Transcript submitted by a reader

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FW9y77Z0TVQ

Napolitano: 0:34
Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for “Judging Freedom”. Today is Thursday, May 29th, 2025. Professor Gilbert Doctorow joins us in just a moment on just how dire is the situation in Ukraine.

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2:21
Professor Doctorow, welcome here, my dear friend. Congratulations on your new book, “War Diaries …”, which, of course, we will discuss at some point during our interview today. I do want to start with the latest out of Germany. Has the decision of Chancellor Merz to deliver Taurus missiles to Ukraine without geographical limits made Germany a co-belligerent in the war in the eyes of the Kremlin?

Gilbert Doctorow, PhD:
Definitely, yes. I’d say the language has changed a little bit in the last week or two. Now, what Mr. Lavrov said most recently about Merz, is a hair’s breadth away from calling him a Nazi. Lavrov said that like Hitler, Merz is doing this and that. Well, like Hitler, it means that he’s already associating Mr. Merz with the Hitler heritage or legacy.

3:22
And that is a dramatic change in the language coming out of the Kremlin. The Russians have said very plainly that if Merz proceeds with this– and the last news, updated news is that they probably have already shipped the missile to Kiev. When Merz said yesterday that it could be, as soon as a few weeks from now, well, judging by the last three years, we know that when statements like that are made, the shipments have been made weeks before, so that we may assume that this missile is already in the possession of the Ukrainians. For the Russians, that is war.

Napolitano:
What do you expect President Putin to do about it? I mean, Prime Minister, or Foreign Minister Lavrov’s words are strong, but they’re just words. I don’t mean that to demean him, as you know, I’m very fond of him personally and professionally, but what do you think President Putin will do?

Doctorow:
I don’t think that President Putin has any margin for his own opinions in this matter. The latest opinion polls in Russia show that he has gone up to an 82 percent approval rating.

Napolitano:
Wow.

Doctorow:
But let’s not deceive ourselves. The popular mood in Russia has changed, whereas some of my peers and colleagues were saying as long ago as two years ago, that the Russian general staff didn’t like the go slowly approach, softly, softly approach of Mr. Putin and wanted something more dramatic. I didn’t put much credence in what they think or say privately, because the military is wholly under the control of civilian rule in Russia. However, the indications [are]–and this even came up in recent talk show programs from Moscow– that the popular mood has changed, and people are weary of this go-slow approach.

5:10
And they– I don’t believe that Mr. Putin would stay in power if he failed to respond to … attacks by the Ukrainians using the the Taurus missile against against their military or civilian assets.

Napolitano:
I know your field is not military tactics, but how far can these Taurus missiles reach? Can they reach Moscow?

Doctorow:
Not quite, but the objective that Mr. Merz himself made when he first discussed shipping them was to do something dramatic, something that would humiliate Moscow and would put Russia in an impossible position, the regime in an impossible position, namely to destroy the Crimean bridge. And for that purpose, the German missile is much more effective than the shorter range missiles from Britain and from France, the Storm Shadow, that were supplied previously. They are not, those were not in their targeting capabilities and in the power of their punch, they were not capable of delivering a really destructive blow against bridges or fortified underground positions. This missile, the Taurus, has that capability, and the Russians have no experience dealing with the unique features of its targeting and of its path. This is a cruise missile, so it has changeable paths of attack and is difficult to intercept.

7:09
For that reason, the Russians are particularly concerned about its becoming available to Kiev, since it could do what the previous deliveries from Britain and France and the United States with HIMARS were incapable of.

Napolitano:
One of our viewers writes that the range is 300 kilometers. Is that, if that is accurate, and if this is fired from Ukraine territory, can it reach that bridge?

Doctorow:
Well, the, as far as I know, 350 kilometers is the limit on Storm Shadow. The Taurus is 500 kilometers. And that is the significance of Merz saying two days ago that limitations on range no longer hold. He meant precisely the longer-range Taurus.

Napolitano:
Are the Germans prepared for a couple of Oreshniks aimed at their industrial base?

Doctorow: 8:13
I don’t think that Mr. Merz takes seriously the Russian threats. After all, he could say, with entire logic, that the Russians never responded to the American shipment of long-range missiles, the HIMARS, the ATACMS, they never responded to the Storm Shadow. However, that is ignoring the Russian view of Germany as opposed to its former allies. Russia is neuralgic, is hypersensitive to what the Germans do. And the recent celebration of the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Europe on May 9th, we were all reminded about the 26 million Russians who died in that conflict, largely due to German military efforts. And that is unforgivable, unforgettable.

9:09
So anything that Germany does, is a special case for Russia. And as I said, whatever the personal preferences of Mr. Putin, he cannot go against the popular will. He wouldn’t want to. The popular will in Russia is to differentiate between German missiles and the others, in a way that means the Russians will have to respond in a dramatic way.

Now, taking out military production facilities, I’m not sure that that would be the first thing that happens, because that particular facility making the Taurus has been idle for more than a year. They have not been producing it, so it wouldn’t accomplish much to bomb it out. That means that they will probably have to find another target for Orashniks. The Russian talk shows spoke vaguely about Berlin. What exactly is meant, we don’t know.

Napolitano:
Wow. Here’s Chancellor Merz two days ago on this very topic. Chris, cut number seven.

Merz:
There are no longer any range restrictions on weapons delivered to Ukraine neither from the British nor the French nor from us nor from the Americans. This means that Ukraine can now also defend itself, including, for example, by taking actions such as attacking military positions located within Russia, or by targeting other strategic sites as necessary. Until recently it was not able to do that. Until recently, with very few exceptions, it also did not do that. Now it can.

In jargon, we call this long-range fire, meaning equipping Ukraine with weapons that can attack military targets in the rear. And this is the decisive, this is the crucial qualitative difference in Ukraine’s conduct of the war. Russia attacks civilian targets completely ruthlessly, bombing cities, kindergartens, hospitals and nursing homes. Ukraine does not do that and we place great importance on ensuring that it stays that way. But a country that can only confront an aggressor on its own territory is not defending itself adequately. So, and this defense of Ukraine is now also taking place against military infrastructure on Russian territory.

Napolitano: 11:24
Before I ask you to analyze that, that was an AI translation from German to English using his voice, amazing what can be done today. What is he trying to accomplish?

Doctorow:
He is preparing a justification in advance for the deployment of these missiles, for their use in striking against Russian targets, and he is lying through his teeth. Everything that he said about the Russian conduct of the war is an outrageous lie scripted in Kiev.

12:02
It is precisely the Ukrainians that have been using terror techniques and deploying their drones and what missiles they have, primarily against civilian targets. That’s been the nature of the warfare going back to 2014. They were destroying civilian residential neighborhoods and playgrounds and hospitals and the rest. And that’s continued to this date.

They have used, the Ukrainians have made some attacks on militarily important facilities. But that is the number of such attacks versus their overall activity, like 2,000 drones were sent into the Russian Federation in the last two weeks by the Ukrainians. They knocked out, or they hit at least, one facility producing chips or something or other for military use. Otherwise it is all ambulances, buses and the rest of it.

13:07
So Mr. Merz is turning everything on its head. The reality is just the opposite. And the Russians have demonstrated this on air, what exactly they targeted and with what effect, because they have drones that inspect, that follow, monitor the destruction.

Napolitano:
Is it too early in his chancellorship for me to ask you fairly, in fairness to you, whether you agree with the Scott Ritter analysis that Merz is the most dangerous German Chancellor since Hitler?

Doctorow: 13:43
Well, I agree completely with that. He is utterly irresponsible, and he is courting disaster for his country. If he believes, and there’s another factor here, that he may well think, first, that the Russians won’t dare strike against Germany. There is dead wrong. They’ve said it openly. They will.

And second, that if they were to do so, then the United States and the other allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization would respond and come to Germany’s aid. Nonsense, maybe other European countries singly will do that, but the United States, I believe, will abstain. And that will condemn completely the notion of the united defense to save Germany from itself. Therefore, Germany will likely suffer uniquely Russian revenge.

Napolitano:
Wow. Let’s transition a little bit. In one of your recent pieces, you wrote about the things Ukrainian soldiers returning from the front are saying about their Russian counterparts. What are they saying?

Doctorow:
Well, I want to point out that this came from an article that was posted by a non-staff person from the “Financial Times” on the front page of their newspaper online, perhaps two days ago. And it was quite astonishing, because of the openness, transparency of the reporting. Much of the information was coming in fact from Russian television. Though the reporter, the writer, author of this piece did not refer to Russian television. Nonetheless, he also interviewed on the battlefield, on the front, Ukrainian soldiers who were saying openly that the Russians are using very effective new tactics. For example, they are instead of coming in on tanks, which are quite vulnerable to destruction by Ukrainian drones as well as others, they are coming in on scooters. They’re coming in on motorcycles in small groups.

16:05
And they’re surprising the Ukrainian defenders of various hamlets on the front line and taking over territory. But the Russians are being very inventive while also they are supporting their forward movement by heavy artillery, by glide bombs, and other serious military equipment. So the Ukrainians are acknowledging the Russian advantage technically in the drone warfare where Russians started out at a big disadvantage three years ago.

Napolitano:16:42
What are the numerical differences of which you’re aware and which you find credible … between Russian enlistments and Ukrainian conscriptions.

Doctorow:
Again, this was also repeated in the article I’m making reference to. And the importance of citing this article is that, editorially, the “Financial Times” is viciously anti-Russian. Some of their journalists slip in some interesting and useful information, considering it is a business newspaper, after all, regarding the state of the Russian economy. Even yesterday, they had an article citing the prosperity and the good feelings of the Russian consumers and general population.

But the newspaper is anti-Russian, and yet they are putting up this material that I just described as a kind of forewarning, I think, to their business subscribers to expect a Ukrainian defeat, something which would not have been acknowledged in any way going back a few months ago.

Napolitano:
Let’s talk for a moment, if we could, about the attempted— this has gotten very, very little play in the West— the attempted assassination of President Putin using drones while he was in a helicopter. Isn’t it reasonable to believe that the information about his presence in that helicopter and the location of the helicopter was supplied to the Ukrainians by either MI6, CIA or Mossad?

Doctorow: 18:25
It is possible, but not necessary. One of the points that bears mentioning and the way that military intelligence has changed in the course of the war, thanks to drones.

The Russian targeting of Ukrainian Western- supplied equipment is largely coming from constant reconnaissance drones. It’s not coming from satellites. And so it is entirely possible that the Ukrainians themselves could have detected a special movement. After all, Putin was coming close to the border. He was visiting Kursk, and that is a bordering oblast. So it is possible the Ukrainians could have learned this through their own reconnaissance, that is, technical means, or they could have learned it from espionage, from leaks.

19:25
Let’s face it, it recently came out, that the reason why the Ukrainian incursion, later invasion of Kursk succeeded so well, was because of widespread corruption in the oblast of Kursk. And this has come out in the last several days. Severe attack on a local administration, which had stolen the money that had been appropriated for defense of the border. It is possible that there are Russians within Kursk who are working for Ukraine.

Napolitano:
But the concept of assassinating President Putin, is it rational that that plan would have been hatched without the Americans knowing about it?

Doctorow:
I think we have to acknowledge that the Ukrainian government, regime, what you want to call it, is desperate. Now, this leads us to the question, is a collapse of the army imminent? I don’t think so. But they are desperate. They are fearing, perhaps, that they will be overthrown because of the military reverses. And they are ready for anything, meaning primarily terrorism.

20:44
Let me alert you to something that isn’t talked about. Turkish airlines have warned passengers on their flights to Russia now that they may be grounded if Turkey believes that its flights from Istanbul could be subject to Ukrainian drones. So that the Ukrainians would even think of attacking Turkish airlines shows you how desperate and totally violent and irresponsible ,and terrorist in nature, the Ukrainian government has become.

Napolitano:
Do you think that mainstream media here in the West is beginning to recognize all this ,or is the “Financial Times” not a barometer of mainstream media?

Doctorow:
No, I think it is a barometer, but that doesn’t mean that they are totally current in and bringing up to date all aspects of Ukrainian activities. As recently as a day ago, nobody was talking in the “Financial Times”, just as they weren’t talking in other Western mainstream, about the massive increase in Ukrainian drone attacks on Russia that preceded the Russian counterattack, which is the only thing that has been covered, in which the Russians have done massive bombing of Kiev and other cities.

22:11
That got everybody’s attention, but what provoked it has been ignored by the “Financial Times”, as well as the rest of mainstream.

Napolitano: 22:21
Here’s President Trump expressing disappointment with the current state of affairs. Chris, cut number 13.
——–

Reporter:
Do you believe the Russians are being disrespectful when they say that your criticisms of Putin are simply an emotional response, and do you still believe that Putin actually wants to end the war?

Trump:
I can’t tell you that, but I’ll let you know in about two weeks, within two weeks. We’re going to find out very soon. We’re going to find out whether or not he’s tapping us along or not. And if he is, we’ll respond a little bit differently. But it’ll take about a week and a half, two weeks.

We have, Mr. Witkoff is here, who’s doing a phenomenal job, is dealing with them very strongly right now. They seem to want to do something, but until the document is signed, I can’t tell you. Nobody can. I can say this, I can say this, that I’m very disappointed at what happened a couple of nights now where people were killed in the middle of what you would call a negotiation.

I’m very disappointed by that. Very, very disappointed. Yeah, please.
——–

Napolitano: 23:30
What do the Russians think of him when he makes comments like that?

Doctorow:
Let’s divide this between what they think and what they say. What they say is very diplomatic. You know what Pieskov said, precisely that the Americans are reacting emotionally, that it’s very tense and therefore it could be explained away. However that’s not what Moscow thinks. That’s what Moscow feels obliged to say, not to tip its hands to the to Donald Trump’s enemies and opponents.

They would– what Moscow thinks is that Mr. Trump is basically well disposed, is looking for detente, and they applaud his efforts, but they are very open to acknowledging the level of opposition that he faces, which was most recent. It was called out also on Russian news yesterday that is Lindsey Graham’s 80 Senate signatures on the bill that he has advanced to call for drastic sanctions to be imposed on Russia. This is a bill that will be veto-proof and this may condition what Mr. Trump was saying yesterday. You’ll see in two weeks what our response will be.

24:48
I think that if this motion by Lindsey Graham and that’s 80 he signed up, proceeds and they force Trump’s hand on this issue, that he will respond by indeed walking away from the negotiations, saying “We’ve done our best” and leaving with a fair-handed equal treatment. That is, the Russians will get more sanctions and the Ukrainians will get no more financial, military aid or reconnaissance aid from the United States. And that will look very good.

Napolitano:
Wow.

Doctorow:
He’s prepared. But I do say that he is not ignorant. The man who delivered that speech in Saudi Arabia, which you, I, and so many others consider to be a brilliant and the most astonishing denunciation of the whole ideology of neocons in the presence of the Saudi leaders, saying that “You’ve done it yourself, you’ve gotten democracy, you’ve gotten prosperity, no thanks to us, because we’ve only brought death and destruction wherever we tried to do nation building.”

The man who delivered that, he didn’t write it, it’s not important, he delivered it, and he knew what he was delivering. That man cannot be described as a buffoon. I am certain, Judge, that he knows as much and probably a lot more than you or I or anyone else around, about what the situation is on the ground in Russia today. And it’s not thanks to the National Security Council, which he has been busy depopulating.

Napolitano:
Right, right.

Doctorow:
Because it was packed by Biden.

Napolitano:
I have to note that standing next to him, I don’t know if you could just put up an image, Chris, of what we just saw from Cut 13 where President Trump was speaking just for a second. Just put up the beginning of number 13. Chris? All right, maybe we can’t get it out.
——–

Reporter:
Do you believe the Russians are being disrespectful when they say that your criticisms of Putin are simply an emotional response, and do you still believe that Putin actually wants to end the war?

Trump:
I can’t tell you that, but I’ll let you know in about two weeks, within two weeks. We’re going to find out very soon. We’re going to find out whether or not he’s tapping us along or not. And if he is, we’ll respond a little bit differently. But it’ll take about a week and a half, two weeks.

We have, Mr. Witkoff is here, who’s doing a phenomenal job, is dealing with them very strongly right now. They they seem to want to do something, but until the document is signed, I can’t tell you. Nobody can. I can say this.
——–

Napolitano: 27:34
Right. I had to comment about the woman standing next to him. That is Janine Pirro, the interim US attorney for Washington DC, my former colleague at Fox News, whom I’ve known for 20 years. That is the longest she’s ever been in front of a camera without saying a word. Tell us about your new book, “War Diaries”, Professor.

Doctorow:
Well, this is a book– I’ve noticed when I went to Amazon that somebody in Ukrainian has published “War Diary” in singular, about a year ago, telling the story from the perspective of the Ukrainians. I’m telling the story as in how it looked, how the development of the war looked on the ground in Russia from my visits there, from my close following their press and so forth.

28:24
It is not intended to be a comprehensive history of the war; it’s intended to be a personal account of what has changed in Russia, how society has changed, the thinking of the man on the street, the thinking of the intelligentsia, the rise in patriotism. All of these are features that I tracked over the course of the war, as you know, in essays that I wrote day by day, week by week.

Napolitano:
Right.

Doctorow:
And I have culled that to produce this very large book, which in some respects will be a reference book. But I think that readers will find that there are good chunks of it which speak to them directly and interest them, particularly my travels in Russia, which were four times a year before I curtailed them as travel became more difficult. Nonetheless, this was a unique reportage because Western journalists all left the country at the start of the special military operation. I think it’s ultimately a valuable contribution.

There will be a volume two. I’m hoping that I can produce it by the end of this year, because the war will be over by then. But of course, nobody knows.

Napolitano:
Nobody knows. Well, we all know how much we appreciate you. Thank you for sending the essays, however long or short they may be. I have the benefit of your thinking all the time and almost instantaneously. I can’t wait to get my copy of the book. And thank you very much for your time today and I’ve already heard from Janine Pirro who apparently is watching this. She loved the wisecrack that I made. All the best. Thank you for joining us, Professor.

30:09
Well, thank you.

Napolitano:
Of course. And coming up later today, we have a full day for you, at 2.15 this afternoon, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson; at three o’clock, Professor John Mearsheimer; at four o’clock from wherever he is on the planet, Max Blumenthal; and at five o’clock, Professor Jeffrey Sachs.

30:31
Judge Napolitano for “Judging Freedom”.

Today’s chat examines the very provocative plans of German Chancellor Merz to supply the Taurus missile to Ukraine. I believe he may not properly appreciate the way the Russians distinguish between American, French, British missiles and those the Germans are providing.  As I say here, President Putin will have no choice but to respond with missiles destroying German military assets because a large and vocal part of the Russian population will not allow him to sit on his hands.

Do heads of state determine the will of the people or are they implementers of the will of the people? The question was posed by Lev Tolstoy as the central issue of War and Peace.  Here and now my call is that Putin must implement the will of the people and not his own predispositions. Hence. If the Germans do go through with deliveries of Taurus to Kiev, Putin will attack Germany with Oreshnik hypersonic missiles, likely after making his case before the UN Security Council. There is no reason for him to conceal his intentions. There is no need to be surreptitious: the Oreshniks are unstoppable.

Donald Trump is in a similar situation. His predisposition is to oversee a peace negotiation that ends in a treaty closely approximating Russian demands. However, the political forces in Europe and on Capitol Hill work against that. In this chat we discuss the bill that Lindsey Graham has introduced in the Senate calling for imposition of very harsh new economic sanctions on Russia with reference to Russia’s latest drone and missile attacks on Ukrainian cities. Graham says the bill is approved by 80 Senators, making it veto-proof. 

I believe Graham’s bill will precipitate the long-awaited declaration by Trump that the USA is leaving the peace process and ending its involvement in the Ukraine war.  In that case, Trump can claim to be even-handed. He will accept the inevitable with respect to new sanctions, saying the intention is to moderate Russian demands to conclude a peace.  And he will simultaneously end U.S. military, financial and intelligence aid to Ukraine to moderate Ukrainian demands.  The net effect will indeed be to end the war on the terms of the victor, Russia, sooner rather than later.

Otherwise, in this interview Judge Napolitano posted a video of Merz claiming that Russia has been attacking civilian targets in Ukraine – apartment buildings, hospitals, kindergartens.  These are outrageous lies coming from Kiev and disseminated irresponsibly by Merz. In this regard, he is now rivaling British Prime Minister Starmer in the Pinocchio rankings.

I was particularly pleased to deal with the question of the drone attack on President Putin’s helicopter when he toured the Kursk oblast at the start of the week.  Some analysts have said that this indicated that US or British intelligence sharing with Kiev had enabled this assassination attempt.  There is even the suggestion that Trump may have had foreknowledge of the attack. However, there are, as I say here, other possible explanations, including the Ukraine’s own surveillance with drones given that the Russian President was flying just across the border from Ukrainian positions. Or, more likely their intelligence could have been provided by Russian traitors based in Kursk.

In the past several days the Russian authorities have made arrests of Kursk officials for expropriating defense funds that were allocated to the oblast early in the Special Military Operation. This theft, it is said, made possible the successful Ukrainian incursion in August 2024.  Russian news reports yesterday emphasized the rampant corruption in Kursk. It is not inconceivable that in such an environment there have been willing collaborators in Kursk selling intelligence to the Ukrainians.

Finally, I am grateful to Judge Napolitano for featuring my just published War Diaries. The Russia-Ukraine War, 2022-2023 and inviting my comments on why the book should interest readers.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2025

Translation into German (Andreas Mylaeus)

„Judging Freedom“, Ausgabe vom 29. Mai: Wie prekär ist die Lage in der Ukraine?

Im heutigen Chat geht es um die sehr provokanten Pläne des deutschen Bundeskanzlers Merz, die Ukraine mit Taurus-Raketen zu beliefern. Ich glaube, er unterschätzt möglicherweise, wie sehr die Russen zwischen amerikanischen, französischen und britischen Raketen einerseits und den von Deutschland gelieferten Raketen andererseits unterscheiden. Wie ich hier bereits gesagt habe, wird Präsident Putin keine andere Wahl haben, als mit Raketenangriffen auf deutsche Militärmittel und -anlagen zu reagieren, da ein großer und lautstarker Teil der russischen Bevölkerung ihm nicht erlauben wird, untätig zu bleiben.

Bestimmen Staatschefs den Willen des Volkes oder sind sie nur Ausführende des Volkswillens? Diese Frage stellte Lew Tolstoi als zentrale Frage in „Krieg und Frieden“. Hier und jetzt sage ich deutlich, dass Putin den Willen des Volkes umsetzen muss und nicht seine eigenen Vorlieben. Wenn die Deutschen also die Lieferungen von Taurus an Kiew tatsächlich durchführen, wird Putin Deutschland mit Oreshnik-Hyperschallraketen angreifen, wahrscheinlich nachdem er seine Argumente vor dem UN-Sicherheitsrat vorgebracht hat. Es gibt keinen Grund für ihn, seine Absichten zu verbergen. Es besteht kein Grund zur Heimlichtuerei: Die Oreshniks sind nicht aufzuhalten.

Donald Trump befindet sich in einer ähnlichen Situation. Er neigt dazu, Friedensverhandlungen zu leiten, die zu einem Vertrag führen, der den russischen Forderungen weitgehend entspricht. Die politischen Kräfte in Europa und im US-Kongress arbeiten jedoch dagegen. In diesem Chat diskutieren wir den Gesetzentwurf, den Lindsey Graham im Senat eingebracht hat und der sehr harte neue Wirtschaftssanktionen gegen Russland fordert, unter Verweis auf die jüngsten Drohnen- und Raketenangriffe Russlands auf ukrainische Städte. Graham sagt, der Gesetzentwurf sei von 80 Senatoren gebilligt worden und damit veto-sicher.

Ich glaube, dass Grahams Gesetzentwurf die lang erwartete Erklärung Trumps beschleunigen wird, dass die USA aus dem Friedensprozess aussteigen und ihr Engagement im Ukraine-Krieg beenden. In diesem Fall kann Trump behaupten, unparteiisch zu sein. Er wird die unvermeidlichen neuen Sanktionen akzeptieren und sagen, dass damit die russischen Forderungen nach einem Friedensabschluss gemildert werden sollen. Gleichzeitig wird er die militärische, finanzielle und geheimdienstliche Hilfe der USA für die Ukraine einstellen, um die ukrainischen Forderungen zu mäßigen. Der Nettoeffekt wird in der Tat sein, dass der Krieg eher früher als später zu den Bedingungen des Siegers, Russland, beendet wird.

Ansonsten hat Judge Napolitano in diesem Interview ein Video von Merz gepostet, in dem dieser behauptet, Russland habe zivile Ziele in der Ukraine angegriffen – Wohnhäuser, Krankenhäuser, Kindergärten. Das sind empörende Lügen, die aus Kiew stammen und von Merz unverantwortlich verbreitet werden. In dieser Hinsicht konkurriert er nun mit dem britischen Premierminister Starmer um den Pinocchio-Preis.

Besonders gefreut hat mich, dass ich auf die Frage nach dem Drohnenangriff auf den Hubschrauber von Präsident Putin eingehen konnte, als er Anfang der Woche die Region Kursk bereiste. Einige Analysten haben behauptet, dass dies darauf hindeute, dass der US-amerikanische oder britische Geheimdienst Kiew Informationen weitergegeben und so dieses Attentat ermöglicht habe. Es gibt sogar die Vermutung, dass Trump möglicherweise Vorwissen über den Angriff gehabt habe. Wie ich hier jedoch bereits dargelegt habe, gibt es andere mögliche Erklärungen, darunter die eigene Überwachung der Ukraine mit Drohnen, da der russische Präsident direkt über der Grenze zu ukrainischen Stellungen flog. Oder, was wahrscheinlicher ist, ihre Informationen könnten von russischen Verrätern in Kursk stammen.

In den letzten Tagen haben die russischen Behörden Beamte aus Kursk wegen Veruntreuung von Verteidigungsgeldern festgenommen, die zu Beginn der Sonder-Militäroperation für die Region bereitgestellt worden waren. Dieser Diebstahl soll den erfolgreichen Einmarsch der Ukraine im August 2024 ermöglicht haben. Russische Medienberichte betonten gestern die grassierende Korruption in Kursk. Es ist nicht auszuschließen, dass es in einem solchen Umfeld willige Kollaborateure in Kursk gab, die Informationen an die Ukrainer verkauft haben.

Abschließend möchte ich Judge Napolitano dafür danken, dass er mein gerade erschienenes Buch „War Diaries. The Russia-Ukraine War, 2022-2023“ vorgestellt und mich gebeten hat, zu erläutern, warum das Buch für Leser interessant sein könnte.

On 15 February 2022, at his joint news conference with Vladimir Putin which concluded his visit to Moscow, former German chancellor Olaf Scholz called ‘risible’ the Russian leader’s denunciation of the Kiev regime as neo-Nazi run.  How could a nation led by a Jew, Zelensky, behave in a Nazi manner, he asked with sarcasm. In saying this, Scholz discredited himself to the Russians once and for all. He also surely contributed to Vladimir Putin’s decision to launch the Special Military Operation on the 24^th by demonstrating that it was hopeless to find a diplomatic solution to the East-West confrontation since basic assumptions were too far apart.

To his credit, in the three years of warfare in and over Ukraine that followed Scholz had sufficient discipline and fear of overly antagonizing the neighbor to the East which compelled him to ignore the warlike pronouncements of his Foreign Minister from the Greens Analena Baerbock and his popular Defense Minister Pistorius. He refused to allow the shipment of Germany’s Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine lest this directly involve Germany in the war, leading to unpredictable but ominous Russian retaliation.

During his electoral campaign last fall, Scholz’s successor, Christian Democrat leader Friedrich Merz chose instead to light the fires of German revanchism to bolster voter support. He advocated the delivery of the Taurus to Kiev. Not only that, but he precisely recommended it be used to destroy Russia’s landmark Kerch bridge connecting the Crimean peninsula with mainland Russia, thereby inflicting a humiliation of enormous proportions on the Kremlin.

In the early weeks of his chancellorship, Merz was prevented from openly handing over Taurus to the Ukrainians by his coalition partners, the Social Democrats, who insisted on abiding by Scholz’s ruling. However, we see from the Chancellor’s meeting with Zelensky yesterday for consultations on further military assistance to Ukraine, that Merz has chosen to have his way by crook if not by hook. Their joint declaration speaks of technical cooperation enabling Kiev to manufacture precision long range missiles for the purpose of striking military bases deep inside the Russian Federation.

The formula advanced by Merz and Zelensky leaves it unclear exactly where the future production facility would be situated, but it is a safe guess to say that it would be inside Germany, because anything built within Ukraine would surely be destroyed by Russia’s Oreshniks before it produced the very first products. Merz is gambling on the notion that Russia will not dare strike Germany due to its protection under Article 5 of the NATO treaty.

In doing this, Merz is willfully ignoring the unmistakable remarks of Vladimir Putin and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov that Germany’s participation in sending Taurus missiles against the Russian Federation makes it a co-belligerent and that Russian retaliation against Germany will follow.

Friedrich Merz is now publicly identified by the Kremlin as a Hitler-like figure. No ifs, ands or buts.  He is viewed as the embodiment of German revanchism which will be smashed just as the Nazi armies were smashed 80 years ago. The German nation has been forewarned. We now wait to see how it will respond.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2025

Occasionally over the past six months I have directed attention to articles in the very mainstream Financial Times dealing with the Russian economy that described fairly accurately the generalized rising prosperity in the country today notwithstanding the expenses of the war effort and an unprecedented volume of Western sanctions intended to degrade that economy. As I remarked, such reportage runs directly counter to the Russia-bashing line that the FT editors tend to impose on all coverage of Russia.

This weekend the level of truthfulness in FT reporting on the dire military, financial, economic and other circumstances of Ukraine reached a level on a par with what Alternative Media, including this newsletter have been saying for a couple of years.

See the report of Christopher Miller based in Kiev, ‘Expect no miracle’: Ukraine braces for Russia’s summer offensive.   

Miller has interviewed Ukrainian soldiers, who say openly how effective are Russia’s latest tactics of sending in infantry on motorcycles, even on electric scooters to catch the Ukrainian defenders of hamlets and settlements by surprise and seize territory. This, by the way, is precisely what Russian state television news is showing day by day.

But that is not all. Miller tells us: “Aiding the infantry is Russia’s heavy and high-tech weapons blasting its way through, with glide bombs, missiles and drones – including new models connected via fibre-optic cables that make them immune to electronic jamming. Defenders have been forced to pull back from towns including Toretsk and Chasiv Yar, where the cost of holding ground proved too high.”   All of this is very true, and it is all being said on Russian television.

He may based in Kiev, but it seems to me that Miller has his television properly tuned to where real as opposed to fake news is coming from.

Miller also speaks about the manpower shortages that leave the Ukrainian command with a losing hand:

“At a Kremlin meeting on economic development this month, Putin claimed that up to 60,000 Russians ‘volunteer’ to join the army each month – double the roughly 30,000 Ukrainians he said were being conscripted.”

Though Miller does not say it, he is taking those facts straight from Russian state news.

Finally, to the same point, in this article Miller alludes to a very damaging assessment of the overall Ukrainian situation delivered to an audience in London last week by Valery Zaluzhny, the Ukrainian ambassador to the United Kingdom, former four star general and commander in chief of the Ukrainian armed forces (to February 2024).  This speech was the source of the title that the FT assigned to his article: not to expect ‘some kind of miracle…that will bring peace to Ukraine.’ Specifically, Zaluzhny said: “With an enormous shortage of human resources and the catastrophic economic situation we’re facing”…etc, etc.

Once again, Miller was right in line with what Russian state television was reporting this past weekend. Director of Russian television news Dimitry Kiselyov called attention to the Zaluzhny speech in London as an indication that the political elites of the Ukraine are now challenging the narrative coming from Team Zelensky, indicating that the regime is cracking.

So far, so good.  I close my examination of this FT article by noting that in one important respect it is more truthful about the situation on the battlefield than what you will hear or read in the Alternative Media videos of some of my peers, who are still predicting Ukrainian collapse and capitulation next week.  After explaining how the Russians are outgunning, out manning the Ukrainians, he cites a Vienna-based military analyst, Franz-Stefan Gady: “We can expect gradual Russian advances but no imminent collapses, no collapse of the front line.” That corresponds to the generally cautious assessments you will hear on Russian state television.

All of the foregoing bears out my repeated justification for watching Russian state television news and relaying to the Community what they are saying.  Now even the FT has become a follower.

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Everything in moderation.  I do not want to suggest that all of Western mainstream has become transparent and truthful about the war all of the time. Western coverage of the Russian drone and missile attacks on Kiev and other Ukrainian cities the past few days is printing text written in Kiev, without any sideways glance at the Russian accounts.  We hear and read that Russia has been striking apartment buildings and other civilian targets, that it is clearly out to destroy the chances for continuing peace talks, blah blah and blah blah.  This is the propaganda line that Trump’s domestic and European opponents have been disseminating. To counter it, Trump issued his now very widely cited criticism of Putin as having gone ‘crazy, though to the disappointment of Neocons, Trump has not indicated any intention of sanctioning the Russians over this.  Indeed, mainstream media rightly understand that Trump’s feet are still  pointed in the direction of withdrawing the United States from the war.

Russian state television has been showing videos of precisely what they were attacking these past two days – factories producing drones, an airport from which a Ukrainian F-16 took off and fired Storm Shadow missiles at Russia, a container ship in the port of Odessa which was carrying war materiel. They also explained that these were ‘revenge attacks’ for the past week of massive Ukrainian drone attacks inside the Russian Federation and particularly concentrated on Moscow.

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Now I wish to comment briefly on a development in the war that has received almost no attention in Western mainstream though it has been picked up especially by Indian newscasters, namely the drone attack on the helicopter carrying Vladimir Putin on his visit two days ago to Kursk oblast, a region of the Russian Federation bordering on Ukraine which was partially occupied by the Ukrainians from August 2024 until its full liberation several weeks ago.

The Russians have said very little about this because the swarm attack of drones indicates a breach of security whereby Ukrainian intelligence knew when and where Putin would be traveling within the range of Ukrainian offensive weapons. One other explanation that is still more alarming is that American or European aerial or spatial reconnaissance information may have enabled the Ukrainian assassination attempt on Putin.

We do not know for a fact whether Putin was actually on the helicopter that was being targeted, but from Russian news there is reason to believe that he was, and that the incident did not lead to disaster only because Russian air defenses were sufficiently effective to down all of the attacking drones.

It is an open question what kind of revenge attack Moscow will now implement.  Will they see this as justifying the ‘neutralization’ of Zelensky for which so many Russian patriots are impatient? There is no doubt that his elimination by missile attack on Kiev is doable by the Kremlin at any time of its choosing.

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I close this overview of current Russia-Ukraine affairs by turning to Russian commentary on what German Chancellor Merz was hinting at in his latest statements about offensive weapons that Europe is supplying to Kiev. Two days ago, Merz said that there no longer is any limit on the range of missiles being supplied to the Ukrainians and that they must be able to strike military targets deep inside the Russian Federation.  Rightly or wrongly, Russian state television including Sixty Minutes and Evening with Vladimir Solovyov last night took this to mean that Merz is once again determined to ship the 500-km range German cruise missile Taurus to Ukraine with intent to knock out the Kerch (Crimean) bridge, for which it is very capable, more so than the French and British long range Storm Shadows supplied to Ukraine till now.

Russian commentators, who surely had the backing of the Kremlin in this instance, stated that supplying the Taurus to Ukraine will be viewed by Moscow as bringing Germany directly into the war and will require a suitable response.  The suitable response will be the launch of Russia’s unstoppable hypersonic Oreshnik missiles to strike one or another target inside Germany.  One panelist said that two Oreshniks should be sufficient to completely destroy the factory in Germany that has been producing Taurus (NB – there is presently no production of Taurus at that site).  Such destruction would take the Germans five years to recover from, putting paid to Merz’s plans of making his country the most powerful militarily in Europe. The speaker went on to say that before this attack, Russia should state its case justifying such a response to Germany directly joining the war. This justification would be read out in the United Nations Security Council.  Another panelist said the Oreshniks should be directed against Berlin without further details.

Allow me to note, that this entire discussion of Merz and his Taurus missiles was discussed in utter seriousness and in a visibly depressed mood. Readers of my War Diaries, Volume I will observe how there have been frequent flip flops in the mood of the hosts and panelists of the main Russian talk shows from confident expectation of victory to anxiety that the end of the world is approaching.   The mood on Russian television last night fell into the latter category.

Postscript, 28 May: ‘The Financial Times’ today has published another of its in-depth and very positive appraisals of the Russian economy. This is by its own staff and is based largely on their close scrutiny of help wanted announcements to determine how the salaries offered in starting positions have evolved over the past year. See “Vladimir Putin’s war economy is cooling, but Russians still feel richer”

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2025

Translation below into German (Andreas Mylaeus)

Die Mainstream-Medien holen bei der Berichterstattung über die dramatische Lage in der Ukraine gegenüber den alternativen Medien auf

In den letzten sechs Monaten habe ich gelegentlich auf Artikel in der sehr etablierten Financial Times hingewiesen, die sich mit der russischen Wirtschaft befassten und recht genau den allgemeinen Wohlstandsanstieg im Land beschrieben, trotz der Kosten für den Krieg und der beispiellosen westlichen Sanktionen, die darauf abzielen, die Wirtschaft zu schwächen. Wie ich bereits angemerkt habe, stehen solche Berichte in direktem Widerspruch zu der russlandfeindlichen Linie, die die FT-Redaktion sonst in ihrer gesamten Berichterstattung über Russland verfolgt.

An diesem Wochenende erreichte die Wahrhaftigkeit der FT-Berichterstattung über die katastrophale militärische, finanzielle, wirtschaftliche und sonstige Lage der Ukraine ein Niveau, das dem entspricht, was alternative Medien, darunter auch dieser Newsletter, seit einigen Jahren sagen.

Siehe den Bericht von Christopher Miller aus Kiew: „Erwartet kein Wunder“: Die Ukraine bereitet sich auf die Sommeroffensive Russlands vor.

Miller hat ukrainische Soldaten interviewt, die offen berichten, wie effektiv Russlands neueste Taktik ist, Infanteristen auf Motorrädern und sogar auf Elektrorollern einzusetzen, um die ukrainischen Verteidiger von Weilern und Siedlungen zu überraschen und Gebiete zu erobern. Das ist übrigens genau das, was die russischen Staatsfernsehsender Tag für Tag zeigen.

Aber das ist noch nicht alles. Miller berichtet: „Die Infanterie wird von russischen schweren und hochtechnologischen Waffen unterstützt, die sich mit Gleitbomben, Raketen und Drohnen den Weg bahnen – darunter neue Modelle, die über Glasfaserkabel verbunden und somit immun gegen elektronische Störsignale sind. Die Verteidiger waren gezwungen, sich aus Städten wie Toretsk und Chasiv Yar zurückzuziehen, wo die Kosten für die Verteidigung zu hoch waren.“ All das ist absolut wahr, und all das wird im russischen Fernsehen gesagt.

Miller mag zwar in Kiew ansässig sein, aber mir scheint, dass er seinen Fernseher richtig eingestellt hat, um echte Nachrichten zu empfangen und nicht Fake News.

Miller spricht auch über den Personalmangel, der das ukrainische Kommando in eine aussichtslose Lage bringt:

„Bei einem Treffen des Kremls zur wirtschaftlichen Entwicklung in diesem Monat behauptete Putin, dass sich jeden Monat bis zu 60.000 Russen ‚freiwillig‘ zur Armee melden – doppelt so viele wie die etwa 30.000 Ukrainer, die seiner Aussage zufolge eingezogen werden.“

Miller sagt es zwar nicht, aber er übernimmt diese Fakten direkt aus den russischen Staatsmedien.

Schließlich verweist Miller in diesem Artikel auf eine sehr vernichtende Einschätzung der allgemeinen Lage in der Ukraine, die Valery Zaluzhny, der ukrainische Botschafter im Vereinigten Königreich, ehemaliger Vier-Sterne-General und Oberbefehlshaber der ukrainischen Streitkräfte (bis Februar 2024), letzte Woche vor einem Publikum in London abgegeben hat. Diese Rede war die Quelle für den Titel, den die FT ihrem Artikel gab: „Keine ‚Wunder‘ erwarten, die Frieden in die Ukraine bringen werden“. Konkret sagte Zaluzhny: „Angesichts des enormen Mangels an Humanressourcen und der katastrophalen wirtschaftlichen Lage, in der wir uns befinden“ … usw. usw.

Wieder einmal lag Miller genau auf einer Linie mit den Berichten des russischen Staatsfernsehens vom vergangenen Wochenende. Der Direktor der russischen Fernsehnachrichten, Dimitri Kiseljow, wies auf die Rede von Zaluzhny in London als Zeichen dafür hin, dass die politischen Eliten der Ukraine nun die Narrative des Teams Selensky in Frage stellen, was darauf hindeute, dass das Regime bröckele.

So weit, so gut. Ich schließe meine Untersuchung dieses FT-Artikels mit der Feststellung, dass er in einem wichtigen Punkt wahrheitsgetreuer über die Lage an der Front berichtet als das, was Sie in den Videos einiger meiner Kollegen in den alternativen Medien hören oder lesen können, die immer noch den Zusammenbruch und die Kapitulation der Ukraine in der nächsten Woche prophezeien. Nachdem er erklärt hat, dass die Russen den Ukrainern an Waffen und Soldaten überlegen sind, zitiert er den in Wien ansässigen Militäranalysten Franz-Stefan Gady: „Wir können mit einem allmählichen Vormarsch der Russen rechnen, aber nicht mit einem baldigen Zusammenbruch oder einem Zusammenbruch der Frontlinie.“ Das entspricht den allgemein vorsichtigen Einschätzungen, die man im russischen Staatsfernsehen hört.

All das bestätigt meine wiederholte Begründung, warum ich die Nachrichten im russischen Staatsfernsehen verfolge und der Community weitergebe, was dort gesagt wird. Jetzt ist sogar die FT auf den Zug aufgesprungen.

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Alles in Maßen. Ich möchte nicht behaupten, dass der gesamte westliche Mainstream in Bezug auf den Krieg jederzeit transparent und wahrheitsgemäß ist. Die westliche Berichterstattung über die russischen Drohnen- und Raketenangriffe auf Kiew und andere ukrainische Städte in den letzten Tagen druckt Texte, die in Kiew geschrieben wurden, ohne auch nur einen Seitenblick auf die russischen Darstellungen zu werfen. Wir hören und lesen, dass Russland Wohnhäuser und andere zivile Ziele angreife, dass es eindeutig darauf aus sei, die Chancen für eine Fortsetzung der Friedensgespräche zu zerstören, bla bla bla. Das ist die Propagandalinie, die Trumps innenpolitische und europäische Gegner verbreiten. Um dem entgegenzuwirken, hat Trump seine mittlerweile viel zitierte Kritik an Putin veröffentlicht, der „verrückt geworden“ sei. Zur Enttäuschung der Neocons hat Trump jedoch keine Absicht signalisiert, Russland deswegen mit Sanktionen zu belegen. Die Mainstream-Medien haben richtig erkannt, dass Trump weiterhin darauf hinarbeitet, die USA aus dem Krieg zurückzuziehen.

Das russische Staatsfernsehen hat Videos gezeigt, die genau das zeigen, was sie in den letzten zwei Tagen angegriffen haben – Fabriken, in denen Drohnen hergestellt werden, einen Flughafen, von dem aus eine ukrainische F-16 gestartet ist und Storm-Shadow-Raketen auf Russland abgefeuert hat, ein Containerschiff im Hafen von Odessa, das Kriegsmaterial transportierte. Sie erklärten auch, dass es sich dabei um „Racheangriffe“ für die massiven Drohnenangriffe der Ukraine in der vergangenen Woche innerhalb der Russischen Föderation handele, die sich insbesondere auf Moskau konzentriert hätten.

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Nun möchte ich kurz auf eine Entwicklung im Krieg eingehen, die in den westlichen Mainstream-Medien fast keine Beachtung gefunden hat, obwohl sie insbesondere von indischen Nachrichtensendern aufgegriffen wurde, nämlich den Drohnenangriff auf den Hubschrauber, der Wladimir Putin vor zwei Tagen bei seinem Besuch in der Region Kursk beförderte, einer Region der Russischen Föderation an der Grenze zur Ukraine, die von August 2024 bis zu ihrer vollständigen Befreiung vor einigen Wochen teilweise von den Ukrainern besetzt war.

Die Russen haben sich dazu kaum geäußert, da der Schwarmangriff der Drohnen auf eine Sicherheitslücke hindeutet, durch die der ukrainische Geheimdienst wusste, wann und wo Putin sich in Reichweite ukrainischer Offensivwaffen bewegen würde. Eine andere, noch alarmierendere Erklärung ist, dass amerikanische oder europäische Luft- oder Weltraumaufklärungsinformationen den ukrainischen Attentatsversuch auf Putin ermöglicht haben könnten.

Wir wissen nicht mit Sicherheit, ob Putin tatsächlich in dem angegriffenen Hubschrauber saß, aber russische Medienberichte lassen vermuten, dass dies der Fall war und dass der Vorfall nur deshalb nicht zu einer Katastrophe führte, weil die russische Luftabwehr alle angreifenden Drohnen abschießen konnte.

Es ist offen, welche Art von Vergeltungsschlag Moskau nun durchführen wird. Wird man dies als Rechtfertigung für die „Neutralisierung“ von Selensky ansehen, auf die so viele russische Patrioten ungeduldig warten? Es besteht kein Zweifel, dass seine Eliminierung durch einen Raketenangriff auf Kiew für den Kreml jederzeit möglich ist.

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Ich schließe diesen Überblick über die aktuellen Ereignisse zwischen Russland und der Ukraine mit einem Blick auf russische Kommentare zu den Äußerungen des deutschen Bundeskanzlers Merz in seinen jüngsten Erklärungen zu den von Europa an Kiew gelieferten Offensivwaffen. Vor zwei Tagen sagte Merz, dass es keine Begrenzung mehr für die Reichweite der an die Ukrainer gelieferten Raketen gebe und dass diese in der Lage sein müssten, militärische Ziele tief im Inneren der Russischen Föderation zu treffen. Zu Recht oder zu Unrecht interpretierten russische Staatsfernsehsender, darunter „Sechzig Minuten“ und „Abend mit Vladimir Solovyov“ gestern Abend, dies so, dass Merz erneut entschlossen sei, die deutschen Marschflugkörper Taurus mit einer Reichweite von 500 km an die Ukraine zu liefern, um die Kertsch-Brücke (Krim) zu zerstören, wozu sie besser geeignet sind als die französischen und britischen Langstreckenraketen Storm Shadows, die bisher an die Ukraine geliefert wurden.

Russische Kommentatoren, die in diesem Fall sicherlich die Unterstützung des Kremls hatten, erklärten, dass die Lieferung des Taurus an die Ukraine von Moskau als direkte Einmischung Deutschlands in den Krieg angesehen werde und eine angemessene Reaktion erfordern werde. Die angemessene Reaktion werde der Start von Russlands unaufhaltsamen Hyperschallraketen vom Typ Oreshnik sein, um das eine oder andere Ziel in Deutschland zu treffen. Ein Diskussionsteilnehmer sagte, dass zwei Oreshniks ausreichen würden, um das Werk in Deutschland, in dem Taurus hergestellt wird, vollständig zu zerstören (Anmerkung: Derzeit findet an diesem Standort keine Produktion von Taurus statt). Von einer solchen Zerstörung würden sich die Deutschen fünf Jahre lang erholen müssen, was Merz’ Pläne, sein Land zum militärisch mächtigsten in Europa zu machen, zunichte machen würde. Der Redner fuhr fort, dass Russland vor diesem Angriff seine Gründe für eine solche Reaktion auf den direkten Kriegseintritt Deutschlands darlegen sollte. Diese Begründung würde im Sicherheitsrat der Vereinten Nationen verlesen werden. Ein anderer Diskussionsteilnehmer sagte, die Oreshniks sollten ohne weiteres gegen Berlin gerichtet werden.

Ich möchte anmerken, dass diese gesamte Diskussion über Merz und seine Taurus-Raketen in aller Ernsthaftigkeit und in einer sichtlich gedrückten Stimmung geführt wurde. Leser meines War Diaries, Band I werden feststellen, dass die Stimmung der Moderatoren und Diskussionsteilnehmer der wichtigsten russischen Talkshows häufig schwankt, von zuversichtiger Erwartung des Sieges bis hin zur Angst, dass das Ende der Welt naht. Die Stimmung im russischen Fernsehen gestern Abend fiel in die letztere Kategorie.

WION (India): Trump, Putin Bonhomie in Tatters

It was a pleasure and an honor to return to WION news commentary programming yesterday to discuss the latest developments in U.S.-Russian relations over resolving the Ukraine war.  WION is India’s largest global broadcaster in English with nearly 10 million subscribers.

As the headline attached to this video quoted above suggests, the starting point for our chat was Donald Trump’s latest remarks to reporters that he was outraged over new massive Russian drone and missile attacks on Kiev and other cities which violate the notion of continuing peace talks. Trump called Putin ‘absolutely crazy’ and said he could not understand what had gotten into the Russian leader.

Let us not mince words. I think I said clearly in my live commentary that Trump’s words were empty rhetoric. They were intended to shut up his domestic and foreign critics who demanded some strong response from the USA, hoping for an end to Trump’s peace efforts and full resumption of the war against Russia, both economic and kinetic, with redoubled American participation. That will not happen.

I also make reference in this video to the Russian warnings in advance of their latest missile and drone strikes that there would be revenge attacks for the unprecedented high level of Ukrainian drones being sent against their own cities, in particular against Moscow these past few days. To be sure, the Russians claim to have destroyed the thousand or more Ukrainian drones sent their way, but falling debris did cause injury and death to some civilians.

 I mention as well in the video the drone attack on President Putin’s helicopter during his visit to the Kursk region that was liberated several weeks ago from a Ukrainian occupation that began in August 2024.  Kiev’s murderous intentions against the Russian President will yet receive a suitable retaliation whatever Donald Trump and others in the West may say.  I will discuss this in greater detail in a separate essay later today.

Finally, I mention in the video the new direction in Western mainstream reporting on the war that now finally acknowledges the dire situation of Ukraine, militarily, financially, economically.  This issue, too, will figure in the essay to come.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2025

Translation below into German (Andreas Mylaeus)

WION (Indien): Trump und Putin – die Freundschaft liegt in Trümmern

Es war mir eine Freude und Ehre, gestern wieder in der Nachrichtensendung von WION zu Gast zu sein, um über die neuesten Entwicklungen in den Beziehungen zwischen den USA und Russland im Hinblick auf die Beilegung des Ukraine-Konflikts zu sprechen. WION ist mit fast 10 Millionen Abonnenten der größte englischsprachige globale Sender Indiens.

Wie die Überschrift zu diesem Video oben andeutet, war der Ausgangspunkt für unser Gespräch Donald Trumps jüngste Äußerungen gegenüber Reportern, er sei empört über die neuen massiven russischen Drohnen- und Raketenangriffe auf Kiew und andere Städte, die gegen die Fortsetzung der Friedensgespräche verstießen. Trump bezeichnete Putin als „absolut verrückt“ und sagte, er könne nicht verstehen, was in den russischen Präsidenten gefahren sei.

Lassen Sie uns kein Blatt vor den Mund nehmen. Ich glaube, ich habe in meinem Live-Kommentar deutlich gesagt, dass Trumps Worte leere Rhetorik waren. Sie sollten seine Kritiker im In- und Ausland zum Schweigen bringen, die eine harte Reaktion der USA forderten und auf ein Ende von Trumps Friedensbemühungen und die vollständige Wiederaufnahme des Krieges gegen Russland hofften, sowohl in wirtschaftlicher als auch in militärischer Hinsicht, mit verstärkter Beteiligung der USA. Das wird nicht passieren.

Ich beziehe mich in diesem Video auch auf die Warnungen Russlands vor seinen jüngsten Raketen- und Drohnenangriffen, dass es Vergeltungsschläge für den beispiellos hohen Einsatz ukrainischer Drohnen gegen ihre eigenen Städte, insbesondere gegen Moskau in den letzten Tagen, geben werde. Zwar behaupten die Russen, die mehr als tausend ukrainischen Drohnen, die auf sie abgefeuert wurden, zerstört zu haben, doch verursachten herabfallende Trümmerteile Verletzungen und Todesfälle unter der Zivilbevölkerung.

Ich erwähne in dem Video auch den Drohnenangriff auf den Hubschrauber von Präsident Putin während seines Besuchs in der Region Kursk, die vor einigen Wochen von der ukrainischen Besatzung befreit wurde, die im August 2024 begonnen hatte. Die mörderischen Absichten Kiews gegenüber dem russischen Präsidenten werden noch eine angemessene Vergeltung erfahren, was auch immer Donald Trump und andere im Westen sagen mögen. Ich werde darauf später heute in einem separaten Essay näher eingehen.

Schließlich erwähne ich in dem Video die neue Richtung in der westlichen Mainstream-Berichterstattung über den Krieg, die nun endlich die desolate Lage der Ukraine in militärischer, finanzieller und wirtschaftlicher Hinsicht anerkennt. Auch dieses Thema wird in dem kommenden Essay behandelt werden.

Transcript submitted by a reader
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vu8Yy9Vh5Y4

Rishab Gulati, NewsX: 0:04
Let’s refocus, because we are in times that seem to be showing us a ray of hope after a conflict in Ukraine that has gone on for months that have turned into years. Is there a possibility of an equitable ceasefire agreement that leads to a lasting peace? It’s a loaded question, because not only emotions, passions and life and death have been at stake; but grand geopolitics in what is already a new cold war have to play themselves out as well.

Joining us on the broadcast to discuss this further is Ambassador Kanwal Sibal, former Foreign Secretary of India. Ambassador Pradeep Kapur, Gilbert Doctorow and Professor Madhav Nalapat will also be joining us shortly. Ambassador Sibal, let me begin with you. What is your assessment of what is taking place in the conversation in Saudi Arabia, sir?

Sibal: 1:02
Well, I think the United States is trying to put immediate pressure on Russia to positively respond to the so-called agreement with Zelensky or Ukraine to accept a 30-day ceasefire. Now, if you see the narrative is that the ball is in Putin’s court or Russia’s court. Now, Putin yesterday has in his press conference with Lukashenko spelt out what the concerns of Russia are. And if you have heard that, I think what he has said makes sense and it is very legitimate: that the ceasefire cannot just be declared unless it is embedded in a proper discussion on what happens on the ground and what precautions and measures are going to be taken to ensure a proper implementation of the ceasefire.

2:17
Now as you know the ceasefire proposal has come at a moment when Zelensky has lost virtually his trump card in Kursk. He was all this time saying that this will give him a card to play in negotiations, in terms of exchanging territory with Russia, where Russia gives him whatever he seeks in the regions which have been annexed by Russia, and in return for a withdrawal from Kursk. But that card has been lost, and there is now a danger that Russia may actually go beyond Kursk and actually create, try to create a buffer zone in the future. So, there is need for an immediate ceasefire so far as Zelensky is concerned.

3:11
But there are other issues which are very, very important from the Russian point of view, purely logically. The Europeans have made it very clear that they are going to support Ukraine to the hilt. They will give him all the arms and aid that he needs. They have joined together in various ways. They have held a meeting of the 34 chiefs of staff of NATO to do brainstorming on how to support Ukraine. The European Union has talked about 850 billion dollars to be spent over the next few years by the European Union to rearm themselves.

3:57
And I heard the British Prime Minister say yesterday on television, which seemed a little odd, that Russia is threatening UK in land, water and air and in the streets of the UK. Now this narrative is being spread that if Ukraine is, if Russia wins in Ukraine then the future security of the European Union is [uncertain].

Now, European Union and the United States are working at cross purposes. And Russia cannot ignore what is happening on the ground in terms of what the Europeans are doing. So, they have to have a lot of clarity in terms of a future peace process. And that is where the matters are. I think it is going to be a very difficult process as the gap in the position of the two sides is very wide. And–

NewsX:
OK, so Ambassador Sibal, so the Trump administration wants the ceasefire to happen. They are not mincing words upon it; they are saying there has to be a ceasefire. Russia says we are cautiously optimistic but we do not want the Ukrainians simply to use the ceasefire to rearm. The Europeans … how much of it is rhetoric, gamesmanship, or do you actually think that Europe is going to take a different position to the Americans fundamentally?

Sibal: 5:19
For the time being, yes. Now, what the credibility of this [is], is a matter of judgment. There are people who say that at the end of the day, Europe has been used to US security cover and its defenses have been relatively neglected. And to rebuild them in any relevant time frame to the Ukraine conflict is not on the cards. You can’t set up a huge defense industry overnight. It’ll take years. And on top of that, who will then lead Europe in terms of defense?

Will it be Von der Leyen in Brussels? Will it be France? Because President Macron has been extremely active in this regard. So there are a lot of divisions within Europe. Do they have a joint armed forces? Do they have a joint command? Who will then actually man the various commands? So these are– the point is that the Europeans are putting a lot of pressure on United States and putting a spanner in the works as much as they can, so that the entente between USA and Russia under Trump can be delayed.

6:31
The Europeans from a certain point of view are not wrong that look it’s a question of peace in Europe, and you cannot then decide on peace in Europe without involving the Europeans. But what the Americans are saying is, “Well for three years you were involved in this, and what has come of it? You’ve not been able to solve it, so why [do you] at this stage want to come into the process?”

NewsX:
After all that has been–

Sibal:
One important last thing.

NewsX:
Yes.

Sibal
That the Europeans are determined to send their peacekeepers, French and the British have agreed to that, on the ground after a peace solution of sorts. Russia has categorically rejected that time and again. This is going to be a big, big issue in the future.

NewsX: 7:18
Can Volodymyr Zelensky sit [at] a table with Putin or his representative? Is that possible, sir, or does a ceasefire or eventual peace deal in a sense mean that there has to be a change of guard in Ukraine?

Sibal:
Two things. One: Zelensky passed a decree that there cannot be any negotiation with Russia so long as Putin is in charge. Putin in turn has said that Zelensky is illegitimate and the power now lies with the Ukrainian parliament. And therefore there should be a re-election, election in Ukraine to decide on who would be, which would be the legitimate government. Now, Ukraine despite all the peace talks has not undone this decree.

8:06
If Zelensky was to undo the decree, it would be a huge political setback for him domestically. So, he is not going to do that. So, there are a lot of weaknesses in the situation with regard to the legality of the peace process, because Putin has said that don’t be in a situation where I sign an agreement with the government which is not legitimate, and a subsequent government may actually take this as a reason for not honoring the agreement.

NewsX: 8:35
Okay.

Sibal:
So, there are lots of difficulties ahead of all sorts. So, I can’t see Zelensky sitting personally together with the Russians.

NewsX: 8:45
Okay. As you are well aware, sir, Vladimir Putin has specifically mentioned Prime Minister Modi in, while talking about a potential ceasefire. What role can India still play other than that of a well-wisher?

Sibal:
–in which he made this statement, He didn’t want to give credit only to Trump to try and broker some kind of peace in Ukraine. He said that other leaders of other countries have also spent a lot of their time in trying to address this issue. And he mentioned our Prime Minister, he mentioned Xi Jinping, he mentioned Lula and he mentioned South Africa.

9:28
But there is a nuance here, if you want to read it that way, that if and when the issue of peacekeepers has to be decided, Russia would be totally against the idea of European peacekeepers, but these countries, if they so choose, they can actually be part of peacekeepers or peace monitors or whatever. I don’t think we like that word “peacekeepers” because that means you can use violence. But peace monitors on the ground. It is said in that context rather than asking for these countries to mediate. I don’t think so that was his intention.

NewsX: 10:06
We have under UN mandate deployed peace monitors and peacekeepers before, sir. Should it be open for consideration by us if the offer was to come?

Sibal:
Yes. If there is a UN resolution, then we should accept our responsibility. And in fact both sides would be quite happy if countries like India were on the ground, because we maintained a neutral stance. We have a credibility with both sides. We have actually not been mediating, but we have been passing messages to and fro between President Putin and President Zelensky.

Our national security advisor actually went all the way to Moscow to brief President Putin on the conversations our prime minister had with the president Zelensky. So, that credibility is there. So, our position has always been that it has to be part of a UN sanctioned peace keeping move not in any other format.

NewsX: 11:06
Okay, Kanwal Sibal, thank you for joining us with your thoughts. Let me open this up to Professor Nalapat. Professor Nalapat, “cautiously optimistic”, what can actually be achieved? Are we to assume that if the Trump administration is pretty adamant on the ceasefire that per force it will somehow happen.

Nalapat:
Look, I am bit surprised Trump has gone 180 degrees from his earliest months on peace in Ukraine. And frankly both he and vice president Vance clearly recognized Zelensky has a personal interest in keeping the war going and Russia has got a very long history of broken agreements with the western world and Ukraine. Look at Minsk 1, September 14, 2014. The Russians signed it in good faith. Very soon the Ukrainians broke it.

12:04
Then you had Minsk 2 in 2015. Again the Russians signed in good faith, February 2015. But again it is broken. Then in 2022 Prime Minister Modi in press together with Vladimir Putin said it is a time for peace and Putin would have agreed. Nothing happened.

I mean that particular effort was sabotaged by Boris Johnson for his own political reasons. He wanted to survive and President Biden for whatever reason. I mean Biden has always had a soft corner for the Ukrainians. So the fact is that Trump has completely changed his original plan, which was essentially, you know, a pull out of weapons. Now he said I am going to flood Ukraine with weapons.

12:54
Now, that is not going to go down very well with President Putin. Now, you know, and supplies to Ukraine will continue. So, what happens? It is another Minsk 1 or 2 and another 2022 in which Ukraine gets a whole month to rearm and replenish its depleted soldiers and have a ceasefire when the Russians are winning on all fronts. There is nothing in this deal that will attract the Russians and I will be very surprised if Putin agrees to it.

My surprise frankly is that Trump has completely changed his original position on Ukraine peace as a candidate and then as a president and he has now adopted a line which is very favorable to Zelensky. And every single European leader who is for the war has been cheering this. So, I would like to say, I think this is quite a change in tone, a 180 degree change in position. I cannot see Russia agreeing to this kind of a quote unquote deal.

NewsX: 14:02
Okay, Shun. Gilbert Doctorow, what do you make of what is going on?

Doctorow:
When you repeated what is commonly said now, that the ball is in the Russian court, that’s dead wrong. The ball is in the American court. And there may yet be a deal over a ceasefire, but it has nothing to do with anything that mainstream is now discussing. It has to do with what you and me and everyone else doesn’t really know fully, because it’s going on behind closed doors. It is what Witkoff was doing yesterday in Moscow.

14:40
And what we’re talking about is, again, to go back to the start of this discussion when you mentioned the new Cold War. It’s about ending the new Cold War. That is what the Russians want. And everything else is details. The Russians’ position, which CNN tells us has been changed and has become an obstacle, is nonsense.

The Russian position today is exactly what President Putin declared very precisely when he addressed the Russian ambassadors in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in June of 2024. It is we will stop fighting at once if the Ukrainians remove their troops from the four oblasts, regions, which have been integrated into the Russian Federation. It is that Ukraine be neutral. It is that Ukraine not allow any foreign military installations on its territory.

15:36
These are unchanged conditions. They are not making the situation worse today. They’re simply reiterating why Russia got into the war to start. And Russia will not leave the war if these issues are not addressed. I believe they are being addressed quietly behind closed doors as is normal diplomacy.

The fact that we do not know the details, well that’s the way life works. I am not bothered by it. I don’t think it is a hindrance, and I think it is premature to draw any conclusions on whether Donald Trump’s team knows what they are doing or not. I tend to believe that they know what they are doing.

NewsX: 16:13
OK. Ambassador Kapur, it has now been reiterated every time Donald Trump speaks about Ukraine that had he been president, there would have been no war. And the reasons the war happened and one can suspect, that Ukraine was driven to war perhaps against its own best interests with rhetoric and promises. many of which did not come to fruition, like joining NATO and joining the European Union. Is it your assessment that if the American administration wants it to happen regardless of what the Europeans think or Zelensky think it probably will happen?

Kapur:
Well, I think it’s become very complicated over the last few years with so many players, with so many different parameters, with so many different interests, so many vested interests involved and the change of administration here. As far as I can see currently, Donald Trump has a tremendous interest to make sure that the war comes to a close, beginning with the ceasefire, of course. And he put a lot of pressure initially on Zelensky because Zelensky was quite adamant in terms of, you know, security umbrella, in terms of the NATO membership, etc., etc., in terms of getting his territory back. So he had certain conditions, including not to negotiate with Putin, etc., which were quite absurd, to say the very least.

17:56
And Trump realized that, and he had to push Zelensky into a very difficult corner for him to understand that what he was talking was not tenable at all. And thereafter, I think there was a lot of pressure internally in Ukraine, through the parliament, through the polity, through the, you know, common man that what Zelensky was saying was absolutely unachievable. And they would need to change their stance completely, which they did.

Now, once Trump has achieved that, he wants Russia also to become a little bit more malleable in terms of, you know, threatening Russia, giving arms to Ukraine, giving them the intel to be able to attack the Russian forces. So, this is all a ploy to bring Russia in a sort of a slightly comfortable negotiating position onto the table.

18:49
Now Russian demands, as some of the other panelists have mentioned, have been very clear, not from 25, not from 2024, not from 2023, but from maybe 1945 onwards after the Second World War. After that they had also at some stages even tried to become members of NATO. Then they had asked the western world not to push NATO towards its borders. After the breakup of the USSR, the NATO has actively pushed, you know, NATO towards the Russian border incorporating more and more East European countries into NATO. So, they feel a geostrategic threat to their own security.

NewsX: 19:34
Okay. But, Ambassador Kapur, I have to ask you this. What is, why would a Donald Trump administration want peace in Ukraine? It seems to be serving an American purpose, you keep Russia busy, Russia seems to be friends with China, which is your current number one problem, You are keeping them tied down there, you know, you test out the American field artillery and equipment and the new warfare on somebody else’s people, Russians and Ukrainians die. Americans are not, do not have boots on the ground, they are not dying. So why, why other than peace being a reward unto itself, what would be the American interest in ending this?

Kapur: 20:10
Well, the American interest meaning currently the president being Donald Trump, his interests are that he prospers more under peace. His absolute paradigm is that if you have peace, there is more economic progress, there is development, there is real estate, you know, which becomes more profitable, a real estate sector, which he has been very, very good at in his past. So he is definitely not favoring the military-industrial complex here.

He is not favoring the deep state. The deep state, the military-industrial complex, which were profiting phenomenally from this war, were the ones who were pushing for the war to continue for longer. Whereas, the economies of Europe, the economy of Ukraine, the economy of Russia, of US have all been impacted very very badly. So, Donald Trump wants to make sure that the US economy does well. For the US economy to do well, the war has to stop.

NewsX: 21:09
Okay, now we will get Gilbert Doctorow back in. Gilbert Doctorow, is it possible? Is it, are we simply, you know, being drowned out in rhetoric, which is public positioning, which is part of the process, but actually everybody is sick of it and wants it to end?

Doctorow:
The question of where’s the substance? I would like to explain my view that the substance is a new world order. Mr. Trump has been criticized for being isolationist, for wanting to take the United States out of NATO, for being inward-looking. I think this is dead wrong. Mr. Trump is an internationalist, but he has a different vision of what that constitutes from what has been operating in the United States for the last 30, 40 years or more.

22:13
His view is to establish a Yalta 2. That is to say a world that is governed jointly by major powers and not by alliances. The major powers in this world are four, and India is one of them. I believe that Donald Trump wants to have a personal accommodation with Mr. Putin, with Mr. Xi, and with Mr. Modi, and that these four countries will be looking after global peace and will mediate their own differences or differing interests in parts of the world peacefully at a single table. I think this first Yalta 2 meeting may take place on May 9th in Moscow, when both Xi and Modi are there. And I think that Trump will do everything possible to catch up with the other three.

NewsX; 23:17
All right. Professor Nalapat, Is it possible because the complexity of global issues [is] very large, can we disaggregate them? Because if we assume that the Americans under Joe Biden pulled out of Afghanistan with great rapidity, left everything there, immediately after a war started in Ukraine.

Subsequently a war started happening in Gaza, where we are told funding came from Iran. Iran is not full of money so they get funding from China. It’s a very complex global affair. Are we assuming that whatever points had to be scored in Ukraine and whatever intents and purposes this war was serving to whoever has now concluded and actually all sides want peace?

Nalapat: 24:03
I would say that’s really not the side, not what exactly the Europeans are talking about. They’re talking about Ukraine continuing the war until there is a surrender by Russia. And frankly, I mean, ever since, you know, ever since 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed, the US and other countries have been trying to see if Russian Federation will collapse. And unfortunately for them, and I think fortunately for Russia, it hasn’t happened yet. I am not very optimistic about China being part of that architecture. India, Russia, US, definitely. As for Europe, Europe had better get on board.

24:51
The fact of the matter is, but the point is that this particular peace deal is an unconditional deal from, I mean, I’m only going by television reports. I don’t know what the behind-the-scenes conversations are or were, But the reality is what Trump is asking is an immediate ceasefire of 30 days, and after that everything is again up in the air. That’s exactly what Zelensky wants. He’s gasping for air. He’s losing practically the whole of Kursk. His forces are retreating across all fronts.

25:25
Given that situation, I am rather, I do not believe that President Putin is going to agree to this kind of a peace in a hurry. And my surprise is frankly that Donald Trump is even suggesting it, because that is not his earlier position vis-a-vis Russia. He is quite correct that Russia has to be a friend of the US and the reason for that is China. Just as Nixon said China has to be a friend and the reason for that was Soviet Union.

So the reason for Russia and America becoming friends because it’s a nightmare for the Chinese, complete nightmare. India and Russia are already good friends and the Prime Minister Modi. So, this nightmare, it’s a nightmare scenario for [the] Chinese. And frankly, given the security choices of President Trump, I am not at all sure that he would like to see China at the table. Rather, I think you know he would like to isolate China and thereby win the new Cold War. It is not between Russia and the US, but between the US and China.

NewsX: 26:38
All right, it is reasonable to still assess three years later that this war should not have started. In many reasons, it has started under false pretext on promises made by those who have not delivered. Russians have died and Ukrainians have died in the tens of thousands. And what exactly we have to show for it three years later is absolutely nothing other than a continuing stalemate. There are global considerations which are far larger than all of us at play over here. But does everybody want peace in Ukraine at this moment? Difficult one to answer.

We are probably closer than we have been to a ceasefire or a peace deal than in the last 6 or 8 months, but who knows whether the next few weeks can deliver one. My thanks to my guests for having this conversation.

27:30
We take a break. See you in a minute.