.

Abgesehen von der erstaunlichen Nachricht Mitte der Woche über das 90-minütige Telefongespräch zwischen Donald Trump und Wladimir Putin war die Woche geprägt von Hinweisen darauf, wie das Endspiel im Krieg aussehen könnte, wie es der US-Verteidigungsminister Pete Hegseth in seiner Antrittsrede vor der Koordinierungsgruppe Ukraine in Brüssel und in den Beratungen auf der am Freitag eröffneten Münchner Sicherheitskonferenz darlegte.

Die MSC-Beratungen wurden von der bemerkenswerten Ansprache des US-Vizepräsidenten J.D. Vance dominiert – Vance, der die demokratische Legitimation der europäischen Verbündeten in Frage stellte und sagte, dass diese interne Bedrohung ein größeres Risiko für ihre Sicherheit darstelle als die externen Risiken, die von Russland oder China ausgehen. Am nächsten Tag folgte eine Rede von General Kellogg bei einem Mittagessen, in der er unmissverständlich klarstellte, dass die Europäer nicht eingeladen seien, an den Verhandlungen über die Friedensbedingungen im Ukraine-Krieg teilzunehmen, weil zu viele Teilnehmer den Prozess undurchführbar machen würden.

Die Kommentare der deutschen Gastgeber der Konferenz, die kurz nach der Rede von Vance folgten, zeigten gemischte Gefühle von Schock und Verwirrung, Wut und dem Bemühen, eine angemessene Antwort auf die Amerikaner zu finden. Die EU-Kommissarin für Außenbeziehungen, Kaya Kallas, versuchte, die Initiative zu ergreifen, und forderte die europäischen Außenminister auf, sich heute, am Sonntag, in Brüssel zu Konsultationen zu treffen. Das allein war schon eine merkwürdige Entwicklung, denn man hätte erwartet, dass ihre Chefin, Kommissionspräsidentin Ursula von der Leyen, sich ins Rampenlicht drängt. Aber VDL sah offensichtlich, dass es besser wäre, wenn sie in einer so angespannten Atmosphäre andere für ihre Vorrechte kämpfen ließe.

Der französische Präsident Emmanuel Macron ließ sich wie immer eine gute Krise nicht entgehen und schob die Brüsseler Honoratioren beiseite. Er berief für morgen in Paris eine Dringlichkeitssitzung der Regierungschefs der am meisten betroffenen EU-Mitgliedstaaten ein, um eine Reaktion auf die Übernahme der vollen Kontrolle über den sich entfaltenden Friedensprozess für die Ukraine durch Amerika zu planen. Es gilt, keine Zeit zu verlieren. Schließlich hat das Team Trump bereits zugestimmt, in der kommenden Woche in Riad, Saudi-Arabien, Friedensgespräche mit den Russen aufzunehmen. Trumps Team aus Rubio, Waltz und Witkoff ist bereits auf dem Weg. Es handelt sich um bilaterale Gespräche zwischen den USA und Russland, zu denen die Ukrainer eventuell hinzugezogen werden, die Europäer jedoch nicht.

Die Flut an Nachrichten aus Washington hat hier in Europa zu einem neuen Konzept geführt. Es ist „Trump Time“ und zwar sofort!

Und so werden sich morgen die Staats- und Regierungschefs Deutschlands, Italiens und Polens auf Einladung Macrons in Paris versammeln. Mit einer Anspielung auf die EU-Institutionen, die im Prinzip die Außenpolitik festlegen, und nicht auf eine bestimmte Koalition von Mitgliedstaaten, lud Macron auch Antonio Costa, den Präsidenten des Europäischen Rates, des obersten politischen Entscheidungsgremiums der EU, das aus den Regierungschefs aller 27 Mitgliedstaaten besteht, ein. Doch dann wird auch der britische Premierminister Keir Starmer teilnehmen, was gegen dieselben Grundsätze verstößt. Da Großbritannien, Frankreich und Polen die Länder sind, die am ehesten bereit sind, ihre Truppen als „Friedenstruppen“ in die Ukraine zu entsenden, kann man mit Sicherheit sagen, dass die erste Aufgabe von Macrons kleiner Gruppe darin bestehen wird, direkt auf die Aufforderung von General Kellogg zu reagieren, dass die Europäer ihre eigenen Vorschläge für die Beteiligung an den Sicherheitsvorkehrungen für die Nachkriegs-Ukraine ausarbeiten.

Allein die Tatsache, dass morgen nur einige wenige Staats- und Regierungschefs der Europäischen Union in Paris zusammenkommen werden, stellt die Idee einer gemeinsamen Souveränität in Frage. Es zeigt, dass das 29-köpfige supranationale Gremium in Unordnung ist und aus allen Nähten auseinanderzufallen droht. Gleichzeitig ist die NATO in Unordnung, weil das Mitgliedsland, das alle seine Militäreinsätze ermöglicht, die Vereinigten Staaten, nun unmissverständlich erklärt hat, dass es europäischen Friedenstruppen oder Kriegern gegen Russland, sollte der Konflikt in der Ukraine andauern, nicht erlauben wird, den Schutz der NATO in Anspruch zu nehmen.

                                                                       *****

Lassen Sie uns nun untersuchen, was einige große europäische Zeitungen über die Situation auf dem alten Kontinent zu sagen haben, nachdem sie in den letzten drei Tagen von Beamten der Trump-Administration einer Schockbehandlung unterzogen wurden.

Beginnen wir mit einer der renommiertesten Zeitungen Deutschlands, der Frankfurter Allgemeinen Zeitung, die der Konferenz einen ausführlichen Artikel gewidmet hat.

Ich zitiere aus ihren Bemerkungen über den Hauptgastgeber der Veranstaltung, Bundeskanzler Olaf Scholz:

Der amtierende Bundeskanzler Olaf Scholz (SPD) war abwesend, als Vance Deutschland zu einer sowjet-ähnlichen Halbdemokratie erklärte und die AfD für das Kanzleramt empfahl. Erst am nächsten Morgen, vor einer spärlich besuchten Sicherheitskonferenz und ohne wirklichen Schwung, fand der Kanzler der stärksten europäischen Macht ein paar Worte des Widerstands: „Das gehört sich nicht, schon gar nicht unter Freunden und Verbündeten.“ Immerhin.

Dennoch versprach er sofort, weiterhin Waffen in Amerika zu kaufen. Und dann sprach Scholz über die notwendige Erhöhung des Verteidigungshaushalts, die er selbst drei Jahre lang blockiert hatte. Der Applaus war verhalten, das Interesse mäßig. Während Angela Merkel während der ersten Amtszeit von Trump noch als Anführerin des werteorientierten Westens galt, ähnelte der Kanzler in München einem Huhn, das längst geköpft worden war und noch ein paar Meter weit lief. [Hervorhebung von mir].

Ähnlich wenig schmeichelhaft äußerte sich die FAZ über den deutschen Verteidigungsminister Pistorius:

Boris Pistorius, der als erster Vances seltsame Bemerkungen mit seiner üblichen Offenheit entgegentrat, machte eine ähnliche Erfahrung. Hinter den Kulissen muss auch Pistorius versuchen, das Beste aus der schwierigen Situation zu machen. Das Versprechen, dass der bevorstehende (Teil-)Abzug des US-Militärs nicht in „Trump-Zeit“ stattfinden wird, sondern dass zumindest ein Zeitplan vereinbart wird, wird bereits als Erfolg gewertet.

Der Artikel schließt mit einer düsteren Note.

Kellogg und der ebenfalls anwesende Deutschland-Kritiker Richard Grenell müssen sich köstlich amüsiert haben, ebenso wie Vances Gefolge. Der Schrecken der Europäer im Bayerischen Hof hatte auf ihre Stimmung die gleiche Wirkung wie mehrere Dosen Red Bull Muntermacher.

Seltsamerweise hat die konservative französische Tageszeitung Le Figaro heute absolut nichts über die Münchner Sicherheitskonferenz oder über das Treffen zu sagen, das Macron morgen in Paris einberuft. Ich nehme an, sie warten auf eine Nachricht aus dem Élysée-Palast, um zu entscheiden, wie sie diese Nachricht interpretieren sollen.

Die linksliberale Le Monde hat jedoch heute in ihrer Online-Ausgabe einige Artikel veröffentlicht, die sich mit der Münchner Konferenz befassen. Beide wurden von Sylvie Kauffmann verfasst, die als „Sonderkorrespondentin“ in München tätig war.

Kauffmann ist amerikanischen Lesern heute vielleicht bekannt, weil sie regelmäßig Meinungsartikel für The New York Times verfasst. In der Vergangenheit, seit Anfang der 1990er Jahre, arbeitete sie mehrere Jahre lang als Leiterin des New Yorker Büros der Zeitung. Zu Beginn ihrer Karriere verbrachte sie 1988 ein Jahr in Moskau und gilt als Expertin für Russland. Später, im neuen Jahrtausend, war sie mehrere Jahre lang Mitglied der Chefredaktion von Le Monde, unter anderem als Chefredakteurin.

Einer der beiden Artikel in Le Monde trägt die Überschrift, dass die USA nicht die Absicht hätten, Europa an den Verhandlungstisch zu bitten. Im Untertitel erfahren wir: „Nach der Münchner Sicherheitskonferenz, die den Graben zwischen Washington und der Europäischen Union ins Rampenlicht gerückt hat, beruft der Élysée-Palast am Montag einen europäischen Mini-Gipfel ein.“

Die Journalisten sprechen von „der Feindseligkeit in der Rede des amerikanischen Vizepräsidenten J.D. Vance“ und berichten, dass die Europäer am zweiten Tag der Konferenz „eine ganze Reihe neuer Tricks schlucken mussten“, als General Kellogg, der Sondergesandte von Präsident Trump für die Ukraine, sehr deutlich erklärte, dass Europa nicht zu den Verhandlungen zur Beendigung des Krieges in der Ukraine eingeladen werden würde. Daher, so Le Monde, „nahmen viele Spitzenmanager des Alten Kontinents den Vorschlag, dass die Staats- und Regierungschefs der am stärksten betroffenen europäischen Länder am Montagmorgen zu einem vom Élysée-Palast organisierten Treffen zusammenkommen sollten, mit Genugtuung auf.“

Der zweite Artikel in derselben Zeitung trägt den Titel ‚In München erklärt J.D. Vance Europa den ideologischen Krieg‘. Weiter heißt es dort:

In der Geschichte der Münchner Sicherheitskonferenz gibt es nun zwei Daten: 2007 und 2025. Zwei Daten, zwei feindselige Reden, die bei den Eliten der Verteidigung und Diplomatie, die sich jedes Jahr in der bayerischen Landeshauptstadt versammeln, einen symmetrischen Schock auslösten: die Rede von Wladimir Putin und die des US-Vizepräsidenten J.D. Vance.

Im Jahr 2007 verblüffte der russische Präsident, der zum ersten Mal nach München eingeladen worden war, die westliche Welt mit einer sehr offensiven Rede, die sich gegen die Vereinigten Staaten richtete, denen er vorwarf, eine unipolare Weltordnung errichten zu wollen. Rückblickend gilt diese Rede als einer der Wendepunkte der Zeit nach dem Kalten Krieg, als erste Warnung Putins an den Westen.

Am Freitag, dem 14. Februar, wandte sich der große amerikanische Verbündete gegen seine europäischen Partner und spaltete den Westen: „Washington hat einen neuen Sheriff in der Stadt“, warnte der Teamkollege von Präsident Trump, bevor er eine heftige Schimpftirade gegen die europäischen Demokratien losließ, denen er vorwarf, die Meinungs- und Religionsfreiheit auszumerzen.

Das ist ziemlich hitziges Material, das auf stürmische Zeiten für das transatlantische Bündnis hindeutet.

Hier in Belgien hat die französischsprachige Presse, die ich verfolge, an diesem Wochenende nicht viele Zeilen der Münchener Konferenz oder dem Ukraine-Krieg im Allgemeinen gewidmet. Stattdessen konzentrierte sich die Berichterstattung auf Themen, die näher an der Heimat liegen, nämlich die erwarteten Änderungen der Steuerpolitik und Kürzungen der Sozialleistungen der neu eingesetzten flämischen Koalitionsregierung unter Bart de Wever. Tatsächlich war die große Nachricht hier am Donnerstag nicht der Besuch von Pete Hegseth bei der Koordinierungsgruppe Ukraine in Brüssel, sondern der landesweite Streik, bei dem 60.000 Arbeitnehmer auf die Straße gingen, um gegen die bevorstehende neue Welle der Sparmaßnahmen zu protestieren. Die einzige Relevanz all dessen für die Situation in der Ukraine besteht darin, dass es aufgrund solcher politischer Unruhen undenkbar ist, dass die belgische Regierung erwägt, Truppen zur Friedensmission in die Ukraine zu entsenden oder das Militärbudget zu erhöhen.

In der heutigen Online-Ausgabe von Libre Belgique wird kein Wort über München oder die Ukraine verloren. Die auflagenstärkere Zeitung Le Soir hat einen winzigen Artikel unter dem Titel „Ukraine und Europa fordern einen Sitz im ‚Jalta‘ von Trump-Putin“.

Bei der NATO versucht der amerikanische Verteidigungsminister, der Donald Trump dient, zu versichern, dass er mit [Trump] den besten Verhandlungsführer der Welt am Tisch hat! Aber die Europäer sind besorgt über einen möglichen „schlechten Frieden“, der dem Kreml zu viel geben würde. Mit dem Risiko, dass Moskau früher oder später wieder in den Kampf zieht.

Was den Zermürbungskrieg in der Ukraine betrifft, ist der vorläufige Epilog in Sicht? Wird das Lager für einen Frieden, der um den Preis von Defätismus und der Übergabe aller Vorteile an den Kreml erzielt wird, über das Lager für Gerechtigkeit siegen, für das das Recht des Stärkeren nicht über die souveränen und demokratischen Hoffnungen eines Volkes siegen sollte?

Es sollte nicht überraschen, dass die britische Presse viel über München und über den Ansatz von Team Trump für eine Friedensregelung in der Ukraine zu sagen hat.

Die heutige Online-Ausgabe der Financial Times enthält drei wichtige Artikel zu diesen Themen. In zwei davon ist Max Seddon, der in Riga ansässige Büroleiter für Russland, einer der Hauptautoren. Der dritte wurde von einem weiteren regelmäßigen Berichterstatter über Russland, Henry Foy, mitverfasst.

Ein Artikel ist dem Telefongespräch gewidmet, das gerade zwischen dem US-Außenminister und seinem russischen Amtskollegen, Außenminister Sergej Lawrow, stattgefunden hat:

Das Gespräch zwischen Rubio und Lawrow ist ein wichtiges Zeichen dafür, dass die inhaltliche Arbeit an den Verhandlungen begonnen hat und die beiden Nationen wieder in regelmäßigem Kontakt stehen, wobei sich die Diplomatie normalisiert. Am Samstag sprachen die USA und Russland zum ersten Mal seit fast zwei Jahren auf dieser Ebene miteinander, obwohl sie weiterhin über inoffizielle Kanäle kommunizierten.

Aus der Sprache, die die Seiten zur Charakterisierung des Themas des Telefongesprächs verwendeten, schließt die FT, dass es „einen offensichtlichen Hinweis darauf gibt, dass die USA bereit waren, die Sanktionen gegen Moskau wegen der Invasion zurückzunehmen.“

Die FT informiert uns außerdem darüber, dass „Washington einen Fragebogen an die europäischen Regierungen geschickt hat, um die Bereitschaft des Kontinents auszuloten, Kiew nach dem Krieg zu schützen, und um den Preis zu ermitteln, den Europa bereit ist, für einen Platz am Verhandlungstisch mit Moskau zu zahlen.“

Angesichts der antirussischen Vorurteile der FT im Allgemeinen würde ich diesen Artikel als bemerkenswert sachlich und frei von „Spin“ bezeichnen.

Ein zweiter Artikel mit dem Titel „USA fordern Europa auf, Waffen und Truppen für die Nachkriegszeit bereitzustellen …“ enthält eine weitere sehr merkwürdige Information:

„Ich habe [den Fragebogen] selbst nicht gesehen, aber ich kann durchaus verstehen, dass er dazu beitragen würde, das Gespräch grundsätzlich zu fokussieren“, sagte Mark Rutte, NATO-Generalsekretär.

Da haben Sie es: Washington hat den NATO-Generalsekretär von den Beratungen über die Sicherheit in der Nachkriegs-Ukraine ausgeschlossen! Das ist eine Nachricht für sich, die die FT nicht kommentiert hat.

Dieser Artikel der Financial Times war auch deshalb interessant, weil er den „zweigleisigen Prozess“ in Trumps Team erläuterte, bei dem sich Steve Witkoff um die russische und General Kellogg um die ukrainische und europäische Schiene kümmert.

Die Financial Times zitiert ungenannte „ehemalige hochrangige Kreml-Beamte“, um zu verdeutlichen, wer Kellogg und wer Witkoff ist:

„Die ernsthaften Gespräche finden, wie Sie wissen, mit Moskau statt, und dafür braucht man seriöse Leute“, sagte die Person. Kellogg „ist dazu da, mit den Ukrainern und den Europäern zu sprechen und im Fernsehen aufzutreten.“

Kurz gesagt, die FT scheint mit einem anderen Russen darin übereinzustimmen, dass Kelloggs Rolle „weitgehend zeremoniell“ ist.

Insgesamt ist der FT-Artikel informativer, sachlicher Journalismus ohne die üblichen Einmischungen der Redaktion.

Der dritte Artikel der heutigen FT, der sich mit der Ukraine befasste, war ebenfalls guter Journalismus. Er legte dar, was Vance auf der Konferenz sagte, was Pistorius sagte. Allerdings wurde Vances Rede als „Schmährede“ charakterisiert.

Der linksgerichtete Guardian hatte auch einen ausführlichen Artikel über die Münchner Sicherheitskonferenz und die Schritte des Trump-Teams, sich ohne europäische Beteiligung mit den Russen zu treffen. Auch hier werden die unterschiedlichen Perspektiven verschiedener Akteure dargestellt, ohne dabei eindeutig Partei zu ergreifen. Der Hauptunterschied zur Berichterstattung der Financial Times besteht darin, dass hier mehr Aufmerksamkeit auf die Gedanken und Handlungen von Keith Starmer gelegt wird.

Und damit schließe ich diese Diskussion über unsere Berichterstattung in der vergangenen Woche. Die kommende Woche verspricht, ebenso voller berichtenswerter Entwicklungen zu sein. Bleiben Sie dran …

Translation below into Spanish (Chod Zom)

Europa en crisis. Macron acude al rescate

En este ensayo ofrezco una breve actualización de los avances de la semana pasada hacia un acuerdo de paz entre Rusia y Ucrania.

Aparte de las sorprendentes noticias de mediados de semana sobre la conversación telefónica de 90 minutos entre Donald Trump y Vladimir Putin, la semana se ha caracterizado por las indicaciones sobre el posible final de la guerra, expuestas por el secretario de Defensa de Estados Unidos, Pete Hegseth, en su discurso inaugural ante el Grupo de Coordinación sobre Ucrania en Bruselas, y por las deliberaciones de la Conferencia de Seguridad de Múnich, que se inauguró el viernes.

Las deliberaciones del MSC estuvieron dominadas por el notable discurso pronunciado por el Vicepresidente estadounidense J.D. Vance, quien puso en duda las credenciales democráticas de los aliados europeos, afirmando que esta amenaza interna suponía un riesgo mayor para su seguridad que los riesgos externos planteados por Rusia o China. Esto fue seguido al día siguiente en un discurso durante el almuerzo por el General Kellogg, que dejó meridianamente claro que los europeos no están invitados a participar en la negociación de los términos de la paz en la guerra de Ucrania porque demasiados participantes harían inviable el proceso.

Los comentarios de los anfitriones alemanes de la Conferencia, que siguieron poco después al discurso de Vance, mostraron sentimientos encontrados de conmoción y confusión, enfado y una lucha por encontrar una respuesta adecuada a los estadounidenses. El Comisario de Relaciones Exteriores de la UE, Kaya Kallas, intentó tomar la iniciativa y convocó a los ministros de Asuntos Exteriores europeos a una reunión de consultas en Bruselas hoy domingo. Fue un hecho curioso, ya que cabía esperar que su jefa, la Presidenta de la Comisión, Ursula von der Leyen, se apresurara a salir a la palestra. Pero es evidente que VDL vio que sería mejor dejar que otros lucharan en nombre de sus prerrogativas en un ambiente tan tenso.

El presidente francés, Emmanuel Macron, como siempre, no deja que se desperdicie una buena crisis y hizo a un lado a los dignatarios de Bruselas de un codazo. Convocó para mañana una reunión de emergencia en París de los jefes de gobierno de los Estados miembros de la UE más interesados para planificar una respuesta a la toma de control total por parte de Estados Unidos del proceso de paz en desarrollo para Ucrania. No hay tiempo que perder. Después de todo, el equipo de Trump ya ha acordado iniciar conversaciones de paz con los rusos en Riad, Arabia Saudí, durante la próxima semana. El equipo de Trump formado por Rubio, Waltz y Witkoff está en camino. Serán conversaciones bilaterales ruso-estadounidenses a las que eventualmente se incorporarán los ucranianos, mientras que los europeos no.

La avalancha de noticias procedentes de Washington ha dado lugar a un nuevo concepto aquí en Europa. Se llama «Trump Time» y significa ¡de una vez!

Así pues, mañana los líderes de Alemania, Italia y Polonia se reunirán en París invitados por Macron. Haciendo un guiño a las instituciones de la UE, que en principio establecen la política exterior, en lugar de una coalición determinada de Estados miembros, Macron también invitó a Antonio Costa, presidente del Consejo Europeo, el máximo órgano político de la UE formado por los jefes de gobierno de los 27 Estados miembros. Pero, violando los mismos principios, también asistirá el primer ministro del Reino Unido, Keir Starmer. Dado que Gran Bretaña, Francia y Polonia son los países más deseosos de enviar sus tropas a Ucrania como «fuerzas de paz», es seguro decir que la primera tarea del grupito de Macron será responder directamente a la exhortación del general Kellogg de que los europeos preparen sus propias propuestas para participar en los acuerdos de seguridad para la Ucrania de la posguerra.

El mero hecho de que sólo unos pocos dirigentes de la Unión Europea se reunirán mañana en París pone en tela de juicio la noción de soberanía compartida. Demuestra que el organismo supranacional de 29 miembros está desorganizado y se deshace por las costuras. Mientras tanto, paralelamente, la OTAN está desorganizada porque el país miembro que da permiso a todas sus misiones militares, Estados Unidos, ha declarado ahora inequívocamente que no permitirá que las fuerzas de paz europeas o los guerreros contra Rusia, en caso de que continúe el conflicto en Ucrania, reclamen la protección de la OTAN.

                                                                        *****

Examinemos ahora lo que algunos de los principales periódicos europeos tienen que decir sobre la situación en el Viejo Continente tras el tratamiento de choque que todos ellos recibieron a manos de funcionarios de la Administración Trump estos últimos tres días.

Empecemos por uno de los periódicos más autorizados de Alemania, el Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, que dedicó un extenso artículo a la Conferencia.

Cito de sus comentarios relativos al anfitrión principal del evento, el Canciller Olaf Scholz:

El actual canciller federal Olaf Scholz (SPD) estaba ausente cuando Vance declaró que Alemania era una semidemocracia de tipo soviético y recomendó a la AfD para la cancillería. Sólo a la mañana siguiente, ante una Conferencia de Seguridad poco concurrida y sin impulso real, que el canciller de la potencia europea más fuerte encontró unas pocas palabras de resistencia: «Eso no es propio, sobre todo entre amigos y aliados». Al fin y al cabo.

Sin embargo, inmediatamente prometió seguir comprando armas en Estados Unidos. Y entonces Scholz habló del necesario crecimiento del presupuesto de defensa, que él mismo había bloqueado durante tres años. Los aplausos fueron contenidos, el interés moderado. Mientras que Angela Merkel seguía siendo vista como una líder del Occidente orientado a los valores durante el primer mandato de Trump, el canciller en Múnich parecía un pollo que hacía tiempo que había sido decapitado y aún corría unos metros. [énfasis mío].

El FAZ tenía cosas igualmente poco halagüeñas que decir sobre el ministro de Defensa alemán Pistorius:

Boris Pistorius, que fue el primero en enfrentarse a los extraños comentarios de Vance con su habitual franqueza, tuvo una experiencia similar. Entre bastidores, Pistorius también debe intentar sacar lo mejor de la difícil situación. La promesa de que la inminente retirada (parcial) del ejército estadounidense no se producirá en «tiempos de Trump», sino que al menos se acordará un calendario, ya se considera un éxito.

El artículo concluye con una nota desalentadora.

Kellogg y el crítico alemán Richard Grenell, que también estuvo presente, debieron de pasárselo en grande, al igual que el séquito de Vance. El horror de los europeos en el Bayerischer Hof tuvo el mismo efecto en su estado de ánimo que varias latas de Red Bull estimulante.

Curiosamente, el diario conservador francés Le Figaro, hoy no dice absolutamente nada sobre la Conferencia de Seguridad de Múnich ni sobre la reunión que Macron convoca mañana en París. Supongo que estarán esperando a que desde el Elíseo les digan qué giro darle a esta noticia.

Sin embargo, el periódico de centro-izquierda Le Monde tiene en su edición online de hoy un par de artículos dedicados a la Conferencia de Múnich, ambos coescritos por Sylvie Kauffmann, a quien nombran «corresponsal especial» en Múnich.

Kauffmann puede que hoy sea bien conocida por los lectores estadounidenses, ya que es una destacada colaboradora de artículos de opinión de The New York Times. En el pasado, a principios de la década de 1990, trabajó varios años como jefa de la oficina de Nueva York del diario. Al principio de su carrera, en 1988, pasó un año en Moscú y se la considera una conocedora de Rusia. Más tarde, en el nuevo milenio, pasó varios años en el consejo editorial de Le Monde, incluso como redactora jefe.

Uno de los dos artículos de Le Monde está encabezado por la observación de que Estados Unidos no tiene ninguna intención de invitar a Europa a la mesa de negociaciones. Su subtítulo nos informa de que «tras la Conferencia de Seguridad de Munich, que ha puesto de relieve el foso que separa ahora a Washington y a la Unión Europea, el Elíseo convoca para el lunes una minicumbre europea».

Los periodistas hablan de «la hostilidad en el discurso del vicepresidente estadounidense J.D. Vance» y nos cuentan que el segundo día de la Conferencia «los europeos tienen que tragarse toda una nueva bolsa de trucos» cuando el general Kellogg, enviado especial del presidente Trump para Ucrania, explicó muy claramente que Europa no sería invitada a las negociaciones para poner fin a la guerra en Ucrania. En consecuencia, según Le Monde, «muchos altos cargos del Viejo Continente se dieron por satisfechos con la propuesta de que los dirigentes de los países europeos más implicados acudieran a la reunión organizada por el Elíseo el lunes por la mañana.»

El segundo artículo del mismo periódico lleva por título «En Munich, J.D. Vance declara una guerra ideológica a Europa».  Continúa diciendo:

Ahora hay dos fechas en la historia de la Conferencia de Seguridad de Múnich: 2007 y 2025. Dos fechas, dos discursos hostiles que causaron una conmoción simétrica entre las élites de defensa y diplomacia que se reúnen cada año en la capital bávara: el de Vladimir Putin y el del vicepresidente estadounidense J.D. Vance.

En 2007, el presidente ruso, invitado por primera vez a Múnich, dejó estupefacto al mundo occidental con un discurso muy ofensivo dirigido contra Estados Unidos, al que acusó de querer establecer un orden mundial unipolar. Retrospectivamente, este discurso ha sido considerado como uno de los puntos de inflexión del período posterior a la guerra fría, la primera advertencia de la Rusia de Putin a Occidente.

El viernes 14 de febrero, fue el gran aliado estadounidense quien se volvió contra sus socios europeos, dividiendo a Occidente: «Washington tiene un nuevo sheriff en la ciudad», advirtió el compañero de equipo del presidente Trump, antes de lanzar una virulenta diatriba contra las democracias europeas, a las que acusó de sofocar la libertad de expresión y la libertad religiosa.»

Se trata de un tema bastante candente, que deja entrever que la Alianza Transatlántica se enfrenta a mares tormentosos.

Aquí en Bélgica, la prensa francófona, a la que sigo, no dedicó muchos centímetros lineales a la Conferencia de Múnich ni a la guerra de Ucrania en general este fin de semana. En su lugar, la información se centró en temas cercanos, como los cambios previstos en las políticas fiscales y los recortes sociales del recién instaurado gobierno flamenco de coalición de Bart de Wever. De hecho, la gran noticia del jueves no fue la visita de Pete Hegseth al Grupo de Coordinación de Ucrania en Bruselas, sino la huelga nacional que sacó a la calle a 60.000 trabajadores para protestar contra la nueva ola de austeridad que se avecina. La única relevancia de todo esto para la situación de Ucrania es que semejante agitación política hace impensable que el gobierno belga se plantee enviar fuerzas a la misión de mantenimiento de la paz en Ucrania o aumentar el nivel de su presupuesto militar.

La edición digital de hoy de Libre Belgique no tiene ni una palabra sobre Múnich o Ucrania. Le Soir, de mayor tirada, tiene un minúsculo artículo bajo el título «Ucrania y Europa exigen un asiento en la “Yalta” de Trump-Putin».

En la OTAN, el secretario de Defensa estadounidense de Donald Trump, trata de tranquilizar diciendo que tiene en la mesa al mejor negociador del mundo [¡Trump!] Pero los europeos están preocupados por una posible «mala paz» que daría demasiado al Kremlin. Con el riesgo de ver a Moscú volver al combate tarde o temprano.

En cuanto a la guerra de desgaste en Ucrania, ¿se vislumbra el epílogo provisional? ¿Va a imponerse el bando de una paz hecha a costa del derrotismo y de dar todas las ventajas al Kremlin al bando de la justicia, para el que la ley del más fuerte no debe imponerse a las esperanzas soberanas y democráticas de un pueblo?

No es de extrañar que la prensa británica tenga mucho que decir sobre Múnich y sobre el enfoque del Team Trump respecto a un acuerdo de paz en Ucrania.

El Financial Times digital de hoy lleva tres importantes artículos sobre estos temas. En dos de ellos, uno de los principales colaboradores es su jefe de la oficina para Rusia en Riga, Max Seddon. El tercero está escrito por otro colaborador habitual sobre asuntos rusos, Henry Foy.

Uno de los artículos está dedicado a la conversación telefónica que acababan de mantener el Secretario de Estado estadounidense y su homólogo ruso, el ministro de Asuntos Exteriores Sergei Lavrov:

La llamada entre Rubio y Lavrov es una señal significativa de que se ha iniciado un trabajo sustantivo en las negociaciones y que las dos naciones vuelven de nuevo a estar en contacto regular, normalizándose la diplomacia. La llamada del sábado fue la primera vez que EE.UU. y Rusia hablaban a ese nivel en casi dos años, aunque han mantenido comunicaciones a través de canales indirectos.

Por el lenguaje que las partes utilizaron para caracterizar el tema de la llamada telefónica, el FT concluye que hay «una aparente indicación de que EE.UU. estaba dispuesto a retirar sanciones contra Moscú por la invasión».

El FT nos informa además de que «Washington envió un cuestionario a los gobiernos europeos para sondear la disposición del continente a proteger a Kiev tras la guerra, y calibrar el precio que Europa está dispuesta a pagar a cambio de un asiento en la mesa de negociaciones con Moscú».

Dados los prejuicios antirrusos del FT en general, calificaría este artículo de notablemente objetivo y desprovisto de «giro».

Un segundo artículo titulado «EE.UU. exige a Europa que establezca un apoyo en armas y tropas para la posguerra…» nos ofrece otra información muy curiosa:

‘Yo mismo no he visto [el cuestionario], pero puedo entender perfectamente que ayude a centrar básicamente la conversación’, dijo Mark Rutte, secretario general de la OTAN.

Ahí lo tienen: Washington ha apartado al secretario general de la OTAN de las deliberaciones sobre la seguridad en la Ucrania de la posguerra. Una noticia por sí misma que el FT ha optado por no comentar.

Este artículo del FT también era interesante por su explicación del «proceso de dos vías» en el equipo de Trump, en el que Steve Witkoff se ocupa de la vía rusa y el general Kellogg de la vía ucraniana y europea.

El FT cita a «antiguos altos funcionarios del Kremlin» no identificados para su apreciación de quién es quién entre Kellogg y Witkoff:

Las conversaciones serias, como sabes, son con Moscú y para eso se necesita gente seria», dijo la persona. Kellogg ‘está ahí para hablar con los ucranianos, hablar con los europeos, salir en la tele’.

En resumen, el FT parece estar de acuerdo con otro ruso en que el papel de Kellogg es «en gran medida ceremonial».

En general, el artículo del FT es periodismo informativo y basado en hechos, sin ninguna de las interferencias habituales del consejo editorial.

El tercer artículo del FT de hoy dedicado a Ucrania también era buen periodismo. Exponía lo que dijo Vance en la Conferencia y lo que dijo Pistorius. Eso sí, calificaba el discurso de Vance de «diatriba».

The Guardian, de tendencia izquierdista, también publicó un artículo sustancial sobre la Conferencia de Seguridad de Múnich y las pasos del equipo de Trump para reunirse con los rusos sin ninguna participación europea. También en este caso, el reportaje relata las diferentes perspectivas de varios actores sin tomar partido de forma obvia. La principal diferencia con el reportaje del FT es que aquí se presta más atención a lo que Keith Starmer está pensando y haciendo.

Y con esto concluyo este análisis de nuestra información de prensa sobre la semana pasada.  La próxima semana promete estar repleta de acontecimientos de interés periodístico. Permanezcan atentos…

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2025

News X interview of 14 February about the fall-out from Trump’s telephone conversation with Putin

Sometimes delayed presentation of a prerecorded interview fares better than what was produced by RT on Wednesday (12^th)  and aired yesterday. I have in mind the interview I gave to India’s NewsX on the 14^th after the stunning news of Donald Trump’s phone conversation with Vladimir Putin was already known, making clear the exclusion of Europe from the peace process by both super powers.

On assurances from the News X producers that this panel discussion would exclude the more obnoxious and least knowledgeable panelists of my previous session with them, which I had sworn would be my last, I agreed to participate, and as I look over the results, I have no regrets.  Indeed, even the strangely naïve propagandist in Kiev, Professor Haran, comes across here as a more worthy debating partner. Indeed, I can accept his word of criticism addressed to me, that ‘Russian’ war dead in WWII were actually Soviet war dead, of which the numbers killed in Ukraine and Belarus may have been especially large given that these were precisely the ‘bloodlands’ in which the opposing armies marched back and forth as the front moved this way and that. To be sure, the labels Belarus and Ukraine are themselves deceptive, given that ethnic Russians were always a large part of the respective populations of these Soviet Republics.  In any case, it is clear to me that the producers had a word with Haran about acceptable behavior beforehand.

The producers of News X insist that the real launch of their channel will come later this month when they seek to raise the level of their shows and to invite Prime Minister Modi to speak on air.

We shall see..

Translation below into German (Andreas Mylaeus)

News X-Interview vom 14. Februar über die Folgen von Trumps Telefongespräch mit Putin

Manchmal schneidet die verzögerte Ausstrahlung eines vorab aufgezeichneten Interviews besser ab als das, was RT am Mittwoch (12.02.) produziert und gestern ausgestrahlt hat. Ich denke an das Interview, das ich am 14.02 dem indischen Sender NewsX gegeben habe, nachdem die schockierende Nachricht von Donald Trumps Telefongespräch mit Wladimir Putin bereits bekannt war und den Ausschluss Europas aus dem Friedensprozess durch beide Supermächte deutlich machte.

Auf die Zusicherung der Produzenten von News X, dass bei dieser Podiumsdiskussion die widerlichsten und am wenigsten sachkundigen Diskussionsteilnehmer meiner vorherigen Sitzung mit ihnen, von der ich geschworen hatte, dass sie meine letzte sein würde, ausgeschlossen würden, stimmte ich zu, daran teilzunehmen, und wenn ich mir die Ergebnisse ansehe, bereue ich es nicht. Tatsächlich wirkt selbst der seltsam naive Propagandist in Kiew, Professor Haran, hier wie ein würdigerer Diskussionspartner. Ich kann seine an mich gerichtete Kritik akzeptieren, dass die „russischen“ Kriegstoten im Zweiten Weltkrieg eigentlich sowjetische Kriegstote waren, von denen die Zahl der Toten in der Ukraine und in Belarus besonders hoch gewesen sein könnte, da dies genau die „Blutländer“ waren, in denen die gegnerischen Armeen hin und her marschierten, während sich die Front in diese und jene Richtung bewegte. Die Bezeichnungen „Belarus“ und „Ukraine“ sind an sich schon irreführend, da ethnische Russen immer einen großen Teil der jeweiligen Bevölkerung dieser Sowjetrepubliken ausmachten. Auf jeden Fall ist mir klar, dass die Produzenten sich im Vorfeld mit Haran über akzeptables Verhalten unterhalten haben.

Die Produzenten von News X bestehen darauf, dass der eigentliche Start ihres Senders später in diesem Monat erfolgen wird, wenn sie versuchen, das Niveau ihrer Sendungen zu erhöhen und Premierminister Modi einzuladen, live zu sprechen.

Translation below into Spanish (Chod Zom)

Entrevista de News X del 14 de febrero sobre las consecuencias de la conversación telefónica de Trump con Putin

A veces, la presentación en diferido de una entrevista pregrabada sale mejor parada que lo que produjo RT el miércoles (12) y emitió ayer. Tengo en mente la entrevista que concedí a NewsX de la India el día 14, después de que ya se conociera la sorprendente noticia de la conversación telefónica de Donald Trump con Vladimir Putin, en la que se dejaba clara la exclusión de Europa del proceso de paz por parte de ambas superpotencias.

Con las garantías de los productores de News X de que esta mesa redonda excluiría a los panelistas más odiosos y menos informados de mi anterior sesión con ellos, que había jurado que sería la última, acepté participar, y al repasar los resultados, no me arrepiento.  De hecho, incluso el propagandista extrañamente ingenuo de Kiev, el profesor Haran, aparece aquí como un compañero de debate más digno. De hecho, puedo aceptar la crítica que me ha dirigido, según la cual los muertos de guerra «rusos» en la Segunda Guerra Mundial eran en realidad muertos de guerra soviéticos, de los cuales el número de muertos en Ucrania y Bielorrusia puede haber sido especialmente elevado, dado que éstas eran precisamente las «tierras de sangre» en las que los ejércitos enfrentados marchaban de un lado a otro a medida que el frente se movía de un lado a otro. Sin duda, las etiquetas de Bielorrusia y Ucrania son engañosas, dado que los rusos étnicos siempre fueron una gran parte de las poblaciones respectivas de estas repúblicas soviéticas.  En cualquier caso, me parece evidente que los productores hablaron de antemano con Haran sobre un comportamiento aceptable.

Los productores de News X insisten en que el verdadero lanzamiento de su canal se producirá a finales de este mes, cuando pretendan elevar el nivel de sus programas e invitar al Primer Ministro Modi a hablar al aire.

Ya veremos…

Transcript submitted by a reader

NewsX: 1:47
… European leaders are demanding a seat at the table in any future Ukraine peace talks. A joint statement insists that Ukraine and Europe must be involved in negotiations, but tensions rose after US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth dismissed Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders as unrealistic and ruled out NATO membership. European diplomats were blindsided when Donald Trump later spoke with Vladimir Putin, pushing for immediate negotiations.

We are joined for more on this discussion by Gilbert Doctorow, Russian affairs expert joining us from Brussels, and Professor Olexy Haran, professor of comparative politics, at the University of Kiev, Mohlya, joining us from Kiev. Thank you very much for joining us.

2:30
Gilbert Doctorow, I wanted to come to you first. And from your perspective, how credible do you find this accusation that a senior Ukrainian intelligence official was working as a Russian agent?

Gilbert Doctorow, PhD:
Well, anything is possible. So if they had been following him, I assume they had good reason. But I think it’s just a minor point in the day’s news. What happened in the Putin talks with Donald Trump is a completely different scale of importance.

NewsX:
We will move on to that very shortly. Professor Olexy Haran, can I get your thoughts on this, this accusation that a top Ukrainian anti-terror official was working as a Russian agent.

Haran: 3:17
Well, it’s difficult to comment, because we have only official official commentary about that. So look, just one thing I would like to say, he’s the former head of anti-terrorist group. It’s not right now, it was previously, okay? So, well, nothing to add basically.

NewsX:
Okay, thank you. We will move on to Gilbert Doctorow, and we will move on to European powers asking for inclusion in talks with Ukraine. What are the potential benefits and challenges of both Ukraine and European powers being included in these peace negotiations? Gilbert Doctorow, your thoughts.

Doctorow: 4:00
I think the chances of that happening are negligible. It was very clear not only from the context of Mr. Trump’s hour and a half discussion with Vladimir Putin, but it was in the context also of the remarks of the US Secretary of Defense Hegseth, that Europe will have no seat at the table. Ukraine will have no seat at the table, but this is a big-powers discussion between the United States and Russia, in which Ukraine is one element, and only one element of the subjects for discussion.

4:40
That was clear by Mr. Trump’s description of their discussion in his Truth Social platform, internet platform, this was among issues like artificial intelligence and how the United States and Russia should resume the kind of cooperative relationship they had in World War II when Russia was the single largest contributor in deaths and that means in fighting the Nazi armies in Europe. So the relationship was put in a very broad context for which the Europeans have no place at the table.

NewsX: 5:20
Professor Haran, I want to get your thoughts on this. Is there room for Ukrainian powers, I mean European powers, at the table in these negotiations? And are you concerned about Ukraine’s potentially not having a seat at the table in these negotiations?

Haran: 5:43
Well, but first of all, I would like to correct both Mr. Trump and Mr. Doctorow if we are talking about the role in World War II. It was, it wasn’t Russia. The country was called the Soviet Union. And actually most of those people who died were from Ukraine and Belarus. And that’s why after creation of the United Nations, Ukraine and Belarus received special seats in the United Nations. So we should differentiate between Russia and the Soviet Union.

Now basically, answering your direct question is– yes, we are disturbed. Definitely, there are some dangerous signs. But I need to say that from our point of view, the policy of Trump is still in the process of formation. So we’ll see how it will evolve. And if we are talking, you know, about direct negotiations between the United States and Russia, yes, there are dangers here, because we do not want to come to the world when the future of the world is decided by two countries. And I think for Indian audience, it’s very clear and important.

7:07
So we participate in this discussion by having our calls with Mr. Trump, his administration. And also, there is a plan for President Zelensky to meet a lot of members of Trump team at the Munich Security Conference and there is a plan also for a meeting between Zelensky and Trump. So if we are not directly involved, at least we have the room to discuss it with our allies.

NewsX:
My sincerest apologies gentlemen, we have run out of time for that segment. Thank you very much Gilbert Doctorow and thank you very much Professor Haran for joining us.

7:47
We will continue to move to more news updates.

Beware all interviewees who participate in prerecorded programs that will be released several days later to suit a broadcaster’s weekly scheduling!

I have just received the link to the Afshin Rattansi’s “Going Underground” that we recorded this past Wednesday but which only went on air today within the distribution channels of RT.

This was before the news of the Trump-Putin phone call, before the speech of J.D. Vance at the Munich Security Conference and before we were aware of Secretary of Defense Hegseth’s presentation on the end game of the war to the Ukraine Coordinating organization in Brussels.

All of these developments put paid to the notion that Donald Trump and his inner circle are unaware of the realities on the battlefield in the war and of what has to be conceded if the Russians are going to sit down and sign a peace.  As we now know, someone in the White House has indeed been reading the daily mainstream newspapers and has trashed the briefings coming from the CIA without waiting for the intelligence briefings to be put in order by the incoming Tulsi Gabbard.

Translation below into German (Andreas Mylaeus)

Was für einen Unterschied machen ein paar Tage in unserer Wertschätzung des Weißen Hauses unter Trump!

Seien Sie vorsichtig bei allen Interviewpartnern, die an vorab aufgezeichneten Programmen teilnehmen, die erst einige Tage später ausgestrahlt werden, um dem wöchentlichen Sendeplan eines Senders zu entsprechen!

Ich habe gerade den Link zu Afshin Rattansis „Going Underground“ erhalten, das wir am vergangenen Mittwoch aufgezeichnet haben, aber erst heute in den Vertriebskanälen von RT ausgestrahlt wurde.

Das war vor der Nachricht vom Telefonat zwischen Trump und Putin, vor der Rede von J.D. Vance auf der Münchner Sicherheitskonferenz und bevor wir von der Präsentation von Verteidigungsminister Hegseth über das Endspiel des Krieges vor der Koordinierungsorganisation der Ukraine in Brüssel erfuhren.

All diese Entwicklungen widerlegen die Vorstellung, dass Donald Trump und sein engerer Kreis die Realitäten auf dem Schlachtfeld des Krieges nicht kennen und nicht wissen, was zugestanden werden muss, wenn die Russen sich an den Verhandlungstisch setzen und einen Frieden unterzeichnen sollen. Wie wir jetzt wissen, hat jemand im Weißen Haus tatsächlich die täglichen Mainstream-Zeitungen gelesen und die Briefings der CIA in den Papierkorb geworfen, ohne abzuwarten, bis die eintreffende Tulsi Gabbard die Geheimdienst-Briefings in Ordnung gebracht hat.

Translation into Spanish (Chod Zom)

¡Qué diferencia hacen un par de días en nuestra apreciación de la Casa Blanca de Trump!

¡Cuidado con todos los entrevistados que participan en programas pregrabados que se emiten varios días después para adaptarse a la programación semanal de una emisora!

Acabo de recibir el enlace al programa «Going Underground» de Afshin Rattansi que grabamos este pasado miércoles pero que no ha salido al aire hasta hoy dentro de los canales de distribución de RT.

Esto fue antes de la noticia de la llamada telefónica Trump-Putin, antes del discurso de J.D. Vance en la Conferencia de Seguridad de Munich y antes de que tuviéramos conocimiento de la presentación del Secretario de Defensa Hegseth sobre el juego final de la guerra a la organización Coordinadora de Ucrania en Bruselas.

Todos estos acontecimientos echan por tierra la noción de que Donald Trump y su círculo íntimo desconocen las realidades del campo de batalla en la guerra y lo que hay que conceder si los rusos van a sentarse a firmar la paz. Como ahora sabemos, alguien en la Casa Blanca sí ha estado leyendo los principales diarios y ha echado por tierra los informes provenientes de la CIA sin esperar a que los informes de inteligencia sean puestos en orden por la entrante Tulsi Gabbard.