This morning at 8am I got a phone call from India’s largest global television broadcaster in English, WION, requesting an interview to discuss points made by Vladimir Putin yesterday in a remarkable interview which he gave to his ‘shadow,’ reporter Pavel Zarubin of state television channel Rossiya 1, while traveling in his Aurus limousine from Moscow to Samara, where he had several speaking engagements.

Putin elaborated in his chat with Zarubin on the circumstances surrounding the nearly consummated negotiations in April 2022 to end the war on mutually acceptable terms a little more than a month following the start of hostilities and thus to avert the carnage and destruction that has occurred since. He also commented on the obstacles to be overcome now if a cessation of hostilities and start of peace talks are to be undertaken again, as Donald Trump has been insisting. The single biggest obstacle is the continuation in office of Volodomyr Zelensky, per President Putin. 

If this position statement by Putin is not newsworthy this morning, what is? Have Putin’s remarks been reported by The New York Times, by The Financial Times, by CNN so far?  No! 

Here and now, let us go over the points made by Putin yesterday.  When the video of my interview with WION is sent to me, today or tomorrow, I will post it separately.

                                                                   *****

Firstly, Vladimir Putin yesterday gave a more detailed timeline of what preceded the peace talks at the very end of March and start of April, 2022. As we know, Russian forces had fought their way south from Belarus, where they were stationed before the 24 February invasion, to the very outskirts of Kiev.  Zelensky told the Kremlin that this threat to the survival of his government had to be moved back for negotiations to begin.  Accordingly Russian troops were withdrawn completely by 4 April. Some were returned to Belarus. Others went back to the Russian Federation. This concession was made as a calculated risk in the knowledge that the Ukrainians might trick them and not go through with negotiations.

In fact, the talks between Russian and Ukrainian delegations did begin in Istanbul and within 10 days a lengthy draft treaty was agreed and was initialed by the heads of the respective delegations.  As we know, this document provided for the neutrality of Ukraine, for its never joining NATO or allowing foreign troops and military installations to be located on its territory. It set limits to the Ukrainian armed forces such as would ensure it could not renew a war with Russia. It left Kiev in control of its Eastern provinces to the point of separation of forces at that time, meaning that negligible further territory would be lost compared to the situation at the start of the invasion. Only one condition was not agreed, said Putin, and this was to be negotiated directly between the two presidents before signing.

The documents were thus ready for signing on 15 April 2022. However, at this point Kiev asked for a one week ‘time out’ in order to consult with their allies. During this period, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson arrived in Kiev and persuaded Zelensky to scrap the draft treaty and to continue the war with support from its NATO friends until achieving the complete restoration of the country’s 1992 borders.

Yes, commented Putin, we were deceived. But we came to understand exactly with whom we were dealing. So be it.

Why would Putin have related this story now?  My interpretation is that he is justifying his own insistence going back to his speech to the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs staff in June 2024 that before ceasefire talks can begin Ukraine must withdraw its troops from the four oblasts which Russia has incorporated into its Federation though they were only partly in its possession: Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson and Zaporozhie. Today, this would also mean Ukraine’s withdrawal of its remaining forces in Russia’s Kursk oblast.

The second part of the interview which Putin gave to Pavel Zarubin yesterday concerned the question of with whom Russia can negotiate and sign cease-fire and peace agreements today. First, Putin raised the issue of a decree Zalensky promulgated six months after the April 2022 draft treaty was scrapped: this decree forbade any negotiations with Russia so long as Putin was in office. This decree is still in effect and given that Zalensky’s constitutionally set term in office expired many months ago, he does not have the power to revoke it. However, even if a legal solution could be found to that standing prohibition on negotiations, there remains the illegitimacy of Zalensky, so that his signature on any agreements which Russian and Ukrainian negotiators might reach would be worthless. 

The logic of these arguments set out by Vladimir Putin yesterday is that Zalensky has to go and either the head of the parliament (Verkhovna Rada) or a newly elected president must be installed for any negotiated texts of a cease-fire and peace treaty to be consummated.

The points discussed above are not the totality of what Vladimir Putin said to reporter Zarubin that was broadcast on Vladimir Solovyov’s talk show last night. He also remarked that should the United States halt its shipment of arms to Ukraine now, the war would end in one or at most two months because the Ukrainian forces would not have the military materiel to continue.

                                                                        *****

In closing, I offer a suggestion to Donald Trump and his entourage on how to react to these latest statements on the way forward: to just keep silent!  What the President has been saying about the Ukraine war these past several days has been ill-informed and has only undermined his credibility as a potential peacemaker.  It would be far better just to shut up and allow diplomats or some new personal emissary (not General Kellogg!) to pick up the loose ends from Vladimir Putin’s latest interview for talks behind closed doors.

Is Trump capable of such discretion?  Yes, the way he is proceeding in great secrecy with outreach to Teheran with a level-headed and capable emissary is a model for how he should proceed now with Moscow.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2025

Postscript: Russia’s new RN channel on youtube has just published the interview with Vladimir Putin by Pavel Zarubin to which I allude above. I am pleased to see that the Russian news organization has finally decided to put its own domestic content up on the internet in English voice over and subtitles.

Translation below into German (Andreas Mylaeus)

Wer hat die neuesten Nachrichten über den kommenden Frieden in der Ukraine? Indiens WION. Nicht CNN, nicht die Financial Times!

Heute Morgen um 8 Uhr erhielt ich einen Anruf von Indiens größtem globalen Fernsehsender in englischer Sprache, WION, mit der Bitte um ein Interview, um die Punkte zu besprechen, die Wladimir Putin gestern in einem bemerkenswerten Interview mit seinem „Schatten“, dem Reporter Pavel Zarubin vom staatlichen Fernsehsender Rossiya 1, auf der Fahrt in seiner Aurus-Limousine von Moskau nach Samara, wo er mehrere Vorträge hielt, angesprochen hatte.

Putin ging in seinem Gespräch mit Zarubin näher auf die Umstände ein, die die fast abgeschlossenen Verhandlungen im April 2022 zur Beendigung des Krieges zu für beide Seiten akzeptablen Bedingungen etwas mehr als einen Monat nach Beginn der Feindseligkeiten begleiteten, und damit auf die Abwendung des Gemetzels und der Zerstörung, die seitdem stattgefunden haben. Er äußerte sich auch zu den Hindernissen, die es jetzt zu überwinden gilt, wenn eine Einstellung der Feindseligkeiten und die Aufnahme von Friedensgesprächen erneut in Angriff genommen werden sollen, wie Donald Trump will. Das größte Hindernis ist laut Präsident Putin die Tatsache, dass Volodomyr Zelensky weiterhin im Amt ist.

Wenn diese Stellungnahme von Putin heute Morgen nicht berichtenswert ist, was dann? Wurden Putins Äußerungen bisher von The New York Times, von The Financial Times, von CNN berichtet? Nein!

Lassen Sie uns hier und jetzt die Punkte durchgehen, die Putin gestern angesprochen hat. Wenn mir das Video meines Interviews mit WION heute oder morgen zugeschickt wird, werde ich es separat posten.

                                                                   *****

Zunächst gab Wladimir Putin gestern einen detaillierteren Zeitplan der Ereignisse vor den Friedensgesprächen Ende März und Anfang April 2022 bekannt. Wie wir wissen, hatten sich die russischen Streitkräfte von Belarus aus, wo sie vor der Invasion am 24. Februar stationiert waren, bis an den Stadtrand von Kiew nach Süden gekämpft. Selensky teilte dem Kreml mit, dass diese Bedrohung für das Überleben seiner Regierung zurückgenommen werden müsse, damit die Verhandlungen beginnen könnten. Dementsprechend wurden die russischen Truppen bis zum 4. April vollständig abgezogen. Einige wurden nach Belarus zurückgeführt. Andere kehrten in die Russische Föderation zurück. Dieses Zugeständnis wurde als kalkuliertes Risiko eingegangen, in dem Wissen, dass die Ukrainer sie austricksen und die Verhandlungen nicht durchführen könnten.

Tatsächlich begannen die Gespräche zwischen russischen und ukrainischen Delegationen in Istanbul, und innerhalb von zehn Tagen wurde ein langer Vertragsentwurf vereinbart und von den Leitern der jeweiligen Delegationen paraphiert. Wie wir wissen, sah dieses Dokument die Neutralität der Ukraine vor, dass sie niemals der NATO beitreten oder ausländischen Truppen und militärischen Einrichtungen erlauben würde, sich auf ihrem Territorium niederzulassen. Es setzte den ukrainischen Streitkräften Grenzen, die sicherstellen sollten, dass sie einen Krieg mit Russland nicht erneut beginnen könnten. Kiew behielt die Kontrolle über seine östlichen Provinzen bis hin zur damaligen Trennung der Streitkräfte, was bedeutete, dass im Vergleich zur Situation zu Beginn der Invasion nur ein vernachlässigbar geringes weiteres Gebiet verloren gehen würde. Nur über eine Bedingung konnte man sich nicht einigen, so Putin, und diese sollte vor der Unterzeichnung direkt zwischen den beiden Präsidenten ausgehandelt werden.

Die Dokumente waren somit am 15. April 2022 unterschriftsreif. Zu diesem Zeitpunkt bat Kiew jedoch um eine einwöchige „Auszeit“, um sich mit seinen Verbündeten zu beraten. Während dieser Zeit traf der britische Premierminister Boris Johnson in Kiew ein und überzeugte Selensky, den Vertragsentwurf zu verwerfen und den Krieg mit Unterstützung seiner NATO-Freunde fortzusetzen, bis die Grenzen des Landes von 1992 vollständig wiederhergestellt sind.

Ja, kommentierte Putin, wir wurden getäuscht. Aber wir haben dabei verstanden, mit wem wir es zu tun haben. So sei es.

Warum hat Putin diese Geschichte jetzt erzählt? Ich interpretiere das so, dass er damit sein eigenes Beharren rechtfertigt, das er in seiner Rede vor den Mitarbeitern des russischen Außenministeriums im Juni 2024 zum Ausdruck brachte, dass die Ukraine ihre Truppen aus den vier Oblasten Donezk, Lugansk, Cherson und Saporischschja abziehen muss, bevor Waffenstillstandsverhandlungen beginnen können, da Russland diese Oblasten in seine Föderation eingegliedert hat, obwohl sie nur teilweise in seinem Besitz waren. Heute würde dies auch den Abzug der verbliebenen ukrainischen Truppen aus der russischen Oblast Kursk bedeuten.

Der zweite Teil des Interviews, das Putin gestern Pavel Zarubin gab, betraf die Frage, mit wem Russland heute Waffenstillstands- und Friedensabkommen aushandeln und unterzeichnen kann. Zunächst sprach Putin das Thema eines Erlasses an, den Zelensky sechs Monate nach der Verwerfung des Vertragsentwurfs vom April 2022 verkündet hatte: Dieser Erlass verbot jegliche Verhandlungen mit Russland, solange Putin im Amt war. Dieses Dekret ist immer noch in Kraft und da die verfassungsmäßig festgelegte Amtszeit von Zelenzky vor vielen Monaten abgelaufen ist, ist er nicht befugt, es aufzuheben. Doch selbst wenn eine rechtliche Lösung für dieses bestehende Verhandlungsverbot gefunden werden könnte, bleibt die Illegitimität von Zelensky bestehen, sodass seine Unterschrift unter Vereinbarungen, die russische und ukrainische Unterhändler möglicherweise treffen, wertlos wäre.

Die Logik dieser Argumente, die Wladimir Putin gestern dargelegt hat, besagt, dass Zelensky gehen muss und entweder der Parlamentspräsident (Werchowna Rada) oder ein neu gewählter Präsident eingesetzt werden muss, damit die ausgehandelten Texte eines Waffenstillstands- und Friedensvertrags in Kraft treten können.

Die oben genannten Punkte sind nicht alles, was Wladimir Putin dem Reporter Zarubin in der Talkshow von Wladimir Solowjow gestern Abend gesagt hat. Er bemerkte auch, dass der Krieg in einem oder höchstens zwei Monaten enden würde, wenn die Vereinigten Staaten ihre Waffenlieferungen an die Ukraine jetzt einstellen würden, da die ukrainischen Streitkräfte nicht über das militärische Material verfügen würden, um weiterzumachen.

                                                                        *****

Abschließend möchte ich Donald Trump und seinem Gefolge einen Vorschlag machen, wie sie auf diese jüngsten Aussagen reagieren sollten: einfach schweigen! Was dieser Präsident in den letzten Tagen über den Ukraine-Krieg gesagt hat, war schlecht informiert und hat seine Glaubwürdigkeit als potenzieller Friedensstifter nur untergraben. Es wäre weitaus besser, einfach den Mund zu halten und es Diplomaten oder einem neuen persönlichen Abgesandten (nicht General Kellogg!) zu überlassen, die losen Enden aus Wladimir Putins jüngstem Interview für Gespräche hinter verschlossenen Türen aufzugreifen.

Ist Trump zu einer solchen Diskretion fähig? Ja, die Art und Weise, wie er unter größter Geheimhaltung mit Teheran in Kontakt tritt und dabei einen besonnenen und fähigen Abgesandten einsetzt, ist ein Vorbild dafür, wie er jetzt mit Moskau verfahren sollte.

Nachtrag: Der neue russische Kanal RN auf YouTube hat gerade das Interview mit Wladimir Putin von Pavel Zarubin veröffentlicht, auf das ich oben anspiele. Ich freue mich, dass die russische Nachrichtenorganisation endlich beschlossen hat, ihre eigenen inländischen Inhalte mit englischem Voice-Over und Untertiteln ins Internet zu stellen.

27 January 2025: Collective Memory in Russia and Collective Amnesia in the West

Yesterday’s state television programming in Russia highlighted the visit of President Vladimir Putin to the Piskaryovo Memorial Cemetery on the outskirts of Petersburg to lay a bouquet in honor of his brother who died in the Great Patriotic War (WWII) and is buried there, and to pay his respects to the 420,000 civilians and 50,000 soldiers of the Leningrad Front who died in the Siege of Leningrad and lie in mass graves at Piskaryovo. There were no speeches.  Putin stood to attention during the minute of silence that was accorded to the dead.

As every Russian and some in the West recall, the Great Siege that Nazi Germany and its ally Finland maintained from 8 September 1941 to 27 January 1944 was intended to starve to death the city’s population, while the city itself was to be razed to the ground if all went to plan. It was not called genocide until recently, but that is precisely what it was in today’s definition of the word. Germans and Finns. The Wehrmacht enforced the siege, that is to say it was the German nation in arms, not merely Nazi zealots.

Following his visit to the cemetery, President Putin officiated at an awards ceremony in the city, bestowing medals on survivors of the siege and on their armed defenders, now all in the 90s, who were seated on the dais. In the audience were both descendants of the blokadniki and newly designated ‘Heroes of Russia’ who have earned their medals in the Special Military Operation in Ukraine. At the President’s mentioning the presence of these new heroes in the hall, the audience rose as one in applause.  This was spontaneous celebration of the continuous tradition of self-sacrifice for the nation.

An English subtitled video of the awards ceremony is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMuoUbDfmwA

Meanwhile, 1356 kilometers away, in Auschwitz (Oświęcim), Poland dignitaries from across Europe and America were gathered to mark the 80^th anniversary of the liberation of the surviving inmates of the Nazi death camp there on 27 January 1945. 

Members of royalty were in attendance, including King Charles of Britain, Felipe of Spain, Willem-Alexander of The Netherlands, Philippe of Belgium, Frederik of Denmark, Haakon of Norway and Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden.

Among the presidents there were Emmanuel Macron of France, Sergio Mattarella of Italy and Alexander van der Bellen of Austria. Prime ministers came from Canada, Croatia and Ireland. Chancellor Olaf Scholz from Germany and Volodymyr Zalensky of Ukraine also were honored guests.

Who was not there?  The Russians, who, after all had overall responsibility for the liberation of Auschwitz, constituting as they did the single largest contingent of the USSR’s Red Army that did the job on the spot. They were pointedly not invited, because as we all know, they are the aggressors in the ongoing bloody war in Ukraine.

I note that it was not easy to find a list of attendees, because Western media have given remarkably little coverage to what happened yesterday at Auschwitz. The online edition of The Financial Times today has not a word about the Holocaust Day event. Its biggest article of the day is dedicated to how the Chinese company DeepSeek ‘disrupted the global race in Artificial Intelligence, sinking the value of Nvidia. Today’s online New York Times also offers no articles yet about Auschwitz, instead publishing a fine gastronomy feature entitled ‘It’s dumpling week.” Was that ‘All the News that is fit to print”?

To its credit, Britain’s The Guardian does post a substantial article. The facts I cite above come from there. It also remarks on the generalized ignorance about the Nazi death camps among the young generation.

“Memories of one of humanity’s worst atrocities are fading.”

“A recent poll found that proportions of young European adults sometimes running into high double digits had not heard of the Holocaust, could not name Auschwitz or any other camp and had encountered Holocaust denial or distortion, mainly online.”

The article has a heavy editorial content, not just facts. It selects testimony from Auschwitz survivors carefully to give us the following essential point:

“With nationalist and far-right parties gaining support across Europe and disinformation increasingly distorting the history of the Holocaust, this year’s anniversary carried special weight.”

The Guardian associates the rise of far-right parties with the rise of antisemitism in Europe. It goes without saying that their reporters do not link in any way the new antisemitism with the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

By the way, the largest color photo accompanying The Guardian article shows Volodymyr Zalensky placing a lighted candle at the Auschwitz museum.

From other sources, we know that on his way to Poland Zalensky made a stop in Baby Yar, a ravine near Kiev where 33,731 Jews were killed by the Nazi SS, the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police and the Wehrmacht on 29-30 September 1941. Wikipedia tells us that this was the ‘largest mass-murder by the Nazi regime during the campaign against the Soviet Union, and it has been called “the largest single massacre in the history of the Holocaust to that particular date.”

Nota bene that this is the same Zalensky whose regime has made heroes of Stepan Bandera and Ukraine’s Nazi collaborator movements in WWII. I find Zalensky’s visit to Babi Yar important in another way. It brings out the fundamental mistake in the widely held view that the Holocaust took place in specially engineered gas chambers of Auschwitz and other German factories of death. Yes, Auschwitz accounted for over one million deaths and was the largest operation of its kind. However, most of the other five million deaths in the Holocaust took place in ravines and open fields of East Central Europe and Western USSR, in what the historian Timothy Snyder called The Bloodlands, his very well documented book by that title. This means that murders were perpetrated by vast numbers of participants, both in uniformed army ranks and from among non-combatants in an age-old savage manner.

That Snyder went on from that landmark research to become a leading voice among Russia-haters before and during the Russia-Ukraine war is an entirely separate issue.

                                                                     *****

Late yesterday, the first segment of the Vladimir Solovyov talk show on the Rossiya 1 channel provided extensive and at times eloquent discussion of the headline issue of this essay.

Of course, panelists addressed the scandalous fact that Olaf Scholz and Volodymyr Zalensky were honored guests in Auschwitz while the actual liberators of the death camp were not invited. By its very nature such a guest list reveals the ongoing rewriting of the history of the Second World War that amounts to denial of what the Russians call historical memory (историческая память) and that we might better call ‘collective memory.’  Donald Trump’s recent ‘favor’ to Russia in acknowledging that Russia ‘had helped’ America to win the war was also brought up as a demonstration of sacrilegious revisionism that is held in contempt by Russians of all political stripes.

Solovyov’s panelists called attention to the reasons for Vladimir Putin’s speaking of a Nazi regime in control of Ukraine since 2014: Nuremberg style torchlight parades in Kiev with Nazi symbols on display and the renaming of streets and monuments in honor of Bandera. From this they went on to mention the similar annual marches of SS descendants through the streets of Riga, Latvia which never attract any critical notice by other EU Member States.

Finally, one panelist brought up the shocking statement that Elan Musk made earlier in the day: that Germany should ‘move beyond Nazi guilt.’ That damning statement has not elicited the discussion it merits in Western media, whereas his Nazi Siegheil straight-arm salute at the rally celebrating Trump’s inauguration last Monday did raise questions in Western major media.

 Musk’s call for selective amnesia in Germany aligns perfectly with his support in word and deed (financially) to the Alternative for Germany party. The AfD was the original voice in the country saying that today’s German nation has no collective guilt for the horrors of the Nazis and should step out confidently to restore its sovereignty. This was later adopted by the whole German political establishment and made it possible for the Greens party leader Annalena Baerbock in her position as German Foreign Minister to stand on a soapbox and denounce Russian aggression and violation of European values.

Sovereignty is one thing, and I fully support it.  Air brushing out the past, is something else, and in the German case is utterly unacceptable, considering what yesterday was commemorating in Auschwitz and at Piskaryova.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2025

Translation below into German (Andreas Mylaeus)

27. Januar 2025: Kollektives Gedächtnis in Russland und kollektive Amnesie im Westen

Das gestrige staatliche Fernsehprogramm in Russland zeigte den Besuch von Präsident Wladimir Putin auf dem Piskarjowo-Gedenkfriedhof am Stadtrand von St. Petersburg, wo er einen Blumenstrauß zu Ehren seines Bruders niedergelegt hat, der im Zweiten Weltkrieg gefallen ist und dort begraben liegt, und den 420.000 Zivilisten und 50.000 Soldaten der Leningrader Front seine Ehre erwies, die bei der Belagerung von Leningrad starben und in Massengräbern in Piskarjowo liegen. Es gab keine Reden. Putin stand während der Schweigeminute für die Toten stramm.

Wie jeder Russe und einige Menschen im Westen wissen, sollte die große Belagerung, die Nazideutschland und sein Verbündeter Finnland vom 8. September 1941 bis zum 27. Januar 1944 aufrechterhielten, die Bevölkerung der Stadt aushungern, während die Stadt selbst dem Erdboden gleichgemacht werden sollte, wenn alles nach Plan lief. Bis vor Kurzem wurde dies nicht als Völkermord bezeichnet, aber genau das ist es nach der heutigen Definition des Wortes. Deutsche und Finnen. Die Wehrmacht setzte die Belagerung durch, das heißt, es handelte sich um die deutsche Nation in Waffen, nicht nur um Nazi-Eiferer.

Nach seinem Besuch auf dem Friedhof nahm Präsident Putin an einer Preisverleihung in der Stadt teil, bei der er Medaillen an Überlebende der Belagerung und an ihre bewaffneten Verteidiger verlieh, die nun alle in den 90ern sind und auf der Tribüne saßen. Im Publikum saßen sowohl Nachkommen der Blokadniki als auch frisch ernannte „Helden Russlands“, die sich ihre Medaillen in der militärischen Spezialoperation in der Ukraine verdient hatten. Als der Präsident die Anwesenheit dieser neuen Helden im Saal erwähnte, erhob sich das Publikum geschlossen zum Applaus. Dies war eine spontane Feier der fortwährenden Tradition der Selbstaufopferung für die Nation.

Ein Video der Preisverleihung mit englischen Untertiteln ist verfügbar, hier: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMuoUbDfmwA

Währenddessen versammelten sich 1.356 Kilometer entfernt in Auschwitz (Oświęcim), Polen, Würdenträger aus ganz Europa und Amerika, um den 80. Jahrestag der Befreiung der überlebenden Insassen des dortigen Todeslagers der Nazis am 27. Januar 1945 zu begehen.

Mitglieder königlicher Familien waren anwesend, darunter König Charles von Großbritannien, Felipe von Spanien, Willem-Alexander der Niederlande, Philippe von Belgien, Frederik von Dänemark, Haakon von Norwegen und Kronprinzessin Victoria von Schweden.

Zu den Präsidenten gehörten Emmanuel Macron aus Frankreich, Sergio Mattarella aus Italien und Alexander van der Bellen aus Österreich. Die Premierminister kamen aus Kanada, Kroatien und Irland. Bundeskanzler Olaf Scholz aus Deutschland und Volodymyr Zelensky aus der Ukraine waren ebenfalls Ehrengäste.

Wer war nicht dabei? Die Russen, die schließlich die Gesamtverantwortung für die Befreiung von Auschwitz trugen, da sie das größte Kontingent der Roten Armee der UdSSR stellten, das diese Aufgabe vor Ort erfüllte. Sie wurden absichtlich nicht eingeladen, weil sie, wie wir alle wissen, die Aggressoren in dem andauernden blutigen Krieg in der Ukraine sind.

Ich stelle fest, dass es nicht einfach war, eine Teilnehmerliste zu finden, weil die westlichen Medien bemerkenswert wenig über die gestrigen Ereignisse in Auschwitz berichtet haben. In der heutigen Online-Ausgabe von The Financial Times findet sich kein Wort über die Veranstaltung zum Holocaust-Gedenktag. Der größte Artikel des Tages ist der Frage gewidmet, wie das chinesische Unternehmen DeepSeek „den globalen Wettlauf um künstliche Intelligenz gestört und den Wert von Nvidia gesenkt hat“. Auch die heutige Online-Ausgabe der New York Times bietet noch keine Artikel über Auschwitz, sondern veröffentlicht stattdessen einen schönen Gastronomie-Beitrag mit dem Titel „Es ist Knödelwoche“. Waren das „alle Nachrichten, die es wert sind, gedruckt zu werden“?

Der britische The Guardian veröffentlicht einen umfangreichen Artikel. Die oben genannten Fakten stammen von dort. Darin wird auch auf die weit verbreitete Unkenntnis der jungen Generation über die nationalsozialistischen Vernichtungslager hingewiesen.

„Die Erinnerungen an eine der schlimmsten Gräueltaten der Menschheit verblassen.“

„Eine kürzlich durchgeführte Umfrage ergab, dass ein teilweise hoher zweistelliger Anteil junger europäischer Erwachsener noch nie vom Holocaust gehört hatte, weder Auschwitz noch ein anderes Lager nennen konnte und vor allem online auf Holocaust-Leugnung oder – Verzerrung gestoßen war.“

Der Artikel hat einen starken redaktionellen Inhalt, nicht nur Fakten. Er wählt sorgfältig Aussagen von Auschwitz-Überlebenden aus, um uns den folgenden wesentlichen Punkt zu vermitteln:

„Da nationalistische und rechtsextreme Parteien in ganz Europa an Unterstützung gewinnen und Desinformation die Geschichte des Holocaust zunehmend verzerrt, hatte der diesjährige Jahrestag besonderes Gewicht.“

The Guardian bringt den Aufstieg rechtsextremer Parteien mit dem Anstieg des Antisemitismus in Europa in Verbindung. Es versteht sich von selbst, dass ihre Reporter den neuen Antisemitismus in keiner Weise mit dem anhaltenden Völkermord in Gaza in Verbindung bringen.

Das größte Farbfoto, das den Artikel in The Guardian begleitet, zeigt übrigens Volodymyr Zelensky, wie er eine brennende Kerze im Museum Auschwitz niederlegt.

Aus anderen Quellen wissen wir, dass Zelensky auf seinem Weg nach Polen einen Zwischenstopp in der Schlucht „Baby Jar“ in der Nähe von Kiew einlegte, wo 33.731 Juden am 29. und 30. September 1941 von der SS, der ukrainischen Hilfspolizei und der Wehrmacht getötet wurden. Wikipedia sagt uns, dass dies der „größte Massenmord des Nazi-Regimes während des Feldzugs gegen die Sowjetunion“ war und als „das größte einzelne Massaker in der Geschichte des Holocaust bis zu diesem bestimmten Zeitpunkt“ bezeichnet wurde.

Wohlgemerkt ist dies derselbe Zelensky, dessen Regime Stepan Bandera und die ukrainischen Nazi-Kollaborateure im Zweiten Weltkrieg zu Helden gemacht hat. Ich finde Zelenskys Besuch in Babi Jar auch aus einem anderen Grund wichtig. Er verdeutlicht den grundlegenden Fehler in der weit verbreiteten Ansicht, dass der Holocaust in speziell konstruierten Gaskammern von Auschwitz und anderen deutschen Todesfabriken stattfand. Ja, in Auschwitz starben über eine Million Menschen und es war die größte Anlage dieser Art. Die meisten der anderen fünf Millionen Todesopfer des Holocaust starben jedoch in Schluchten und auf offenen Feldern in Ostmitteleuropa und im Westen der UdSSR, in den sogenannten „Bloodlands“, wie der Historiker Timothy Snyder sie in seinem sehr gut dokumentierten Buch mit diesem Titel nannte. Das bedeutet, dass die Morde von einer großen Anzahl von Beteiligten verübt wurden, sowohl in uniformierten Armeereihen als auch unter Nichtkombattanten, und zwar auf eine uralte, grausame Art und Weise.

Dass Snyder nach dieser bahnbrechenden Forschung zu einer führenden Stimme unter den Russlandhassern vor und während des Russland-Ukraine-Krieges wurde, ist ein ganz anderes Thema.

                                                                     *****

Gestern Abend wurde im ersten Teil der Talkshow von Vladimir Solovyov auf dem Fernsehsender Rossiya 1 ausführlich und zuweilen wortgewandt über das Hauptthema dieses Essays diskutiert.

Natürlich sprachen die Diskussionsteilnehmer die skandalöse Tatsache an, dass Olaf Scholz und Volodymyr Zelensky Ehrengäste in Auschwitz waren, während die eigentlichen Befreier des Todeslagers nicht eingeladen waren. Eine solche Gästeliste offenbart naturgemäß die anhaltende Umschreibung der Geschichte des Zweiten Weltkriegs, die einer Verleugnung dessen gleichkommt, was die Russen als „historische Erinnerung“ (историческая память) bezeichnen und was wir besser als „kollektives Gedächtnis“ bezeichnen sollten. Donald Trumps jüngste „Gunstbezeugung“ gegenüber Russland, indem er anerkannte, dass Russland Amerika „geholfen“ habe, den Krieg zu gewinnen, wurde ebenfalls als Beweis für einen frevelhaften Revisionismus angeführt, der von Russen aller politischen Couleur verachtet wird.

Die Diskussionsteilnehmer von Solowjow wiesen auf die Gründe hin, warum Wladimir Putin seit 2014 von einem Nazi-Regime spricht, das die Ukraine kontrolliert: Fackelzüge im Nürnberger Stil in Kiew mit zur Schau gestellten Nazi-Symbolen und die Umbenennung von Straßen und Denkmälern zu Ehren von Bandera. Daraufhin erwähnten sie die ähnlichen jährlichen Aufmärsche von SS-Nachkommen durch die Straßen von Riga, Lettland, die von anderen EU-Mitgliedstaaten nie kritisch zur Kenntnis genommen werden.

Schließlich brachte ein Diskussionsteilnehmer die schockierende Aussage zur Sprache, die Elon Musk früher am Tag gemacht hatte: Deutschland solle „die Nazi-Schuld hinter sich lassen“. Diese vernichtende Aussage hat in den westlichen Medien nicht die Diskussion ausgelöst, die sie verdient, während sein Hitlergruß mit ausgestrecktem Arm bei der Kundgebung zur Amtseinführung von Trump am vergangenen Montag in den großen westlichen Medien Fragen aufwarf.

Musks Aufruf zu selektiver Amnesie in Deutschland passt perfekt zu seiner Unterstützung der Partei Alternative für Deutschland in Wort und Tat (finanziell). Die AfD war die erste Stimme im Land, die sagte, dass die heutige deutsche Nation keine Kollektivschuld für die Schrecken der Nazis trägt und selbstbewusst voranschreiten sollte, um ihre Souveränität wiederherzustellen. Dies wurde später vom gesamten politischen Establishment Deutschlands übernommen und ermöglichte es der Grünen-Parteivorsitzenden Annalena Baerbock in ihrer Position als deutsche Außenministerin, auf einer Rednerbühne zu stehen und die russische Aggression und die Verletzung europäischer Werte anzuprangern.

Souveränität ist eine Sache, und ich unterstütze sie voll und ganz. Die Vergangenheit auszulöschen, ist etwas anderes und im deutschen Fall völlig inakzeptabel, wenn man bedenkt, woran gestern in Auschwitz und in Piskaryova gedacht wurde.

Transcript submitted by a reader

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzwHb6dyw2M

NewsX: 0:00
Russia continues its advances in Ukrainian territory. Its defense ministry has announced the capture of Velyka Novosylka [Velikaya Novosyolka], a strategically important town in eastern Donetsk region, whereas Ukraine says that its troops have only strategically withdrawn from certain areas. This capture, if confirmed, would make Velyka Novosylka the first significant town to capture in 2025. A day prior, Ukrainian air defenses downed 50 of 72 drones launched by Russia overnight.

0:34
Additionally, Ukraine’s general staff of the armed forces said that forces struck an oil refinery in the Russian region of Ryazan. The facility reportedly produces fuel for Russian military jets. Elsewhere, Ukrainian NGOs catering for the needs of war veterans and their families have claimed a suspension of US funding is forcing them to halt their work. This comes after newly sworn in US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced he would pause foreign aid grants for 90 days. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky later claimed that military aid to Ukraine would continue, but did not clarify whether humanitarian aid had been paused.

1:18
We are joined by our reporter Aditya Wadhawan. Aditya, what can you give us about these recent updates from the Russian-Ukraine war?

Wadhawan:
Well, Tom, as you can see, the Ukraine defense forces are claiming that they have hit the drone storage facility of Russia and they have stuck important Russian installations. On the other hand, Russia has been striking Ukraine for quite some time. What has happened recently since the new incoming Trump administration has taken charge of the United States of America, the Secretary of State Marco Rubio has halted the foreign aid that was being given to Ukraine as part of its 90-day halt of its foreign aid.

2:14
It is considered as a setback to Ukraine’s growing military prowess against Russia to defend itself. As per some reports, what has happened, the Trump administration has also indicated that they are no more interested in the reconstruction work in the war-torn Ukraine, and they have given that work to some private company. So we see the entire situation, you know, it is not looking very good for Ukraine, because it is, it was actually dependent upon a good missile, upon the missile system and its defensive procurement on United States of America. And halting this foreign assistance for another 90 days is considered to be a setback for Ukraine.

Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin has praised Donald Trump for not providing aid to Ukraine, and this needs to be seen as to how this entire scenario in the Russia- Ukraine war proceeds from here. Yes Tom, back to you in the studio.

NewsX: 3:17
Thank you very much, Aditya. We are joined for more on this discussion by Professor Olexiy Haran, Professor of Comparative Politics at the University of Kiev, Molya; and Gilbert Doktorow, Russian affairs expert live from Brussels.

Professor Haran, I wanted to come to you on this first question. How does the reported fall of Velyka Novosylka affect Ukraine’s military objectives in the Donetsk region, and how is Ukraine planning to regain strategic positions?

Haran: 3:54
Well, definitely I would say yes, we [have] withdrawn from the Velyka [and] Novosylka, and it creates better possibilities for Russia to continue its slow but still movement further in Donbass.

The question when we are talking why it happens, you know, I think that in order to organize successful defense, we need more resources including military resources. So in this sense, I would like to comment on the decision, well, to freeze for 90 days foreign aid support. As far as I understand, as far as we understand in Ukraine, it doesn’t include actually the military support. It’s more about support– definitely Trump may decrease it, but so far, you know, this military support is coming from other channels, not through the programs, definitely, of development.

5:11
What is true is the United States, yes, they stopped US aid, they stopped development programs in Ukraine for 90 days. And I would say definitely it’s bad, you know, because this US aid support in Ukraine doesn’t only include grants to NGOs, to free media, but it also includes very important areas of energy, of medicine, social sphere, which is really important in times of war. It’s a bit surprising for us– well, two countries are excluded from this freezing for 90 days. These are Egypt and Israel, which we may also understand why, but Ukraine is at war.

6:09
It’s not like other countries. It’s under attack. So definitely we think it’s not very just to stop development programs for Ukraine. By the way, these are, well, closed information, but it was discussed in the press that American diplomats in the State Department, they actually made a statement, closed statement to Rubio and others that it should be, that support to Ukraine should be continued.

NewsX: 6:47
Gilbert Doctorow, I wanted to get your response of that. I want to ask how does the capture of Velyka, Novosylka align with Russia’s broader military strategy in eastern Ukraine?

Gilbert Doctorow, PhD:
Well, I’m glad you gave me that question, because it touches directly on the meaning of the capture of that city, when my fellow panelist says that his country needs further military assistance. The military assistance, materiel, coming in from the West is useless to Ukraine if it cannot be brought to the front lines. And the capture of Velikaya Novosylka, that is precisely a part of the strategy that the Russians are implementing very successfully now. This city was one of the main logistics hubs.

7:40
The next city, and still greater target for Russian efforts, is Pokrovsk. And there you have the nexus, the rail lines, the truck lines, the roads, which are supplying the front. If the front cannot receive supplies, then it’s pointless to speak about anything else.

It’s wonderful that you are informing your viewers about the losses that the Ukrainians are experiencing on the battlefield, but you are not alone. The fact is that mainstream in the West, “The Financial Times”, “The New York Times”, other major newspapers across Europe, are daily reporting, finally, are daily reporting the serious reverses, the serious losses of manpower and of Western-supplied equipment of the Ukrainians on the battlefield, along the 1,200-kilometer-long line of demarcation or separation of the forces.

8:38
This is common knowledge. I salute Mr. Trump for his first week in office by decree ending US Government censorship. However, if nobody is reading or listening to the news that is available in mainstream, then what’s the point of it all?

The most important person not reading the news is Mr. Trump himself. He has been in the last week issuing utterly ignorant and foolish statements about the state of, the condition of the war, that supposedly the Russians and the Ukrainians are in a stalemate, and their lives are being lost for no purpose. Mr. Trump, open the newspaper and you will see it is not a stalemate.

9:21
Listen to this radio station and you will under– or television station, and you will know it is not a stalemate. The Russians are about to have a conclusive victory over the Ukrainian forces. And why on earth would they agree to do a pause, which is what you think you are going to negotiate with Mr. Putin? You will not.

NewsX: 9:42
Professor Haran, can I please get your response to that, please. And then I want to talk about the successful interception of 50 out of 72 Russian drones, and how significant is this achievement for Ukraine?

Haran:
Well, you know, we have attacks from Russia almost every day. Actually, the photos which you see behind me is my vicinity, where I live. So that’s what we have, you know … cruel Russian bombardments of civilian cities and civilian objects. So look, we intercept a lot of drones, but unfortunately not all. And that’s why we need defense system to close our skies. Look, I am really appalled. It seems to me that Mr. Doctorow, he is happy, you know, about– he would welcome Russian victory, the aggressor’s victory. I don’t understand why.

And actually, when we are talking, you know, that “Russia is successful, Russia is winning the war” and so on and so forth, let me remind that Putin wanted to seize Kiev.

NewsX: 10:57
I’m really sorry, we seem to have lost you, but we have also run out of time. We will now move to more news from across the world.

Yesterday evening’s News of the Week hosted by Dmitry Kiselyov largely focused on Donald Trump’s inauguration and first six days in office.  But coverage of the war in Ukraine, which always takes a substantial part of the program, spent time celebrating the taking of the Donetsk oblast city of Velikaya Novosyolka.  The name probably does not mean much to the outside world, so allow me to explain that this was a highly fortified town that has played an important role as logistics hub for delivery of supplies to the Ukrainian front lines all along the line of confrontation in Donbas.

There were also reports from forces attacking the still larger and more strategic city of Pokrovsk. It is now being sealed off from all sides by Russian units in the expectation that it can be taken without the time and casualties of street fighting.

Some Russian units are already on the outskirts of Pokrovsk, setting up ‘cauldrons’ that will isolate and eutralize Ukrainian troops, who will surrender or die. Surely, Pokrovsk will fall in the coming weeks. What this means is that all war materiel which the United States and its European allies may dispatch to Ukraine will not do much good for the defense since it cannot reach the front.

I am very pleased that I was able to make these points on India’s global broadcaster News X this morning while congratulating them for their earnest reporting on the Ukrainian setbacks and Russian victories. However, as I also said on air, a great many Western mainstream media outlets have in the past couple of weeks also been providing unbiased and factual reporting on the Russian advances and what they mean for the denouement of the war.

I saluted Donald Trump for his decree in these first days in the Oval Office ending state censorship of the news. We in the Opposition can now breathe easier.  But I ask what is the value of freedom of the press if no one is reading or watching what is published, least of all the President himself, who remains clueless and daily makes ignorant statements about a supposed bloody stalemate to justify his intervention as peacemaker dictating terms of a cease-fire.  No, the deaths are not senseless: they are the price on the Russian side for achieving in full the objectives of the Special Military Operation and defending the country’s legitimate security interests against NATO and US global hegemony.

And so I addressed Donald Trump in this broadcast and recommended that he open the daily print news of The Financial Times or The New York Times, while tossing in the waste basket the Kievan propaganda that he has been getting from the corrupt U.S. intelligence agencies.

When the link to this NewsX segment on the war which I shared with a somewhat subdued, may I dare say humbler defender of the Zelensky regime based in Kiev becomes available, I will re-post it here.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2025

Translation below into German (Andreas Mylaeus)

Russische Eroberung von Welikaja Nowosyolka: Was bedeutet das?

Die Nachrichten der Woche, die gestern Abend von Dmitry Kiselyov moderiert wurden, konzentrierten sich hauptsächlich auf die Amtseinführung von Donald Trump und seine ersten sechs Tage im Amt. Aber in der Berichterstattung über den Krieg in der Ukraine, die immer einen wesentlichen Teil der Sendung ausmacht, wurde die Einnahme der Stadt Welikaja Nowosyolka im Oblast Donezk gefeiert. Der Name sagt der Außenwelt wahrscheinlich nicht viel, daher möchte ich erklären, dass es sich hierbei um eine stark befestigte Stadt handelte, die eine wichtige Rolle als Logistikzentrum für die Lieferung von Vorräten an die ukrainischen Frontlinien entlang der gesamten Konfrontationslinie in Donbas spielte.

Es gab auch Berichte von Streitkräften, die die noch größere und strategisch wichtigere Stadt Pokrowsk angegriffen haben. Sie wird nun von allen Seiten von russischen Einheiten abgeriegelt, in der Erwartung, dass sie ohne den Zeitaufwand und die Verluste von Straßenkämpfen eingenommen werden kann.

Einige russische Einheiten befinden sich bereits am Stadtrand von Pokrowsk und errichten „Kessel“, die die ukrainischen Truppen isolieren und neutralisieren sollen, die sich ergeben oder sterben werden. Pokrowsk wird sicherlich in den kommenden Wochen fallen. Das bedeutet, dass das gesamte Kriegsmaterial, das die Vereinigten Staaten und ihre europäischen Verbündeten in die Ukraine schicken könnten, für die Verteidigung nicht viel nützen wird, da es die Front nicht erreichen kann.

Ich bin sehr froh, dass ich diese Punkte heute Morgen im indischen Nachrichtensender News X ansprechen konnte, während ich dem Sender zu seiner aufrichtigen Berichterstattung über die Rückschläge der Ukraine und die Siege Russlands gratuliert habe. Wie ich jedoch auch in der Sendung sagte, haben in den letzten Wochen auch viele westliche Mainstream-Medien unvoreingenommen und sachlich über die russischen Vorstöße und deren Bedeutung für den Ausgang des Krieges berichtet.

Ich habe Donald Trump für seinen Erlass in den ersten Tagen im Oval Office begrüßt, mit dem die staatliche Zensur der Nachrichten beendet wurde. Wir in der Opposition können jetzt aufatmen. Aber ich frage mich, welchen Wert die Pressefreiheit hat, wenn niemand liest oder sieht, was veröffentlicht wird, am allerwenigsten der Präsident selbst, der weiterhin ahnungslos ist und täglich unwissende Aussagen über eine angebliche blutige Pattsituation macht, um seine Intervention als Friedensstifter zu rechtfertigen, der die Bedingungen für einen Waffenstillstand diktiert. Nein, die Toten sind nicht sinnlos: Sie sind der Preis auf russischer Seite für die vollständige Erreichung der Ziele der militärischen Spezialoperation und die Verteidigung der legitimen Sicherheitsinteressen des Landes gegen die globale Hegemonie der NATO und der USA.

Und so habe ich mich in dieser Sendung an Donald Trump gewandt und ihm empfohlen, die Tageszeitungen Financial Times oder New York Times aufzuschlagen und die Kiewer Propaganda, die er von den korrupten US-Geheimdiensten erhält, in den Papierkorb zu werfen.

Wenn der Link zu diesem NewsX-Segment über den Krieg, den ich mit einem etwas zurückhaltenden, wenn ich das so sagen darf, bescheideneren Verteidiger des Zelensky-Regimes in Kiew geteilt habe, verfügbar ist, werde ich ihn hier erneut posten.

The ‘silver lining’ in Trump’s election that is turning to dross

It is just under a week since Donald Trump took the oath of office and a number of the contradictions between his words before the election and his deeds after the inauguration are sorting themselves out.

Regrettably, there was no contradiction between ‘before and after’ as regards his policy on Israel and the Gaza genocide. Commentators in the alternative media said his personal inclinations were locked in by a $150 million campaign donation from arch Zionist Miriam Adelson and this seemed to be borne out by those he nominated for the ‘power ministries’ in his cabinet, all of whom were unreservedly pro-Israel.

Today’s news confirms the worst one could fear: Trump has now urged Egypt and Jordan to take in most of the population of Gaza. His idea is to ‘clean out’ the Strip, sending away to neighboring states what he estimated to be ‘a million and half people.’  Perhaps this was just another example of his disregard for facts, just as he spoke several days ago about Soviet war dead in WWII as 60 million when the true figure widely known to all is 26 or 27 million. Perhaps it was a tip-off that he knows more about the true scale of murder perpetrated by Israel in Gaza than the rest of us. My point is that the official number for Palestinians in Gaza before October 2023 was 2.2 million.

Even mainstream media seem to be astonished by Trump’s proposal.

The Financial Times says it ‘would upend decades of US policy promoting the two-state solution based on the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, in Gaza and parts of the occupied West Bank.” The paper goes on to quote the damning remarks of a Middle East expert in Washington over what would be construed in the region as a second ‘Nakba’ or permanent expulsion of Palestinians from their homes. By reference to this expert, they call it ‘ethnic cleansing’ and note that ‘it would undermine prospects of a normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia.’ In other words, Trump is destroying with his own hands the signature policy of his first administration that ended in the Abraham Accords.

In the absence of normalization in the region, Israel would remain under constant threat of renewed war, meaning that American military support for the country would be extended without end.  So much for Trump’s aspiration to be a peacemaker and to scale back American military operations abroad.

My interest in all of the foregoing is because of what it means for Trump’s approach to the other big foreign policy issue on his desk when he took office:  ending the Ukraine war. In a word, this does not point to his being above the boorish and uninformed remarks on how to deal with Russia that we heard in the weeks before his inauguration from his inner circle, including Sebastian Gorka, Michael Waltz and General Kellogg.

It will be a real challenge for Vladimir Putin and his closest advisers to find common interests with Trump that can lead him away from the obnoxious rhetoric that we saw in Trump’s mixture of threats that accompanied his invitation to the Russian president to a summit meeting. My guess is that the key to an understanding over Ukraine and a revised security architecture in Europe that accommodates Russian interests will be Russian proposals on stabilizing the strategic arms balance by, for example both sides freezing the deployment of medium range ballistic missiles in Europe including hypersonic missiles and the non-deployment of several Russian doomsday systems that have not gone into production like their nuclear underwater drone Poseidon or their Satan 2 ICBM which can raze to the ground half a continent at one go.

The issue of the growing disbalance in strategic weapons between the two nuclear superpowers was flagged by several U.S. Senators in the months after Putin presented Russia’s latest achievements to the world in March 2018. 

See https://consortiumnews.com/2018/03/10/gang-of-four-senators-call-for-tillerson-to-enter-into-arms-control-talks-with-the-kremlin/

It became a major talking point in Joe Biden’s first and only summit meeting with Vladimir Putin in June 2021.  It has not gone away. Indeed, the contrary is true now that Russia actually demonstrated its unrivaled and unstoppable capabilities with its Oreshnik missile attack on Dnepropetrovsk. 

This issue of strategic power balance all by itself can move the U.S-Russia agenda in a constructive path when the talked about summit takes place. Leaving the talks at the level of a ceasefire or frozen conflict in Ukraine will be a dead end.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2025

Translation below into German (Andreas Mylaeus)

Der „Silberstreif“ in Trumps Wahl, der sich in Schlacke verwandelt

Es ist knapp eine Woche her, dass Donald Trump den Amtseid abgelegt hat, und einige der Widersprüche zwischen seinen Worten vor der Wahl und seinen Taten nach der Amtseinführung klären sich allmählich auf.

Bedauerlicherweise gab es keinen Widerspruch zwischen „vorher und nachher“, was seine Politik gegenüber Israel und den Völkermord im Gazastreifen betrifft. Kommentatoren in den alternativen Medien sagten, dass seine persönlichen Neigungen durch eine Wahlkampfspende der erzkonservativen Zionistin Miriam Adelson in Höhe von 150 Millionen Dollar festgelegt wurden, und dies scheint durch die von ihm für die „Machtministerien“ in seinem Kabinett ernannten Personen bestätigt zu werden, die alle vorbehaltlos pro-israelisch sind.

Die heutigen Nachrichten bestätigen das Schlimmste, was man befürchten konnte: Trump hat nun Ägypten und Jordanien aufgefordert, den Großteil der Bevölkerung von Gaza aufzunehmen. Seine Idee ist es, den Gazastreifen zu „säubern“ und schätzungsweise „eineinhalb Millionen Menschen“ in die Nachbarstaaten zu schicken. Vielleicht war dies nur ein weiteres Beispiel für seine Missachtung von Fakten, so wie er vor einigen Tagen von 60 Millionen sowjetischen Kriegstoten im Zweiten Weltkrieg gesprochen hat, während die tatsächliche Zahl, die allgemein bekannt ist, bei 26 oder 27 Millionen liegt. Vielleicht war es ein Hinweis darauf, dass er mehr über das wahre Ausmaß der von Israel in Gaza begangenen Morde weiß als der Rest von uns. Ich möchte darauf hinweisen, dass die offizielle Zahl der Palästinenser in Gaza vor Oktober 2023 bei 2,2 Millionen lag.

Selbst die Mainstream-Medien scheinen von Trumps Vorschlag überrascht zu sein.

Die Financial Times sagt, dass dies „Jahrzehnte der US-Politik zur Förderung der Zweistaatenlösung auf der Grundlage der Gründung eines palästinensischen Staates neben Israel, in Gaza und Teilen des besetzten Westjordanlandes, auf den Kopf stellen würde“. Die Zeitung zitiert weiter die vernichtenden Äußerungen eines Nahostexperten in Washington über das, was in der Region als zweite „Nakba“ oder dauerhafte Vertreibung der Palästinenser aus ihren Häusern ausgelegt werden würde. Unter Berufung auf diesen Experten nennen sie es „ethnische Säuberung“ und stellen fest, dass „dies die Aussichten auf eine Normalisierung der Beziehungen zwischen Israel und Saudi-Arabien untergraben würde“. Mit anderen Worten: Trump zerstört mit seinen eigenen Händen die charakteristische Politik seiner ersten Regierung, die in den Abraham-Abkommen mündete.

Ohne eine Normalisierung in der Region wäre Israel weiterhin der ständigen Gefahr eines erneuten Krieges ausgesetzt, was bedeutet, dass die amerikanische Militärhilfe für das Land endlos verlängert werden würde. So viel zu Trumps Bestreben, ein Friedensstifter zu sein und die amerikanischen Militäreinsätze im Ausland zu reduzieren.

Mein Interesse an all dem Vorstehenden liegt darin begründet, was es für Trumps Herangehensweise an das andere große außenpolitische Thema auf seinem Schreibtisch bedeutet, als er sein Amt antrat: die Beendigung des Ukraine-Krieges. Kurz gesagt deutet dies nicht darauf hin, dass er über den ungehobelten und uninformierten Äußerungen über den Umgang mit Russland steht, die wir in den Wochen vor seiner Amtseinführung aus seinem inneren Kreis, darunter Sebastian Gorka, Michael Waltz und General Kellogg, gehört haben.

Es wird eine echte Herausforderung für Wladimir Putin und seine engsten Berater sein, gemeinsame Interessen mit Trump zu finden, die ihn von der widerwärtigen Rhetorik abbringen können, die wir in Trumps Drohungen gesehen haben, die seine Einladung an den russischen Präsidenten zu einem Gipfeltreffen begleiteten. Ich vermute, dass der Schlüssel zu einer Einigung in der Ukraine-Frage und einer überarbeiteten Sicherheitsarchitektur in Europa, die den russischen Interessen Rechnung trägt, in russischen Vorschlägen zur Stabilisierung des strategischen Rüstungsgleichgewichts liegen wird, indem beispielsweise beide Seiten die Stationierung von ballistischen Mittelstreckenraketen in Europa, einschließlich Hyperschallraketen, einfrieren und auf die Stationierung mehrerer russischer Weltuntergangssysteme verzichten, die noch nicht in Produktion gegangen sind, wie ihre nukleare Unterwasserdrohne Poseidon oder ihr Satan-2-Interkontinentalraketen, die einen halben Kontinent auf einen Schlag dem Erdboden gleichmachen können.

Das Problem des wachsenden Ungleichgewichts bei den strategischen Waffen zwischen den beiden nuklearen Supermächten wurde von mehreren US-Senatoren in den Monaten nach Putins Präsentation der neuesten Errungenschaften Russlands im März 2018 angesprochen.

Siehe https://consortiumnews.com/2018/03/10/gang-of-four-senators-call-for-tillerson-to-enter-into-arms-control-talks-with-the-kremlin/

Es war ein wichtiges Gesprächsthema bei Joe Bidens erstem und einzigem Gipfeltreffen mit Wladimir Putin im Juni 2021. Es ist nicht verschwunden. In der Tat ist das Gegenteil der Fall, da Russland mit seinem Oreshnik-Raketenangriff auf Dnepropetrowsk seine unübertroffenen und unaufhaltsamen Fähigkeiten unter Beweis gestellt hat.

Allein dieses Thema des strategischen Kräfteverhältnisses kann die US-russische Agenda auf einen konstruktiven Weg bringen, wenn das geplante Gipfeltreffen stattfindet. Die Gespräche auf der Ebene eines Waffenstillstands oder eines eingefrorenen Konflikts in der Ukraine zu belassen, würde in eine Sackgasse führen.

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

Transcript submitted by a reader

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

                                                                *****

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

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

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

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

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2025

Translation below into German (Andreas Mylaeus)

Verschiedene aktuelle Entwicklungen zum bevorstehenden Trump-Putin-Gipfel

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

                                                                *****

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

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

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

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

Transcript submitted by a reader:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Transcript submitted by a reader

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Interviewer
What does that mean?

Graham:
so exposed. Help Israel–

Interviewer:
What does that mean?

Graham;
–deliver a knockout blow.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Doctorow:
Right. Goodbye.

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

21:50
Judge Napolitano for “Judging Freedom”.