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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pUbyemlm6s

Diesen: 0:00
Welcome back to the program. We are joined today by Gilbert Doctorow, historian and international affairs analyst, to discuss the growing pressure on President Putin, I guess, to give up on some of his restraints and even react more forcefully towards NATO. So thank you for coming on.

Doctorow:
Well, it’s a pleasure, except that I will not be bringing good tidings to the show.

Diesen:
Well, it does appear that we’re moving somewhere quite dangerous. That is, only over the past few days, we’ve seen articles such as the one in “Financial Times” where it’s very open that the US is participating in attacks on Russian refineries. Again, hasn’t been denied by the White House. Even Trump seems to be gloating as he speaks and, well, I would say largely exaggerates the gasoline queues in Russia. We have Hegseth talking about imposing costs on Russia and Trump of course working overtime to sabotage the Russian economy, pressuring countries like India to stop trade.

1:11
But also under Trump’s rule, we see that the nuclear deterrent of Russia was attacked back in June. I saw a report yesterday by FSB, which suggested that the British were directly involved in this attack on Russia’s nuclear deterrent. Trump now openly talking about sending Tomahawks, which again could carry nuclear warheads. We, the Russians, would also not be able to know. And again, if Russia sees a Tomahawk launch towards Russia, They can’t really know if there’s a nuclear warhead, if there’s a first strike. So this must be taken into consideration in terms of how they retaliate and respond.

So I guess for all of these reasons, we now see some more louder voices in Moscow, both from politicians as well as the media, which more or less sees this restraint as appeasement that will only produce a more dangerous situation as we now take further steps towards a direct war. And yeah, no one really has escalation control here. So it doesn’t take that much imagination to see how such an escalation could lead to a nuclear exchange. So I don’t know, I tend to agree with this assessment though, that we’re heading towards a possible direct war, again, with unthinkable consequences. And escalation control is an illusion that may essentially kill us all.

2:44
So on that very dark, pessimistic start, I wanted to address an article you recently wrote on this topic as well, where you discussed the dilemma in terms of how Russia could respond to NATO’s escalations. What are, the way you see it, the arguments for and against restraints on Russia’s part?

Doctorow: 3:08
Well, I will approach this question, shall I say, from a layman’s standpoint, because you are the political scientist who looks at the theoretical considerations around deterrence, and that’s a widely discussed issue. That’s not my metier. But speaking as a layman, I see that Mr. Putin is willy nilly undermining Russia’s deterrence by his restraint. Showing off latest generation missiles and other armaments, where Russia is years ahead of the West and the United States in particular — that isn’t deterrence. Deterrence, finally, is a question of political will to use that arsenal. And it is not at all apparent that Mr. Putin has that will.

His actions, his words in the last few months have spoken exactly the opposite. And in that sense, I say he has weakened Russia’s deterrence. Now, where do I get this notion that there is opposition to Mr. Putin? Who is it? Is it the military? Are they plotting against him? Is the KGB plotting against him? I don’t know. Nobody knows.

4:28
But I can say the issue is not undercover. It is very much in people’s eyes. And when I make reference now to Russian state television, I want to be sure that people understand that this, when I say talk show, I don’t mean a talk show that you have coming out of NBC. This does not “Meet the Nation”. This is the voice of the Kremlin without being the Kremlin.

Now, when people think about the tough voice coming out of Russia, they think about Mr. Medvedev, who was a weakling president and has been very busy the last three years trying to make up for it by super patriotism. Not the only one, there are a number of outstanding Russian political scientists and statesmen who have done the same thing, who are making up for their cuddly behavior towards the West by being overtly xenophobic today. But what am I talking about? I’m talking about Vladimir Solovyov and his show, “The Evening with Solovyov”.

5:32
Who is he? Yes, he’s the host of a talk show, but that doesn’t tell you who he is. He is a close associate of Kiselev, who is the director of all Russian state news on television. He is the protector of the hound dog who follows Putin everywhere, Zarubin. He has been favored by the Russian Defense Ministry to go to the front and to see things that nobody else sees and to get into tanks and to present interviews with people he considers to be special heroes from the front on his television program.

So this is not just a chat show. This is a man who is very closely connected to Putin’s circle, who is part of the circle. And he’s been saying, and I think about, you can find on YouTube, but bizarrely, it appeared yesterday on YouTube. I don’t recall the kind of anonymous sponsor who put it on for Russian television, because Russian television by itself is banned from YouTube. The program of the 14th, it is labeled the program of the 15th, the 15th is when it was posted by this intermediary program of Vladimir Solovyov.

7:01
And what he says will shock you out of your skin. He’s saying that Russia is prepared. Russia has allowed red lines to be crossed. It has not stood for its defense, that it has behaved weakly, and that this has to stop. That, well, let me go on. That this is not, we’re no longer in a special military operation. Let’s face the fact, we are now at war. At war. In that case, we don’t care about humane behavior towards the enemy. The Ukrainians are our enemy.

They’re trying to do everything to destroy us, and we should respond the same way. We should now bomb all of the decision-making centers in Kiev during the daytime to make sure that all the staff goes down with the buildings. Got it? We should also warn European countries, whoever has factories building weapons that are going to Ukraine, to evacuate their cities. Because well, it’s clear, there’s an open threat to destroy European capitals.

I’m in Brussels. We have in downtown Brussels, one such factory. It was formerly a car factory. It’s now making the various types of armaments for Ukraine. So this is a very direct warning.

8:30
The most important thing I’ve considered here was the mention of we are now, let’s stop talking about it, in SMO, we are at war. I’m waiting for Putin to declare war. And I think it will happen as soon as either the Tomahawks are delivered to Ukraine or something similar. That will be the provocation that allows him to do what people like Solovyov are demanding. And once you’re at war, everything goes.

At the same time, I’m sitting here in Brussels where I can tell you from an inside source from Flemish newspaper that our Prime Minister de Wever is shaking in his boots over this business of Euroclear’s 145 billion in Russian state assets being turned into collateral. Because he’s afraid, with good reason, that Brussels will be destroyed. So this is why I do not bring my usual note of encouragement to the audience, but I am as alarmed as you appear to be from your opening remarks. We are at a very serious stage.

Diesen: 9:45
Yeah, just I don’t see how a direct war now can be avoided because again, if Russia shows restraint, then they will see this as a weakness in NATO and the Tomahawks will be delivered, which the Russians would then have to react to in the most fierce way. And if they do respond, then of course, look at the language we have in Europe.

We have some few drones over an airport. And even after we found out that there are Europeans who have been flying them and arrested, we still talk about how this is a hybrid war by Russia. Like we seem so eager to pick a fight. I mean, once the Oreshniks begin to rain upon our production facilities and in logistic centers in Europe, I mean, this is going to be impossible to avoid war. This is, yeah, it seems like we’ve hit the end of the line.

10:40
Otherwise, you mentioned the theories on deterrence. I mean, in deterrence, well, at least when I used to teach it, we focused on the three C’s. You have to have the CAPABILITIES to deter. It has to be, well, obvious. You also need it to be, and the Russians do have this with the, especially the Oreshniks, which allows them to climb up the escalation ladder in a very aggressive way without going nuclear.

The second is that it has to be CREDIBLE that you’re willing to use this weapon, that once you cross a red line, they will be used. And all of this has to be COMMUNICATED. So this kind of three C’s all has to be present if you want a proper deterrent. But as you said, the desire to kind of hope that you can get along with Trump, it’s undermining the credibility. And this is very, I guess, dangerous communication.

I know, you know, in the media, journalists will then hear this and say, well, then you’re supporting the Russians. But this is the problem. It’s not supporting this side or that side. It’s once we go down this road, This is the war. The war becomes the main enemy.

11:48
This is what would possibly destroy everyone. But still, it’s not as if Putin is all naive either. What do you see as being the arguments then for and against these restraints? Because there are reasons why one should also be cautious.

Doctorow:
Cautious he always has been. That has been his byword in almost any policy that you look at. I’d like to just explain that people may be wondering why I am changing my opinion, not just about Mr. Putin, for whom I have great admiration in all he’s achieved in saving Russia from ruin and giving a Phoenix-like rise to a great-power status again. I don’t deny any of that. But his behavior and the conduct of this war leaves many open questions over whether he still has the nerve to and the willingness to take risk that is imposed on you.

12:49
You don’t have a choice; the risk is on all sides. The question is, which risk do you choose to respond to? And what your calculations are. His calculations, I think, at this point are dead wrong, based on his reading of Trump, which I think is wrong. And then the second thing they’ll say is, why am I now turning against Mr. Trump? Because first I was considered to be a dupe of Putin, and then I was considered by people who don’t like what I say or write, to be a dupe of Trump. Well, my answer to those points is very relevant to our discussion. It is that I am one of the few, unfortunately, who changes my views according to what I see in front of me. If the objective facts change, then my opinion changes, and the objective facts have changed.

Mr. Trump with this much-heralded Gaza war solution, heralded by whom? Mostly by the wrong people, meaning the whole EU and all of the other sycophants around him. It is a phony peace settlement. It’s a fraud. But unfortunately, he has been lionized, he’s been, well, he wasn’t given a Nobel Prize, but he came close to that.

And he believes that his method of solving these crises by using maximum American force to compel the warring sides to find, to strike a compromise, he believes that he succeeded. I think he’s dead wrong on that. We’ll find out in the next few weeks when the war breaks out again. But he thinks that worked, and he thinks it’s applicable to the Russia-Ukraine war. That is why he’s maximizing pressure on Russia now by saying, falsely by the way, yesterday that he Mr. Modi had promised to stop buying Russian oil. They haven’t. They will scale it back somewhat, and that was what the meeting today with the Saudis is all about. They’re going to try and raise their purchase of Saudi oil and also of US oil, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to stop buying Russian oil. Anyway, he believes that he has everybody in his hands, that he is the almighty ruler of the universe and that everyone will follow his dictates.

15:07
Well, up to a point, andhe has reached that point. Russia is not a small patch of desert next to the Mediterranean Sea called Gaza. Russia is not a small Jewish state surrounded by a hundred million Muslims or more, but fighting them off because of superior military capability. Russia is a world super, is a not super power, but a major international power with the world’s largest stock of nuclear weapons and many other defense feats that are ahead of its peers and competitors by 10 years or more. And he cannot compel them to do his bidding or to sacrifice the reasons why they have lost 150,000 dead in this war for the sake of appeasing the vanity of one Donald Trump. That is not going to work.

And instead, it may lead to a war that we will all suffer from. So I think everyone should be following this closely. I go to this prestigious social club here in Brussels which brings together– the main purpose of the club is to celebrate how important we all are and to have a good meal. That’s, well, maybe it’s a good reason for a club. But among these people who are very successful professionals in all areas, there’s no awareness at all of what is going on, none. They pick up and read the newspapers and they know as much as anyone reading “New York Times”. And that frightens me very much.

Diesen: 16:54
Yeah, it’s, no, I often feel incompetence has reached a dangerous level as well. But this restraint, it’s very openly now, this denounced by the Europeans as a weakness. That is, I saw Mark Rutte, the NATO secretary general, standing on stage, more or less beginning to emulate the kind of language and talk that Trump does.

So he argues, you know, the Russians, they can’t even fly their jets, their ships are useless. So the Russians are weak, they’re pointless, their economy is, you know, smaller than Spain or, you know, the usual talking points. So in other words, you know, with Trump, of course, being one of the key people this message is intended for. And at the same time, Trump is powerful, he’s strong. And if he only treats the Russians like he did with the Palestinians, then they will fall in line.

I mean, this is, you can almost see why Trump has abandoned this position he previously had. Keep in mind back in February, he was condemning Zelensky for playing with World War III. Now this Trump will seemingly trigger this. And also the Dutch foreign minister, sorry, defense minister arguing that, well, yeah, let’s send the Tomahawks. No one’s discussing anymore any of the consequences.

18:21
What do you mean when a Tomahawk, possibly carrying a nuclear warhead from the Russian perspective, heads inwards towards Russian borders? I mean, how are they expected to respond? The only thing we have to respond is to say, well, you know, they should have thought about this. They should get out of Ukraine. It’s all this. It’s so empty and ridiculous. So I just don’t see how it’s possible to negotiate out of this any more.

Doctorow: 18:50
It’s manifestly obvious that Mr. Trump is a bully. It’s less manifestly obvious that most members of the US Congress are also bullies. It is incomprehensible to me that Vladimir Putin doesn’t see this and notice and act the way he said that he did, as a scrappy kid in Leningrad in the courtyards when confronted with bullies. He said, you don’t wait for them to hit you, you hit them first. Where is he now? I hope that he comes to his senses.

I hope for all of us that he comes to his senses because he doesn’t, he will be removed and replaced by people who we really do not want to see in power in Russia because they will be very aggressive, very xenophobic, and very ready to go into nuclear war. So it is to all of our advantage that Mr. Putin looks closely at what he’s facing in Trump, which is a bully who will back down when his bluff is called. Nobody in the US government wants to die from Russian missiles. Nobody.

They just don’t believe that there’s such a threat. They have to be reminded one way or another that the threat is there and will be operated. And I think they will all back down.

Diesen: 20:09
Again, I think that’s the reason why Putin’s been restrained. It’s a big gamble. But other reasons for the restraints possibly being temporary though, because of course one of the reasons in NATO why we would like to do a temporary ceasefire is because all the Ukrainians have to be able to mobilize more men, they have to prepare defensive lines. NATO needs time to ramp up its industrial production. There’s a lot of reasons.

But on the Russian side as well, they’re also, I’m assuming now, preparing for a possible direct clash with Europe as the Europeans are preparing to enter this war. Now, I’m assuming that during this time of restraint, the Russians have been building up plenty of Oreshniks and other weaponry, which is not intended for Ukraine. I mean, there’s been a lot of, a few months ago, there’s a lot of reports in the Western media as well that you had– that the Russians were pumping out a lot of armored vehicles, but few of them were sent to the front, like they’re all building up in the back.

I mean, there looks like there are many indications that there are now preparations for what seems increasingly unavoidable, which is now a direct war between NATO and Russia.

Doctorow: 21:28
Well, let’s look at the timeline. The last week I made the remark that the conversion or the application of Russia’s frozen assets into collateral for loans to Ukraine that will never be repaid, that this was connected with the bigger issue of when Europe is ready to go to war with Russia. And this was confirmed. I was very pleased is the wrong word because what we’re talking about couldn’t please anybody.

But the fact of the matter is that the foreign minister of Poland, Sikorski Adego, said that with these funds from the frozen assets, Ukraine will be able to fight the war for three more years. This is exactly what I was saying. These two things are perfectly linked. This is a bridging loan to keep Russia distracted with Ukraine, the war in Ukraine, while Europe prepares for 2028 or 2029 launch of a war against Russia, because it had bulked up sufficiently. These– I really regret that the intimate linkage here is kept out of sight. But Mr. Sikorsky, he told it all yesterday. They are linked.

Diesen: 22:53
So what is the way here though? I mean, how can World War III now be avoided? I mean, well, of course, if I would give advice to NATO, I would say, you know, de-escalate if you’re European, pick up a phone and talk to Putin. But you know, we can’t talk to the Russians. We seem determined to continue to escalate. But on the Russian side, what can they do at this point? I know the rhetoric in Europe is that, oh, they should just leave Ukraine, but that doesn’t really solve the war because then NATO moves into Ukraine and all the same problems. The war wouldn’t be over.

So what are possible pathways out of this? Because this is pretty much the most pessimistic I’ve been in terms of avoiding another world war since this whole thing began.

Doctorow: 23:53
I think it’s all in Putin’s hands. Let me put this in perspective. I detected a week ago when there was this open conflict between Deputy Foreign Minister Ryabkov and Oshakov, the advisor to President Putin and Pieskov, the press secretary of Putin, over whether the spirit, the impulse of Anchorage Alaska’s summit still is in effect or whether it’s been dissipated. Ryabkov said it’s over, meaning the diplomatic path towards normalization with the United States is not viable. He was overruled publicly and unusually by these two gentlemen. And then by Putin himself. That never happens.

For casual visitors to this show or to Russian affairs, they would have no sense of this. But those of us who are Russia watchers know this never happens. That the number two man in foreign ministry is put in his place, or man who is supposed to succeed Lavrov, is put in his place in a very undecorous way, indecorous way. That was a tip off, that there’s a big conflict going on at the top in Russia, and in the center of the government.

But then I want to put into perspective what I said about Solovyov and his denunciation of the Go Slow approach and of these SMO, the Special Military Operation approach, as opposed to open war.

I don’t see that as the cat’s paw of an opposition to Putin within the government or outside the government. I’ve already explained how Mr. Solovyov is so very close to Putin and to Putin’s immediate spokespeople, not just his press secretary, but the man who oversees all of Russia’s television programs on the news. So I believe that Putin himself is preparing to make this transition from the SMO to open the declaration of war on Ukraine, which will change dramatically their behavior. They will destroy everything that exists.

26:25
They will turn Kiev into rubble, not just the downtown Bankovaya, where the government offices are. And they will not look back. As Solovyov said, we will show humane consideration after we’ve won the war, not before. So I think the ball is in Putin’s court. I don’t look for any big change here in the West or here in Europe.

I think it will come only after Putin declares war on Ukraine, which could be, as I said, could follow immediately on delivery or rumored delivery of Tomahawks. And that will change in a cardinal fashion the way the war is being prosecuted. That will save us all.

Diesen:
It looks like one of the reasons why Russia’s been more constrained in terms of, as you say, going to an all-out war as opposed to a special military operation is both its, yeah, the domestic situation as well as its partner states. That is, domestically it was assumed that the public would be very critical if this amount of violence was used against Ukraine.

But now, of course, with these last rounds of escalation from NATO, it looks like it would be the contrary that the public would expect or if not demand a harder stance. But you also see some indication from our allies but less common partners that is China, India, I guess, going softer, you know, maintaining only a special military operation was also seen, I think, as not appearing too aggressive and violent in the eyes of the Chinese and the Indians. However, now with again the escalations of NATO, they have a different consideration. Now looking weak in front of their partners is also not ideal because no matter how close partner you are, at some point states will often bet on the winning horse and if it looks that you’re too weak then your partners will turn away from you anyway. So it does seem like, again, all the indicators suggest that we’re heading again towards this very dark place.

28:53
But I guess when the Russian retaliation comes, what do you expect them to go after though? Is it political, military target, the infrastructure inside Ukraine, outside? How do you see the possible climbing up the escalation ladder?

Doctorow:
Well let’s differentiate between what the Russians will do to Ukraine and what the Russians will do to Western Europe or the United States and you differentiate between the last two, of course. Attacking the United States is the last thing that Russia will do as it prepares for World War III.

They have uncertainty about the competence of military and political judgment in Washington, and they know that the two countries can destroy life on earth, so they would prefer any conflict with the United States to be the very last stage in escalation. If the Tomahawks are shipped, I don’t think they’re going to attack if they’re producer is in the United States or any United States military assets outside of the United States. I think the attack will be on the intermediate country, whether it’s Norway or Denmark, whoever decides to carry the water for Washington and be the deliverer of Tomahawks, they will get hit. But as for Ukraine, I think the moment that Mr. Putin declares war on them, which is the first step that he takes, there will be total destruction then.

30:28
All at a conventional level, all using the Oreshnik and all the other means at their disposal to lay waste to Ukraine so it starts to look like Gaza. That’s in their power. And I think the feeling of enmity, of hatred for Ukraine, has reached that point. So as I say, there are three different levels of destruction here, of response.

The most severe will be against Ukraine. That will be immediate, leveling it to the extent that they can or want to. The second will be hitting European military assets in Europe, starting with those directly associated with the Tomahawk or other, because it’s not necessarily a Tomahawk. The United States has a few other long range missiles that it can deliver to Ukraine to do the job quite nicely. So whatever is the country that is cooperating with the States, with NATO and acting as NATO to deliver these to Ukraine they will be struck in one way or another probably in a military way, not civilian centers. And until and unless NATO declares war on Russia. In that case, watch out, because everything will be subject to attack, and it will be subject to nuclear attack.

31:50
That’s another, I didn’t mention that in detail, that Russia has made it plain that any war with NATO will be a nuclear war. They are not going to go into tank formations against Poland or anybody else. They will use their nuclear strength to eradicate the military forces and if necessary, civilian populations of Western Europe.

Diesen: 32:16
So if we enter, I guess, game theory, this would be a bet essentially on a game of chicken, that is, Russia would strike targets. It seems as if Germany would be kind of high on the list in terms of its potential industrial production, as well as its role as a logistics center, also its mere posture in all this.

But once this strike comes, it would then, given that Germany is a non-nuclear state, then it would essentially be a clear signal to the rest of the NATO alliance that the Russians will be, you know, they’re prepared to go all the way. And this is when NATO has the dilemma of either responding in a big way, which would then probably lead to a nuclear exchange or back down. I know if NATO would ever back down, I guess under Trump’s leadership would be the best bet on the Russian side, given that he doesn’t seem to have much problem in terms of flipping his position back and forth.

Doctorow: 33:26
Well, the Article 5, he’s already trashed Article 5. So I don’t think any European defense planners can reckon on the United States automatically coming to their aid if Russia attacks with nuclear or without nuclear.

I don’t think that the United States is going to risk New York, Los Angeles, Washington for the sake of Munich or Lyon. This is a given and I think most people here in Europe and Brussels understand that. As I say, the ball really is in Putin’s court to find a proper answer to what you described in the opening, which is complete condescension and disregard for Russia as a power. That cannot go on. It only can lead to disaster.

Diesen: 34:22
I often make the point how awful the political leadership and media now is. I mean, Imagine during the Cold War, if someone would have done this, say, let’s openly attack key commercial targets, deep inside Russia, military, political targets, again, directly by NATO countries, and any opposition would be dismissed as being pro-Soviet or something along those lines. I mean, the kind of irresponsibility would be unthinkable. But now it’s the only response it seems. I mean, this is the, it just feels like this is really the dumbest way one could possibly stumble into a third world war.

But I guess just as a final question, do you think tomorrow, on Friday, this is when Trump said he would make a decision on the Tomahawks. I guess that’s really a good indication when we know whether or not, yeah, we’re going down this path or not.

Doctorow: 35:28
Well, irrespective of the Tomahawks, the situation is becoming critical. And I think the fact that this Solovyov program is so open as it was, this corresponds to the situation that we see in the massive pressure that Trump is applying to cut, to hurt severely as possible Russia’s economy, the secondary sanctions, the assault he’s made on Brazil, the assault he’s made on the Indians. This is not supportable for a long time by Russia.

You mentioned that the close allies in BRICS can move away from Russia if they feel they’re not winning. I think they also can move away if they fear that the losses that the United States is imposing on them are unsustainable for their economies, too harmful for their population, for them to stand by Russia and then take this beating. And I think that this also figures in to the calculation by Putin’s advisors of when we have to go from an SMO to war. Can we last this out? Can we watch our base, our closest friends abandon us under pressure from Trump?

That would have enormous psychological impact on the Russian population. And it wouldn’t be favorable to the governments in power. So I think that Trump is overplaying his hand. I think you mentioned that on one of the– whether with me or another program in the last week or so, the pressure applied and pressure applied and then the spring releases itself in an unexpected and violent way. And I think that’s what we’re about to see, that Trump has overdone it and has misunderstood the limits to his power vis-a-vis Russia.

Diesen: 37:40
I don’t think he recognized the difference between the large powers and the small power, because a small power can be, like the Palestinians can be forced to stand down or any other, but the large powers, if you’re China, Russia, standing down, it would be the first step towards your destruction. This interesting point that Professor John Mersheimer has. He argues that one of the most fundamental things or dangerous things in the West is the refusal to recognize that Russia sees this war as being an existential threat, including NATO expansion on its borders. But this is quite important, I think, because if you don’t recognize that Russia sees this as existential, then that results in a massive miscalculation and what happens when you mount this much pressure on it, because the assumption or language you hear always from the Americans and Europeans is, “Oh, we just need to put more pressure on Putin. Then he’ll back down.” But again, for the Russians backing down here is an existential threat that would result in their eventual destruction. So there is only escalation here. And again, it looks as if that’s where we’re heading now with, as you said, an actual war. Do you have any final thoughts before we finish off?

Doctorow: 39:01
No, the outlook is not good. But the only comfort I can offer is that the first stage in a Russian escalation will be to annihilate Ukraine. No government in Kiev is not an ideal solution, and the people have written to me saying, oh, that’s not the end of the war. Well, it avoids anything dire coming Russia’s way out of whoever is running Ukraine.

The chaos that will follow in Ukraine after the decapitation is not only of Mr. Zelensky and his immediate entourage, they were saying, they being Mr. Soloviev, to use the Oreshniks and destroy Bankovaia, and well, the parliament with it, it’s the whole political class in Kiev that they will annihilate. So there’ll be chaos after that happens, and there’ll be no opportunity for whatever is left to strike a blow of any consequence against Russia. So that is a comfort not for those who are living in Kiev or for Ukrainians in general, who we’ll probably find here in the streets of Brussels very soon, if any of this happens, but it is a comfort to the rest of us that it’s not [proceeding] to bombing Western Europe, not to mention the United States. I think we’ll end, the whole thing will end with a show of force that destroys Ukraine. End of subject.

Diesen; 40:35
I want to get your opinion on one more thing, which I’ve thought about a lot before. That is, I’m wondering if another miscalculation for us in the West is that we have assumptions about the way Russia escalates. Because when we believe that it doesn’t uphold its red lines, perhaps the Russians just escalate differently.

I mean, often we do this gradual incrementalism where we escalate a little bit, a little bit down based on the extent to which, the responses we get. But with the Russians, you see often that they hold back for a while and then they go really, well, not, well, let’s say overboard, that they react in a big way. So they don’t do the incrementalism that NATO is renowned for. So I often think about the speech, last speech Putin gave around the time they annexed Crimea in 2014. And he used this analogy, he referred to pushing a spring further and further back until it finally shoots out.

41:35
And essentially this was a reference to 20 years of warning, stop expanding NATO on our borders. So we will have to take action at some point. And then he said, this was the spring idea. And then of course, from 2014, we kind of gradually developed a Ukrainian army, almost make it a defacto NATO member, ignore everything that comes out of Moscow. And then again, eight years later, they come with this reaction where they again, launch this invasion where they send in their military.

And again, you can put this with after we began sending the weapons, we didn’t do it, They didn’t do anything. And suddenly they go in and annex four regions. I mean, maybe it’s just, we don’t know. Maybe we escalate. We go up and down the escalation ladder in a very different way than the Russians.

42:26
So, but this is a problem with NATO’s incrementalism as well. The reason why I do small steps forward is because the reason why you started with tanks, then you did HIMARS, then you did F-16s, things which we ourselves recognize could trigger World War III, because once you do another step, it’s so small, it doesn’t really matter. But once the response actually comes, it seems very disproportionate. But I mean, are we fooling ourselves, I guess, is what I’m asking with this incrementalism.

Doctorow: 42:56
Well, I would explain Russian incrementalism. It’s been variable over this 10-year period. But one thing I want to dismiss is the notion that Russia was had by Minsk II, but they were deceived by Merkel and by Hollande, who had no intention of implementing this properly, and Putin more or less agreeing with that. I don’t believe that for a moment on the Russian side. What people pay very little attention to is that Russia, which could have destroyed entirely the Ukrainian armed forces in 2014, didn’t dare do that because it knew what would follow: an attack that didn’t have to be a kinetic war, it could be just an economic attack on Russia, which it was totally unprepared to sustain.

43:47
It took Russia 10 years to prepare for that eventuality and to survive the sanctions from hell. So Russia, maybe Ukraine was preparing its army the whole time, and Russia was preparing its economy the whole time and its army as well. So there was a reason, there was a reason for this restraint because it was busy doing something that it couldn’t talk about. I think the reason for that restraint ended in 2018, 2019 when they were satisfied that their latest offensive weapons and their rearming, their nuclear triad had reached the point where they were superior and ahead of the United States for the first time ever in strategic weapons. And then they were prepared to make a move.

So I would put their restraint in that it is without calculating or other crafty restraints wasn’t a naive and stupid restraint. But what we have seen for the last few years looks more like a stupid restraint. Now I may be missing something. Perhaps they don’t have more than three Oreshniks when you actually count the noses here. There could be a reason for this, that they were lying about the production facility and they don’t have sufficient arms to match their words.

That could be. But if that’s not the case, if they really have been building, as you were suggesting a few minutes ago, a real cache of hardware to be used when needed, then the restraint doesn’t make much sense. Use it or lose it. And if they fail to defend their interests, then they will lose it. So that’s my answer to this question. It’s not a simple question that you were asking.

Diesen: 45:42
Well, no one from Moscow is giving me the facts of what’s happening behind the scenes. But again, it is an hypothesis though that, again, as you suggested, between 2014 and 2022, Russia was making its economy sanctions-proof and also preparing enough military force in case there would be a larger war. And after 2022 to 2025, they similarly went very slow and showed restraint as they do, I guess, perhaps recognize that if Ukraine loses or not if but when Ukraine lose the war that NATO might join in and that appears to be what’s happening now. So having had three and a half years to prepare, I’m guessing that, again, I don’t know what’s happening inside the weapon depots or what kind of hypersonic missiles or Oreshniks they have been building up, but I’m assuming that they are quite aware that NATO would join in on the fight after Russia had exhausted itself a bit on the Ukrainians.

46:49
Anyways, thank you for taking the time. This is a very dark topic, but I’ll be very curious to see what happens tomorrow because is Trump just bluffing, or is he actually going to go through with this, the Tomahawks that is, which can only be interpreted as a declaration of war? So thanks again.

Doctorow: 47:11
All right. Thank you.

As they say, it is always darkest before the dawn.  Though this discussion was recorded at noon, Brussels time today, figuratively speaking it took place before the “dawn” that arrived at 8pm when the Kremlin released a lengthy summary of the just completed two-and-a-half-hour phone call between Presidents Putin and Trump.  To all appearances, that phone call draws us back from a pending crisis that would open a clear path to a NATO-Russia war, as the title that Glenn Diesen assigned to our video reads.

When we spoke at noon, we knew that Trump would be receiving a visit from Volodymyr Zelensky in the White House tomorrow at which he was expected to announce his decision to dispatch Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine. We also had reason to believe that the Russian reaction to such news could be a dramatic escalation in the conflict. 

As I mention in this video, two days ago, on 14 October, talk show host Vladimir Solovyov said on Russian state television that it was time to respond appropriately to the rising threat to Russian security and in particular to the delivery of Tomahawks by declaring war on Ukraine and proceeding to beat the hell out of Kiev by missile strikes on all the decision-making centers in the capital. This decapitation would extend well beyond Zelensky and his circle to virtually the entire political class of Ukraine, while the country would be bombed into ruins. And as I explain, Solovyov is not just a talking head: for reasons I set out here it is fair to say that his threats were cleared with Putin for delivery in this unofficial way.  The fact that this show of the 14^th was posted on youtube, as virtually never happens, suggests that it was meant as a direct warning to the United States.

If that is so, then today’s phone call indicates that the message was received by the intended audience and Washington is taking a step back from the disaster that was otherwise pending.

We must be grateful for small favors and hope that reason will prevail at the foreseen summit between Putin and Trump at a date still to be announced.

In the meantime, I recommend this conversation with Glenn Diesen to see where we were headed, and may yet be headed, if the summit in Budapest does not result in a breakthrough in the deadlock between Russia and NATO over a conclusion to the Special Military Operation that addresses and resolves the root causes of the conflict as stated by Moscow.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2025

Transcript submitted by a reader

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKx-eUpYDoM

NewsX World: 20:31
Now for this discussion, we’re joined by Gilbert Doctorow. He’s an international relations and Russian affairs expert, joins us live from Brussels. Thank you very much for joining us again. Good to see you. Gilbert, now in response to Ukraine’s increased reliance on gas imports, how might Russia adjust its energy policies as well?

Doctorow:
What we’re talking about is the consequence of exchange of strikes by Russia and Ukraine against the energy infrastructure of the other side. In our news, Western news, they speak only about Ukraine’s strikes on the Russian infrastructure. In the Russian news, they speak only about their own strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure.

21:22
And it’s understandable that the broad public does not have any sense of the sequence here. Who did what to whom when, and what was an action, and what was proactive, and what was reactive? From my following this, I would like to call out that the latest Ukrainian remarks on what they have to import, or on how Russia has now lost its refinery capacity, 30, 50 percent or more of Russian production and refining has been stopped. The Russians are importing gasoline and so forth. As typically, the Ukrainians are projecting onto the Russians what is happening in Ukraine. Ukraine is importing, Russia is not importing anything in this regard.

22:15
However, the Russians have had serious losses of refining capacity and of other energy infrastructure due to Ukrainian strikes. And some of those strikes were directed by Americans. Let’s be quite open about this. It isn’t discussed in media, but it is known that the most recent strikes by Ukraine on Russian gas and oil infrastructure [were] using HIMARS, and it was Americans who were directing those HIMARS.

This is a very serious escalation. The damage was considerable. In Russian news you hear nothing about the extensive destruction of their energy infrastructure by Ukrainian attacks. What you do here, and this is mostly in social media, is in this region or that region there is a shortage of fuel. Now, when this comes to a discussion, public discussion, the Russian patriots will tell you, “Ah, this is the season of the harvest. The diesel fuel and other fuel is in short supply for that reason.”

23:28
Rubbish. It’s in short supply because refineries were struck. The issue is very serious. And the Russian response was also serious. They’ve had in the last few days massive attacks by missiles and drones on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure across the country. And the results were devastating, but not in the sense that they were put an end to the war.

NewsX World:
And Gilbert, can you tell us more about the involvement of US in these strikes that you say that it’s not covered enough or it’s not covered at all in media?

Doctorow: 24:11
It’s covered in the alternative media. The question of US firing HIMARS was discussed yesterday on one of the leading YouTube platforms, with highly responsible people, both as panelists and as hosts. So I take that quite seriously.

I assume that the information was coming from inside Russia by people who are, who have some relationship with the panelists who are speaking in the West. Nonetheless, the fact is that Russia is, as is understandable in a state of war, holding back a lot of information about the damage that it is experiencing, and is trumpeting its successes in blowing up everything it can on the Ukrainian side.

NewsX World: 25:01
And do you think that after all this, the US can still act as a mediator? Why do you think the US is leaning towards Ukraine now?

Doctorow:
The US’s role as mediator was rather peculiar from the very start. The United States effectively, the Russians wanted to call it out. They would say what we all know, that the United States has been, is, and for the foreseeable future, even under Donald Trump, a co-belligerent with the Ukrainians against Russia. Russia has not pressed that point, because if you press it, what you have is a war, a war with the United States, which they would prefer to avoid. I think we would be happy if they avoided it, because it probably would be the end of civilization on Earth.

25:45
For that reason, they haven’t done what they have a right to do, which is name the United States as a co-belligerent. Now they’re doing that, or intending to do that, if Europeans follow the United States through the open door of supplying long-range missiles, which they will control, to attack Russian infrastructure, energy infrastructure and otherwise. That they will control it is a blessing in a way, because if these missiles could be operated by the Ukrainians, you could be sure they would not be directed against refineries. They would be directed against Moscow’s and Petersburg’s presidential neighborhoods as a terrorist attack to create havoc in Russian society.

But neither the Germans nor the Americans are very likely to give the Ukrainians free control of where these missiles, which they may supply, which they may deploy, will be used against Russia. It’s not a pretty situation.

NewsX World: 26:49
Yes, indeed, we stay in a very sensitive place now. And also, Gilbert, I’m sure you saw the news yesterday with the confirmation that Ukraine has used domestically made missiles in recent strikes on Russian infrastructures. How does this reflect Ukraine’s growing self-reliance in defense, and what impact might this have on the conflict’s strategic dynamics?

Doctorow:
If there are serious weapons being manufactured in Ukraine, they won’t be manufactured for long, because intelligence will reveal to the Russians where these are, and they’ll be bombed out of existence. They opened an important manufacturing center, Neil Loth, a couple of days ago. The day after it was opened, it was obliterated by Russian bombing attack. So I don’t take this question of the Ukrainians’ ability or technical ability to produce serious weapons as having any determinant in the way the war goes, simply because the Russians can bomb anything they want out of existence on Ukrainian territory. That such weapons might be supplied from the West, that’s another story.

27:58
I do believe that the terrorist missiles that Mr. Scholz was talking about at the end of last year before the elections and the the entry of the still more aggressive Mr. Merz into the chancellorship, I believe that there are Taurus missiles in Ukraine presently. The question is how long before the Germans allow them to be used, and as I say a lot, how long before the Germans themselves use them from the Ukrainian bases against Russia, an act which will probably bring retribution. The Russians are unlikely to do anything about Tomahawks supplied by the United States, because that is a nuclear war to end civilization. But if the Germans try it, you can be sure that the Taurus factory will be bombed the next day.

NewsX World:
Thank you very much, Gilbert Doctorow, for joining us and sharing that insight.

This 40 minute interview goes into the corners of my arguments about Putin’s scandalous performance at the plenary session of the Valdai Discussion Club last Thursday, into the reasons why Putin should bomb the hell out of Kiev right now and put an end to this war by decapitating the Zelensky regime, into the evident emerging plan of European hawks to “lend” 145 billion euros of frozen Russian assets to Kiev for the sake of keeping the Ukrainian forces in the war for the next 4 years while Germany and others bulk up their armed forces and prepare to attack Russia in 2029.

You will note that I have parted company with many of the loudest voices in Alternative Media who are saying that Ukraine has already lost the war, that the front is collapsing and capitulation is just around the corner. 

I set out very clearly the open sources, namely Russian state television, which inform my changing understanding of the threats to Russia from prolonging the war. This is the modern-day equivalent of reading Izvestiya and Pravda for clues to Soviet policies back in the days of the Cold War; when done properly that yielded very valuable information. Today’s Russian electronic media are far richer in content.

 I question the value of the unnamed sources, presumably Russian military, who my peers say informs their views of how the war is going:  it seems to me to be irresponsibly naïve to believe that any chums in Russia will divulge military secrets to their nice buddy in the States; the penalty is life in the prison camps if not worse.

The Deep Dive audience may have a fair number of trolls among them judging by the vicious remarks in the Comments section.  However, the Likes are 8 times greater in number, which I find encouraging.

Enjoy the show!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADl-ifTpYtw

NewsX World: 0:00
–Israel to scale back operations in the Palestinian territory. All right viewers, those are the headlines and our top focus, what’s happening in Europe. The governor of Lviv region of Ukraine, Maxim Kozitsky, has now stated that a Russian drone and missile strike on Ukraine’s western Lviv region overnight killed two people. He’s also added that two other people had been wounded. Meanwhile, at a late-night attack on Ukraine’s southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia, One person has unfortunately lost their life and nine others are reported to be injured.

Meanwhile, Poland, a NATO member, has stated that it scrambled aircrafts to ensure its air safety after Russia launched airstrikes on Ukraine. Ukraine meanwhile has reported that missiles and drones are raining down on the Lviv region near the Polish border.

0:55
With us on the broadcast is Gilbert Doctorow, international relations and Russian affairs expert, joining us from Brussels. Thank you so much for taking your time and speaking to us on NewsX.

Civilians are now losing their lives. We’ve seen yesterday as well, there was an attack on a train station that claimed the lives of 30 people. Apart from this, energy infrastructure is being targeted within Ukraine as well. And what do you think will be the consequences of this, particularly with regards to energy security in the global market?

Doctorow: 1:30
The Russian attacks on Lviv may not be understood properly by much of the audience, who aren’t necessarily experienced in the geography of Ukraine. So let me just say something obvious.

This is next to the Polish border. And Lviv has been a marshalling point for incoming military hardware coming through Poland, because Poland is across the border, from the West, from the United States and elsewhere. They fly in or bring in by ship the armaments into Poland, which are then transported by rail down to the border and crossing over into the region.

For that reason, because of the proximity to Poland and to avoid having an escalation and sharply worsening relations with a NATO country like Poland, Russia in the past did not hit hard the Lviv region. It was spared. And that is paradoxical, because the whole problem in relations between Russia and Ukraine [is] from that region.

The Lviv region is the home to the Ukrainian nationalists. That is to say, the Lviv region, which was various times over history, I mean recent history, going back 150 years, was in Polish-Austrian possession and then became part of Ukraine after World War II. This area was a center for the Ukrainian language. It was propagated from the land of the 19th century by the Austrians, who supported the Ukrainian language and Ukrainian nationalism as a way of undermining the Russian empire in that region.

3:26
So the Lviv region has very great historical and present-day importance, present-day as a logistic center, present-day as an intellectual or ideological center of the whole Maidan movement and the anti-Russian direction of the Ukrainian leadership in Kiev. That it is being struck in such a cruel way now is an escalation by the Russians in response to the never-ending escalation towards Russia by NATO and the United States.

NewsX World:
Indeed, and speaking of NATO, so far we’ve seen their response has been very calibrated, even though Poland did scramble jets and Operation Eastern Sentry is in place. There’s not been any major protraction of the war that has taken place. Is NATO now toeing the line very carefully in order to avoid escalating the war even further?

Doctorow:
I wouldn’t say that. The war has many different dimensions. And NATO right now is escalating in a different area, but even more dangerously than what we see in the daily news coming from the Lviv for example. What I have in mind is the Baltic. The European nations, and with France in the lead, are now trying to impose both a maritime and an air blockade on Russia over the Baltic Sea.

4:53
And that, the arrest of what was assumed to be by France a Russian gray fleet oil carrier that Europe sanctions, the interception this past week by France, who arrested the captain and one of his mates and interrogated them for some time before releasing them, that is an act of war. It was done in neutral waters, and if Russia wanted to present Europe, France in particular, with the declaration of war, it would be under the UN Charter entitled to do that. So escalation is underway, but it’s not where you’re looking. Escalation is now in the Baltic.

NewsX World: 5:37
All right. I request you to stay on with us. We’re tracking some further updates.

##################################################

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8fgLRVbvN8

NewsX World: 0:02
Lithuania’s Vilnius airport was forced to shut down late on the 4th of October. Now according to reports, authorities spotted 13 suspected contraband balloons flying towards the airfield. The airspace remained closed until 4.30 A.M. Local time.

Now flying objects were also seen near Baltogivok, just 25 kilometers from the border with Belarus. This comes amid growing concerns over repeated airspace violations across Europe. Unidentified drones have caused airport disruptions in Denmark, Germany, Norway and the Netherlands in recent weeks. Russia is increasingly suspected of being behind the incidents. In fact, just last month, Russian drones breached Polish and Romanian airspace, and on September 19, three Russian jets entered Estonian territory.

0:53
NATO officials, meantime, are on high alert. Still with us on the broadcast is Mr. Gilbert Doctorow. Interesting developments. You referred to France. There was a meeting that has recently taken place in Copenhagen, where French President Emmanuel Macron, he referred to the shadow fleet, but he also spoke a lot about the drones as well stating that NATO will give a befitting reply and will shoot down any drones or any jets that are in fact, you know, breaching sovereign territory airspace as well. In light of this and the actions we’ve seen France take recently, do you think other countries, other NATO nations will follow suit as well?

Doctorow: 1:37
Only if Mr. Putin stops playing pussycat and shows himself to be a lion. His address last Thursday to the Valdai Discussion Club in Sochi indicated that Mr. Putin has lost his way and is inviting attacks like the one that you have mentioned by his “softly, softly” approach in the face of brazen acts of escalation by NATO. The talk– there’s hysteria now within Europe over the supposed violation of European NATO airspace by the Russians. And this has two dimensions to it. That is the jet fighters that you mentioned in passing and the drones.

All of this, let’s be perfectly clear. This is programmatic. It is staged. I would bet money on it. Let’s say a case of champagne with any of your listeners, that this is being staged by the MI6. The Brits are in charge of dirty tricks. This is very much an hysteria generated from London the same way as the hysteria “Russia Russia Russia” against Mr. Trump into in 2016 was facilitated by MI6 and the Steele dossier and all of that complete fabrication.

3:04
The Russians did not send any drones against Poland. That is proven to anyone who is interested in facts by the nature of the drones, which were not attack drones, but were decoy drones, and which were very likely taken from downed Russian drones in Ukraine, reconstructed very easily, and sent towards Poland, towards Romania, and elsewhere by the Ukrainians for the sake of fomenting a war, a NATO-Russia war, which would relieve Ukraine from its present travails.

So you, I know you make your efforts to be objective, but you have involuntarily, I would say, repeated the propaganda coming out of London when you say Russian drones attacked Poland. Nonsense.

NewsX World: 4:00
And so quick follow up to that, we’ve recently seen elections take place in the Czech Republic, billionaire Andrzej Babis’s populist ENO party has now come to power. The EU is slightly wary of this, considering the fact that he is adopting a more protectionist position. We’ve recently in fact seen the EU approving a tranch, many tranches of aid to Ukraine, amounting to 140 billion euros. And this was in discussion for what, a couple of years. But Hungary in particular was stalling. Are there now fears that the new government in the Czech Republic that has now come to power would follow in Hungary’s footsteps?

Doctorow: 4:46
I’m very pleased that you raised the question of Mr. Babish’s evident victory in yesterday’s elections in the Czech Republic. That is of great importance. It raises the number of EU member states who do not accept the decisions that Ursula von der Leyen and her team are forcing upon Europe, with the support and help of NATO, to do everything possible to escalate and continue the war. The 145 billion that you mentioned would continue the war for three more years.

Now, what does that mean? It means that Europe would be looking to create a bridge, a continuing war in Ukraine, while it rearms and prepares for an all-out war with Russia three to four years from now. So this is a very important development. Mr. Babich is against it, just as are his neighbors in what was called the Visegrad Four.

The three members that are in agreement on the approach to Russia and the war in Ukraine are Mr. Orban in Hungary, Mr. Fico in the Slovak Republic, and now Mr. Babish in the Czech Republic. That is very important. Poland is the odd man out in the Visegrad, but that can be changed.

NewsX World: 6:06
All right, sir. I request you to stay on with us. We’re tracking further updates coming in. We’re now learning that Russian President Vladimir Putin has congratulated Tajikistan’s leader, Imam Ali Rahman, on his 73rd birthday and has emphasized upon the importance of their upcoming meeting in Dushan.

Now Putin has expressed confidence that the meeting would strengthen the already close Russia-Tajikistan partnership, focusing on expanding bilateral, regional and international ties. The leaders will discuss various key issues during their meeting, which will coincide with the second Central Asia-Russia summit and the CIS Council of Heads of State. Putin is looking forward to constructive talks that will further enhance ties between the two nations and boost cooperation within the Commonwealth of Independent States.

6:58
Still with us on the broadcast is Mr. Gilbert Doctorow. Of course, Central Asia being in focus at the moment. You had earlier pointed out that Europe in the long term is looking at rearming and preparing for another war. In the meantime, could we see Putin sort of shifting his strategic assets, sensitive assets further east as well in order to protect them? And what role does Central Asia have to play in this?

Doctorow: 7:28
I wouldn’t say that Mr. Putin is changing or pivoting towards Central Asia. I would say the question is how Central Asia pivots or does not towards Russia. The fact is that despite their common past in the Community of Independent States, which was a successive organization to the Soviet Union, all the countries of Central Asia blow hot and cold, as respect relations with Russia.

When it looked like Russia was not doing well in the war, they were all flirting with the United States, where Mr. Biden’s administration was doing everything possible to win each of these countries away from the friendship and close ties with Russia and China. Then when it became apparent that Russia is defeating NATO and is winning the war in Ukraine, they all suddenly thought or thought again about their close friendship with Russia and drew close to them, which is what this latest news bulletin that you’ve given is all about.

When Russia is winning, they’re all good friends. When Russia doesn’t look like it’s winning, then they start looking for new romance partners in the United States and elsewhere.

NewsX World: 8:37
Indeed, and we’re seeing some rather interesting developments also take place in the Caucasus region as well. There are protests taking place in Georgia at the moment against the results of municipal elections there. In fact, the protesters are contesting the fact that the government is pro-Russia.

Doctorow:
I wouldn’t say it’s pro-Russia, it’s pro-Georgia. And that is what outsiders, particularly in the United States, have not liked at all. The Georgian administration was, in the last five years, never friendly to Russia. They didn’t– for a long time they canceled direct flights between Tbilisi and Moscow. The trade relations were minimal.

9:26
So the notion that Georgian leadership was divided between the friends of Russia and the friends of the United States is a false presentation. The country was divided between the friends of Georgia and the enemies of Georgia. The enemies of Georgia, who are out in the streets demonstrating and who probably got their pay packets each day from the Soros funds of one kind or another– formally, they receive them from USAID– they are there to overthrow the legitimately elected government of Georgia, which is pro-Georgian.

It does not want to be drawn into the war with Russia as Mr. Sakashvili was when he was in power in Georgia, and almost cost his nation its existence in 2008. So they want just to be left alone to look after their commercial and geopolitical interests.

NewsX World: 10:24
All right. So with that, I would like to thank you
for taking our time, sharing your insights with us on NewsX World.

Transcript submitted by a reader

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQdNcL7XkU8

Diesen: 0:00
Hi everyone and welcome back. We are joined by Gilbert Doctorow, historian, international affairs analyst and also author of the Russia-Ukraine War or more specifically _War Diaries, the Russia-Ukraine War_. I always carry it with me. It’s an excellent book, and I really recommend it.

So welcome back to the program. We see that President Putin just gave a speech at the Valdai Discussion Club in Sochi. Many people had waited for this speech with some suspense because of the dangerous times we live in and also at this annual Valdai discussions he usually devotes four hours to discussing all world events. So many eyes were on this meeting, and also because of course the proxy war between NATO and Russia continues to escalate as the Ukrainian army suffers more on the battlefield. We see now discussions of Tomahawks, the US providing long-range missiles. No, it’s also long range intelligence for doing the long-range strikes.

1:07
We see _Financial Times_ reporting that the British are already engaged in attacks deep inside Russia in cooperation with the Ukrainians. So there’s a growing pressure, is my point, on Putin to restore Russia’s deterrence. And to a large extent, you feel he did not deliver on this. Am I correct?

Doctorow:
Yes, you’re correct. I was deeply disappointed in his presence at the Valdai Discussion Club meeting in Sochi. Although I watched it from afar, there was complete coverage with some delay, provided by several different YouTube channels. I can’t say that I saw all four hours of it. It took a great deal of patience to do that. And I doubt that too many other of my peers spent more than a short time watching it and using the subject to project what they wanted to hear, but in fact did not hear.

When I looked yesterday at YouTube, and of course YouTube presents, it has AI-directed proposals to you and suggestions to you, knowing what your preferences are. So each day I got a menu of YouTube channels and they were consistently speaking about Putin threatens, Putin warns, Putin denounces. And they made it seem as though he was doing what everyone expected him to do, but in fact he did not do. Or to the extent that he issued warnings, they were so vague, so indefinite, that they have no meaning. Moreover, the most important fact is that the warning, the very clear red line that he described one year ago, oh, one year, two months ago, in several interviews, there’s a red line about use of long-range American or other missiles to strike deep within the Russian Federation.

He said very clearly that any country supplying this, And first of all, the United States, because the missiles in question, they weren’t named as Tomahawks, but it was known that all of the missiles striking Russia from Ukraine are in fact targeted and controlled by NATO member states. He said specifically that if long-range missiles were supplied to Ukraine and they struck Russia, then Russia would consider the [countries] supplying, delivering such missiles to Ukraine to be co-belligerents, co-belligerents for which Russia would reserve the right to strike back militarily.

3:55
That’s not what we heard on Thursday. That very clear and very strict warning to the United States was erased. Instead, what we heard was, well, if the United States supplies these missiles, they really won’t change the situation on the battlefield, even though they’re awesome. They are outdated. And more importantly, what they will do is spoil our budding relationship, cancel out the light at the end of the tunnel. Oh my goodness, that is not calling the United States a co-belligerent. If that were all that Putin said at this meeting, I would maybe try to find excuses for him.

But things were much worse from my perspective, and none of this is being carried by my peers. My peers on some very widely watched programs are speaking about Putin as a gentleman, Putin as the adult in the room and so forth. They’re saying what they said about him for years and they’re ignoring intentionally or not, they’re ignoring what happened at Valdai, Kekwelo. Namely, his so obvious attempts to ingratiate himself with Donald Trump that I would say he sacrificed Russian sovereignty then and there.

5:18
What do we name? Well, there was his lengthy homage to Charlie Kirk, the lengthy discussion of the son of a CIA director, directoress, who died as a Russian soldier fighting for Russia in Donbass. But more to it. His answer to a question from the audience, “What do you think about President Trump’s 20-point peace plan?” And he said, that is Putin said, “This may surprise you, but I approve of it. And I think that it has a lot of merit. Of course, I would add to it that it should acknowledge specifically the two-state solution.”

And then he went on to say, because the question was also asked about the designation of Tony Blair to be on the governing board, the interim governing board, I think he called it a peace board, which he, Trump, would head that would manage affairs in Gaza until such time as it was determined that the Palestinians could govern themselves. Well, Tony Blair on the peace board. Tony Blair, the unindicted war criminal, the man who encouraged Bush to fund his murderous and illegal invasion of Iraq against all the provisions of the United Nations Charter.

7:02
This man was then praised by Vladimir Putin as an experienced statesman and a person with whom he had personal contact and rapport, going back to the start of the new millennium when he spent one or more days in Blair’s residence and they both had shared coffee while in their pajamas. A touching note. But I just wonder how we can reconcile this statement with Mr. Putin as the defender of the Third World, of the members of BRICS, of the Palestinians, it is reconcilable. It is, as I say, a sacrifice of Russian sovereignty for which Russia may pay very dear. And we also, because it puts us in line for World War Three.

Diesen: 8:06
Yeah. Well, that was, one might, I guess the critical takeaway as well was that, well, it looked like the main message he wanted to get across to signal Russia’s main objective was for Russia and the United States to continue improving their relations while at the same time making it clear that Russia is now done with the Europeans because, well, he used words like describing them as weirdos and they, well, there’s no, I think everyone now recognizes strategic vacuum in Europe and there’s, he doesn’t see any way of fixing this, but also no desire either. So this is kind of the main thing he wanted to go for.

But I did share some of your ideas or thoughts on this because I was there at Valdai, and the day before we met with Lavrov, and he was also asked about Tomahawks and he came with this dismissive attitude as well. “They’re not going to change anything.” But what happened, but this is the, you know, okay, you exude confidence, but this is not what you want to say if you want to uphold a deterrent. It almost sounds like they, invite it in. And I think this can be very dangerous because if they do have more impact than expected, then Russia will strike back, and then we have war.

9:30
If the Tomahawks go in, the Germans will then see, “Oh, maybe we can go too now.” And the Germans will definitely get hit by Russia. So I think like almost a soft tone, but it might nonetheless escalate the risk of war. Same as you mentioned celebrating the Americans. So Charlie Kirk you know is a hero just like Russian conservatives.

He praised Americans fighting with Russia in Ukraine. And Trump of course I think he leaned a bit heavy into how easy it is to work with him and authentic, all of this. I think the European experience is that you don’t want to bow too heavy towards Trump because he’s the kind of guy who will, you know, buy his enemies and sell his friends. He’s very, well, if you praise him too much, he owns you. So I think this is what the international system he’s going for as well.

10:32
And the effective thing is what the Indians did is they pushed back a little bit. So I think this can only possibly embolden Trump further. So I don’t think that was helpful either. And the one area I would maybe disagree with you is the issue of Tony Blair though, because he kind of expressed some loathing of Blair and then the only positive thing he could say was, yeah, he has good coffee. I mean, it’s a, it’s a worth, it’s not a great compliment to give to someone, but you know, maybe I was reading it wrong.

Just as a last note, I spoke to different people in the audience there before and after this, you know, a lot of ambassadors and generals, mostly foreign, and they are, you know, so academic. Many had the same takeaway though, that they expected Russia to really have to come in with a message that they’re going to restore their deterrent, authentically so. And that’s what I heard before, and that’s also what I heard afterwards was it didn’t deliver what they had expected.

Doctorow:
We are in a world of real-politik and there’s very little room for personal rapport and for nostalgia for public relations in the past or supposed cultural affinities. This is a dynamic world that is changing, constantly in flux.

And that is something that Russia’s partners have to consider and that Mr. Putin did not help by his presentation in Valdai. I was on Indian radio yesterday, and the Indians were following Mr. Putin’s remarks at Valdai, at Sochi, with respect to his backing India in the face of American secondary sanctions and making reference to their long history of rapport with Russia going back to Soviet Union, and Soviet support for India in moments of need like in 1972. All of this is fine, but if you paid attention to this backtracking that I mentioned a moment ago, from hard red lines to very mushy, fuzzy lines, you wonder what Mr. Putin’s guarantees are worth. Well, I don’t have to wonder. You don’t think they’re worth much.

And that’s certainly true of Iran. I was on Iran’s Press TV and the question is, what do you make of Mr. Putin when he is backing the Trump plan? For that matter, so is India. So Iran in BRICS is in a tough spot there. Their close allies are on the other side of the fence on an issue that’s of great importance to Iran.

13:32
But there is, the personal aspect has been brought up repeatedly, that “I had good rapport with Trump and he’s a good conversationalist and he listens.” All that’s fine. But in the big order of things, when Putin tries so hard to ingratiate himself with Trump, he can only earn contempt, which is not a good basis for a durable relationship.

Diesen:
I was also wondering if Russia is being lulled into a false sense of security a bit as well, because he spent quite a lot of time discussing why the war more or less almost is over because he looked at the attrition rates and he looks at how the losses the Ukrainian army is taking, both men and material, and why it’s not possible to replenish this. And so more or less, you know, going with numbers and statistics to show that this is coming to an end, likely sooner than later.

But I guess my pushback against this would be that I agree with this assessment, but there’s other variables at play which won’t remain constant over time. That is that the Europeans are preparing for more direct warfare, they’re also seizing ships, discussion of blocking trade routes, which is an act of war. There’s this threats against Kaliningrad. It’s this possibility that the Russian economy might start to do worse a few months from now. Who knows?

15:13
It’s possible that China and India can’t stand up to American pressures forever. I mean, I’m not saying this will happen, but there’s a lot of unknown variables. And if you’re in a good place now, which I think Russia is in this war, it doesn’t mean that they’re going to be in a good place necessarily in six months or 12 months. So it does beg the question why, why would they still slow-balling this whole thing. I mean, they’ve got current success now, but if something goes wrong, given that Russia sees this an existential threat, then they would have to break out the nuclear weapons if things would start to go terribly wrong. So I’m just saying it seems strange to me that this will be the core variable to focus on.

Doctorow: 16:00
They’d have to break out nuclear weapons or they’d have to change their leader. That should not be off the table for discussion. But I think Putin was looking in the wrong direction, so was Lavrov. The issue is not whether the Tomahawks or the German missiles, Taurus, will change the situation on the battlefield.

No, they will change public opinion, which is where war must begin and end. If Russia is struck by a Tomahawk, if a major population center is struck by a Taurus, well, who cares what’s going on on the Donbas front, that will change the whole war entirely and it will go very badly for the Russian leadership. The public, which is now living very comfortably, earning salaries three times what they got before the war started, will be enraged by a strike that kills civilians in any major city, enabled by this lax response that we heard in Sochi to American plans to send in Tomahawks. And I agree completely with you that the real threat from the Tomahawks, which may very well never be supplied, is that this opens the door to Merz to do what Scholz didn’t dare do, because they’re saying, waiting for the Americans to go through the door first. And practically speaking, Donald Trump just went through that door, even if he never supplies a single Tomahawk.

17:43
Which means that we may, there’s not a question of delivering the Taurus to Kiev. Surely they’re already there in big numbers. The question is implementing them, using them. And if that happens, yes, well, who knows what Mr. Putin will say then. Maybe it’ll just spoil relations with Germany. He backs away from destroying the one factory in Germany that makes these terrorist missiles. It opens a lot of uncertainty. And instead of a clarification from the speech that Dmitry Peskov said would be important, we have new uncertainties.

Diesen:
Yeah, there was a lot of ambiguity. Again, I’m not sure how to interpret the optimism though, because if he’s too calm, too optimistic, it kind of signals that the guard is down, we’re not really going to do anything. Or if it’s just, maybe he knows something we don’t know if this is the reason behind it. Because I go to the Valdai every year and I’ve never seen him in such a good mood. He kept making jokes the whole time. He was such a loose, relaxed attention.

And also, you know, afterwards when President Putin goes backstage, I hear he’s away from the audience and the cameras, he’s still super optimistic and positive and like happy. So I’m not sure. He’s not putting on a, I guess, a show. I think it’s authentic. But as you say, if he’s like, Tomahawk’s this, nothing is that important.

19:33
It’s kind of strange because again, back to the thing when it’s kind of praising Trump. I’m glad they get along well, and it’s important to when the two largest nuclear power they have to be able to get along and reduce tensions. But on the other hand, this is a country which is now more or less at war with Russia. It’s their missiles, with their intelligence, their targeting data, the war being planned by their generals, killing thousands of Russians. And they’re now talking about escalating, so opening the doors to flooding Ukraine with more weapons. And if the only response is, yeah, he’s a good guy, We can work with him.

I mean, it’s, there has to be a balance somewhere where, yes, we’ll be, we’ll work with him. We happy for good relations. So we can end this war. But at the same time, if there has to be a deterrent somewhere, I didn’t necessarily see that balance, I guess.

Doctorow: 20:31
Well, the, it’s not my, discovery, the Russians say, hopefully that Trump is surrounded by enemies. And although they may have a rapport with him and understanding with him, they are aware– this is what comes out of Russian state television– that Trump may not be able to carry through his programs, particularly his reconciliation with Russia. Therefore, for Vladimir Putin to put so much trust in what he believes is an agreement with Donald Trump to normalize relations is strange to say the least.

There are three, I see at least three major threats to Russia. We discussed a while ago, this is for Tomahawks. You mentioned in passing the second threat, which is the blockade of the Baltic, interruption of trade routes. And we’ve seen various manifestations of that. That’s this whole hysteria over supposed Russian drones everywhere in the states bordering the Baltic by the way, and not just in places like Romania. That is the detention of the captain and some mate on a gray fleet Russian tanker by France. This is another manifestation of the attempt to intimidate Russia, to interrupt its trade routes and to establish an air and maritime blockade on the Russian use of the Baltic Sea. That is, as you said, an act of war.

22:12
What I would have expected is for Vladimir Putin to say, “Gentlemen, you pursue this, and by international law, that is an act of war, and we will declare war on you the next day.” He didn’t do that.

Now, all he has to do is to say the obvious: “Gentlemen, if you use, as you intend to use, the 145 billion euros in Russian state assets that are now frozen in euro here in Belgium as collateral for a loan to Ukraine, which by your own terms will not be repaid unless Russia agrees to pay tribute, to capitulate and to pay war damages to Ukraine. That is effectively confiscating our state assets. Under international law, that is an act of war, and we will declare war on you if you proceed with this.”

This would be normal. That would be a threat. What he said in his Q&A, these weren’t threats. They were mulling over what should we do. It was a variation on Maria Zakharova’s constant refrain. Can you imagine? Well, yes, we can imagine almost anything now.

Diesen:
Yeah, well, I guess the same as Tomahawks can be applied to the… Well, it turned out not to be a Russian ship, but irrespective of it, a ship was seized by the French. The French thought it was Russian and their objectives are more or less open. They want to disrupt the Russian trade. That’s the same reason the Europeans are also participating in striking deep inside Russia, its energy infrastructure. They also want to disrupt this transportation corridors. But again, this is an act of war and President Trump, sorry, President Putin, he made the point that, well, this is piracy.

It’s like, well, yes, it is. But condemning it and pointing out how dangerous is one thing. But again, if the main objective was to restore deterrent, that was a little bit left out of the conversation, because if it’s just one ship and then it’s never again yeah why go down the route of escalation especially when you’re winning on the battlefield. But the whole point there is things that the precedent, he siezes a ship, he releases it soon thereafter, no foul, then there’s no reactions from the Russians. Well, now you can do this again.

I mean, this has been the lessons of sending weapons. Remember the beginning, the West didn’t want to send any tanks because this was seen as being overly provocative and, you know, making the West directly involved. The F-16s would mean World War III, but now we’re just openly speaking about participating in striking deep inside Russia. I guess my main fear is the illusion of escalation control because it seems that we might not have the same assumptions about how we move up and down the escalation ladder. For the West, we slowly go a little bit up, we pull down if there’s too many fierce reactions, but the Russians, they tend to make, do nothing and then come up, come with a big response.

I think it was around the Crimean speech in 2014. President Putin made this comment that, you know, you treat us like a spring, you pushed us further and further back. At some point, we’re just going to lash back hard. That’s not how the West escalates. We do this slow incrementalism, setting precedents.

I’m just wondering if we think that the Russians are weak, but they’re actually building up an arsenal, Oreshniks or something, preparing to hammer us. I would like to see more certainty, as you said, more specific, setting the rules for proxy war because everything is unclear and that creates a lot of risks for miscalculation, I think.

Doctorow: 26:18
The issue here is not whether or not Western military experts properly evaluate Russia’s military potential. The issue here is how political experts advising the leadership in Europe and the United States evaluate the determination and risk-taking readiness of Russian leadership. There is the weak point.

As I said, this is a parallel to the question of whether or not these missiles will change the situation on the battlefield. Let’s assume they don’t, but it will change the political atmosphere which runs the war. If there’s a strike against Petersburg or strike against Moscow, all hell will break loose in Russian political life. And as to strikes deep inside Russia, they are already going on. As you mentioned at the outset, thanks to particularly British assistance, the Ukrainians are striking, effectively destroying Russian refineries and creating local areas, particularly in the southwest as I understand in Belgorod and probably in Korsk, maybe nearby Russian oblasts.

27:39
They have created a serious shortage of fuel. Now this is not getting proper attention in alternative media. In fact, it’s getting no attention in alternative media. But it is a reality. Now why Russia’s response has been to step up its strikes on Ukrainian oil production, gas production, gas pipeline, pumping centers, and so forth.

These strikes, of course, have been denounced in Western media, as strikes against civilian infrastructure, and nobody says a word about what they’re a response to, because there is a kind of omerta, kind of conspiracy of silence, to describe in the public agora what is happening to Russian infrastructure, which Russian drivers of cars in the locale that is affected understand perfectly well. Why it’s not reported by us is an open question.

Diesen: 28:48
I think the one key thing that could destabilize is also the assumption we have in the West often that Putin is a dictator. You know, he wields all power.

Now, well, this is kind of important because if you think that he’s okay, he’s not going to retaliate in a big way, he’s going to let this one go. As you said, that’s an assumption that it’s all up to him. But you know, there’s a lot of other political forces in Russia and if they, as you suggest, get upset enough, that either creates, well, it creates an immense amount of pressure on Putin. I used to write articles around 2015-16 about how the military and the key opposition were seeing Putin as being weak because they said, you know, we see that NATO, you know, we try to reach out a hand, we see that they’re not taking it. Instead, they’re building up capabilities along the border.

They’re preparing the Ukrainians for a war. And, you know, again, this back in 2015-16, and the main argument was we should prepare for war instead because it is coming. But, yeah, forward to today or to 2014, it would be impossible for him then not to react. And I think the same happens now. If we read his body language or his words and think that we can step over a red line, it’s not up to him necessarily.

There will be a demand coming from the political system that this is unacceptable. And I don’t know, do you see him possibly put in being undermined, this political credibility by taking too soft of a stance?

Doctorow:
Well, I’ve said something that is unspeakable for the last couple of weeks, that he may be removed from power. And yes, people say, oh, how could it happen? Who would do it? He has 80% popularity ratings. Well, a year ago, I would have said that this was indeed impossible. There were people like John Helmer, who was saying back then, people like Paul Craig Roberts, who was saying back then that Putin is leading us to World War III. In the case of Helmer, he paid attention to the general staff, saying there’s a lot of unhappiness in general staff with the go-slowly, turn-the-other-cheek approach of Putin to the way the war is being conducted. I didn’t believe that for a minute.

I thought that Helmer was getting information, if he was getting any real information from very few discontents who were not actually in the active service. However, considering what’s going on now, considering that Russia is facing three major threats that we discussed on this program, [1] the extension of this $145 billion to Ukraine, which can extend the war for now three years. [2] The long range missiles, which, either German or United States, can be used for political advantage to undermine the government by creating popular hysteria in Russia. It’s kind of terrorism. [3] And of course, there’s blockade in the Baltic.

32:09
These are major threats. And I can see where Russian patriots close to the government would look for a way out. Now I have in mind where and why. I’ve done my own poll. Your program, “Judging Freedom” and a few other, one or two other very important alternative media interview programs are now being systematically translated, not translated, dubbed into Russian using AI techniques by a YouTube channel called Parusky in Russian.

And they have, they provide data as a YouTube channel on the number of hits or views and the number of thumbs up, the number of comments and the numbers come pretty big. My Wednesday interview with Judge Napolitano had, the last time I looked, 78,000 views. It had approximately 920 reader comments, which were almost all negative. That’s to say, we Westerners are idiots, we can’t possibly understand Russia, and our president is the best president of the world. Okay, fine.

33:26
So I’d say 900 no’s for the idea that the conduct of the war is going badly. But 1,800 thumbs up. That’s to say those who agreed with the notion that the war is being badly conducted outnumbered those who love Putin at any price. Two to one. That’s not reflected in the 80-percent approval ratings that the Russian state pollsters or official pollsters give us.

I’m sure those are completely accurate, but they’re asking the wrong questions. So there is, I believe, taking under 75,000, that’s a lot of people, that’s much more than any usual poll takes to find out public opinion. And two to one, the votes who bother to write in what they think, most active people, they are two to one against the conduct of the war as it is today. So could there be at higher levels of say the FSB or other agencies at the top, [objection] to what Mr. Putin is doing?

Of course there could be. I’m just an observer here, and I have no recommendations to anybody in Russia or outside Russia what should happen. But I do think that we in the West as careful observers cannot ignore the possibility that he will be removed.

Diesen: 34:55
Well, I think so far, yes, it’s stable given that he’s been, well, he’s attributed for saving Russia. Even, you know, as Gorbachev once said as well, that if he hadn’t been for Putin, Russia would probably have been destroyed. And I guess they look at other variables as well. For example, Moscow now is truly one of the nicest cities in the world. It certainly was not in the 90s. So the way that Russia has recovered and strengthened itself, to a large extent, his credit.

But I do agree with you, though. I get the sentiment that many people do not agree with this slow, attrition war. But it’s not even just the Russians. Like I said before, I was speaking with all these different ambassadors and generals from not just China, India, but also from the West. No military there, but only diplomats from the West. But nonetheless, a bit of confusion was why Russia hasn’t attempted a capitation strike.

I mean, they know where everyone [is], they have their weapons. It seems to be an issue of intent, of not wanting to do it. So, but given all the human suffering both on the Ukrainian and the Russian side that this war brings. And also that it brings us closer and closer to World War III as the Europeans are now pulling themselves into this conflict. It seems, well, as more than one of these military and diplomatic people told me that they asked, you know, why they couldn’t understand why Oreshniks haven’t rained down upon the government buildings in Kiev, which sounds brutal.

36:47
But they saw this, well, what’s the alternative? Because Russia can’t end it. That’s capitulation. So if the option is between decapitation strikes and this slow grinding attrition war, Why not even try to go for a decapitation strike like the Americans and the Israelis tried in Iran? I don’t really know the answer to this. Again, I’m not a military strategist, but it is strange, given how many casualties have been ramped up over the past three and a half years.

Doctorow: 37:22
The man has been in power for 25 years. That is a very long period. I think we’re witnessing the end of an era. His wonderful foreign minister is tired. He’s tired. The man, I don’t think he spends more than one night a week in his own bed. He’s traveling constantly. The recent images I’ve seen of Sergei Lavrov, the man is finished. So this is an end-of-era phenomenon that we’re witnessing, but I don’t see my peers recognizing that.

Doesn’t mean it’s going to happen. Maybe he’ll link, he’ll go serve his term until the end, But I see cracks, and I see non-performance. I see a lack of vigor in his response to these latest challenges from the West that [is] troubling.

Diesen: 38:17
Yeah, no, I am, well, what I found fascinating this year was usually after he gives these speeches every year at the Valdai Discussion Club, the assessments are often, you know, everyone seems to more or less end up around the same interpretation.

But what I thought this year was kind of unique is how different people perceived it. Some saw this as being the strict warning to the West, like, you know, don’t cross here, this is our deterrent, while others have interpreted it as being so, yeah, being soft to the point that they might just pull back the red lines and thus embolden NATO to escalate. So it is, it’s very, and I never left this speech as being more confused, I guess, than I was now, which is not great when you’re a country at war, you want to be very specific, you want to communicate clearly and what you’re communicating should be credible and you should have the capabilities as well to back it up. This is the three C’s of deterrence, communication, credibility and capabilities.

Doctorow:
You were there on the spot, and your reading of the audience and the notables in that audience of course is the most valuable, more than anything that I can find on television, and yet … and yet, there were things obvious.

Diesen:
But I’m wondering if there’s something, again, the way he often speaks, because he talks about the Europeans getting more aggressive and he points to the polls and then he reads a poem. He talks about how Blair is a horrible person, but he makes good coffee. And I’m wondering now if he, in this super optimistic, friendly, let’s-all-get-along, cumbaya speech, if he was at the same time– If I turn on the news, the Russians are just hammering Ukraine even harder and harder. Their missile attacks seem to have learned a way of working around the Patriot systems which can’t intersect properly and more so.

40:41
So things seem to be getting, hardening dramatically on the battlefield and at the same time he seems to be lowering his guard. So again, I’m not sure if there’s something I didn’t pick up on.

Doctorow:
The situation on the battlefield is not a hundred percent covered in the West, not in alternative media for sure. There was apparently a rather big and initially successful counter-attack by Ukraine in the Sumy region. I’ve seen very little about that.

What we see now on Russian state television is the counter-counter attack and how they’ve driven them back and recovered. They never described how they lost. So to say that this is one way that the Russians are really crushing the Ukrainians, I think it’s not quite accurate. Yes, in places the Ukrainians are falling back. They still have a long way to go to reach the Dniepr.

41:39
And this is the point. If 145 billion comes to Ukraine, they will hire any number of mercenaries. They will find ways to embolden their soldiers, and the war is going to drag on until Europe is ready to fight Russia, which would be too damn late.

42:00
Well, thank you so much for sharing your views on this. As I said, speaking with the different people there, their interpretation was so widely different that– and I must say, there were several who were leaning towards your thoughts as well, that this was definitely not what they had expected. So I’m not sure if you have any final thoughts before we wrap this up.

Doctoorow:
No, just a great appreciation to you for sharing what you saw, because you were there. And for widening to your audience a variety of views on issues that they should see from many different angles.

Diesen:
Yeah. Well, just on that, I did ask a question to Putin there about how the geopolitical consequences of Finland and Sweden joining NATO, but then specifically in terms of the Arctic and the Baltic seas, now that tensions are, or pressure is mounting on Kaliningrad.

But again, in the spirit of the good mood, he didn’t touch on the Kaliningrad. But this is the US general threatened to invade. So again, I’m not sure if his efforts to lighten the mood resulted in ignoring some of the severity of what’s happening. Again, I’m not sure how to read President Putin either in terms of his performance there. But anyways, it’s worth watching in full, even though he does go on for four hours. So, yeah. Anyways, thanks again for joining us.

Doctorow: 43:32
My pleasure. Thank you.

Transcript submitted by a reader

https://www.urmedium.net/c/presstv/134767

PressTV: 0:14
Hello and welcome to “Spotlight”. Tensions between Russia and NATO are escalating once again with Moscow warning the US about the potential deployment of long-range missiles to Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin stressed that such a move would mark a new stage of escalation in the conflict, significantly raising the stakes between Washington and Moscow. Putin also expressed concern over Europe’s increasing militarization, particularly Germany’s plans to strengthen its military and warrant a retaliatory measures. As NATO member states pledge to boost military spending, Russia insists that these actions, coupled with the flow of weapons to Ukraine, are fueling the war. Moscow maintains that NATO, not Russia, is responsible for the ongoing conflict and the rising tensions in Ukraine.

Story by Hamid Shahbazi: 1:06
Tensions between Moscow and NATO countries are once again on the rise over the war in Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin, in his latest speech, warned the US about the potential supply of long-range missiles to Ukraine, saying that it will mark a completely new stage of escalation between Washington and Moscow.

Putin:
Using Tomahawks without the direct participation of American military personnel is impossible. This would mark a completely new, qualitatively new stage of escalation, including in relations between Russia and the United States.

Shahbazi:
The comments come shortly after it was reported that the White House has approved intelligence sharing with Ukraine, while weighing up whether to send Tomahawk cruise missiles to Kiev.

The supply of Tomahawk cruise missiles, which are known to have a range of at least 2,500 kilometers, would significantly boost Ukraine’s ability to strike Russian targets. Russian President Vladimir Putin also expressed frustration over Europe’s military buildup, noting that he is monitoring the trend and warned of retaliatory measures.

Putin: 2:14
We are closely monitoring the rising militarization of Europe. In Germany, for example, they’re talking about how the German army should once again be the most powerful in Europe. Well, we’re listening carefully, watching what exactly they mean. Retaliatory measures by Russia will not take long. The response to such threats will be very significant.

Shahbazi:
He accused Europe of stoking hysteria to justify rising military spending and said Russia is not a threat. In June, NATO member countries have pledged to nearly triple their military spending under pressure from US President Donald Trump, deepening militarization across Europe despite ongoing social and economic strains.

NATO claims its military buildup is for self-defense. But Russia argues that it is this very buildup, along with the constant supply of weapons to Ukraine, that is fueling the war. Moscow insists that NATO’s actions, rather than any Russian attack, are the real cause of the conflict, and warns that continued militarization will provoke significant retaliation, with Russia holding the West responsible for escalating tensions in Ukraine.

PressTV: 3:23
Joining us on tonight’s “Spotlight”, we have radio host and journalist at CPR News, Mr. Don Debar joining us from New York.

And we also have independent international affairs analyst, Mr. Gilbert Doctorow, who’s joining us from Brussels.

Gentlemen, welcome to the program. So the Russian president, we’re going to start off with Mr. Debar, New York. The Russian president has warned against Europe’s escalating militarization amid this conflict with Ukraine. Vladimir Putin said effectively all NATO states are at war with Moscow right now, and his country is going to respond to any threat against its security. Break down the recent warning from Putin.

Debar:
Well, here in the US, to me, the most significant part of it was that he reminded the world that the United States came through World War II unscathed because of the two oceans that separated it from the European and Asian wars, and that these would not be a barrier to the US’s full participation in a response from Russia to the threat. In other words, we’re getting to the point where they’re talking about trading missiles back and forth across the oceans.

And we know what those missiles carry. And in fact, because we can’t know what they carry while they’re in transit, everyone that goes off the ground, the other party has to assume it’s carrying a nuclear warhead and respond in kind while they’re able to. This is the policy and the doctrine they followed for many years. Now, we’re looking back to 1962, October, what’s it, 63 years now, and because the Soviet Union had installed some mid-ranged nuclear weapons missiles in Cuba which was 90 miles off, I’d say analogous to the location of Ukraine, the United States directed, but it said basically, number one, any missile launched from Cuba against anyone else in the world considered launched by the USSR against the United States and will see a full retaliatory response. And secondly, that the missiles had to be removed or there would be an invasion, you know, a full-scale invasion by the US of Cuba.

6:00
Now the analogy here is strong enough, but we were talking then about missiles that could only reach, say, from Washington, D.C., to Dallas, Chicago, maybe, or somewhere inside that kind of range, not the entire U.S., not New York, etc. And you had launch time, you know, there was a lot of time, relatively speaking, between launch and when these things would land. Now we’re talking, okay, when I was in Moscow in 1990, they installed cruise missiles in Germany, much further than Ukraine, and the time was 18 minutes from launch to its arrival in the Kremlin. So there’s a hair trigger here that didn’t exist 63 years ago, many more weapons, and the United States is behaving in a belligerent fashion across the board talking about that open war, and that was not the condition in 1962. This is the scariest moment in human history.

PressTV: 7:01
Gilbert Doctorow, Putin accused European nations of fueling instability by increasing military spending and deepening integration under NATO. What is the end game for Europe here, in your opinion? Russia has in the past said that Washington has subjugated Europe in order to wage war against Moscow. What does a winning scenario look like for Europe?

Doctorow: 7:27
Regrettably, remarks that you’ve been quoting come from yesterday’s speech by Vladimir Putin at the Valdai Discussion Club gathering in Sochi. What was regrettable about it is that he has backed away from his own red lines of a year ago. He, in the speech, he was essentially saying, good Americans, bad Europeans. The part that you just asked me to comment on is the bad Europeans. I would like to put attention also to the good Americans.

Mr. Putin was very solicitous and very careful to please Mr. Trump. And this was an alarming aspect of his appearance in the speech and more importantly in the question and answers. You in Iran must be particularly interested in what he had to say about Trump’s 20-point peace plan, which he approved. You in Iran must be particularly interested in his calling the unindicted war criminal Tony Blair an “experienced statesman”, whom he had spent a day or more together with in his residence back at the beginning of the millennium. Well, I’m sorry, this was too big an effort to please Trump, which cannot end well.

PressTV: 9:02
Right. Don Debar, Putin warned that supplying US Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine would lead to a whole new level of escalation, including in the Moscow-Washington relations. Where does that scenario lead to? Ukraine sought these missiles since the Biden administration, but the US rejected that over fears of escalation. Is it likely to happen now?

Debar:
I mean, it’s difficult to tell what’s going to happen. It’s so volatile. And it’s also difficult to know in many, like in some fundamental ways, what’s really going on. There is an apparent– “rift” is a kind way of putting it– in the ruling circles here in the United States, with Trump sitting in the White House and almost everybody else treating him as the enemy, And the population divided somewhere around 50-50 on this. And when Trump ran for president, he ran, he promised that this war would come to an end in 24 hours. But certainly he conveyed the idea strongly and intentionally and rather blatantly that it wasn’t going to be escalated but rather shouldn’t be going on and was going to come to a halt as soon as he could get his hands on it.

Either that’s true or it’s not, in terms of his intent. And then it’s either possible or not for him, but then the question becomes if he’s removed, because this is one of the strongest bases of the support that keeps him in office in the face of the apparent onslaught from all the other political quarters, then if he loses that support, who comes into office?

It’s not going to be anyone who’s ever mentioned that they shouldn’t have a war with Russia. And everyone else in this country, in terms of the ruling circles, they’re belligerent as hell towards Russia and support everything that is offered in terms of dealing with it. You look to Lindsey Graham, for example, as sort of the center of opinion outside of Trump’s White House.

PressTV: 11:19
Gilbert Doctorow, let’s discuss these two serious potential escalations. One we mentioned earlier, the supplying of Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine. And the other is the talk of seizing Russian cargo ships on the high seas. How do you see Russia responding to these situations?

Doctorow:
Like a wimp. This is exactly what I’m talking about. By ingratiating himself with Donald Trump or attempting to, Mr. Putin is playing a very dangerous game. He said one year ago, this question of Tomahawk– well, they weren’t named– but of long- range American missiles being supplied to Ukraine was discussed directly by Vladimir Putin. And he said– he didn’t say what he said yesterday, that this would be an escalation. He said that this would make the United States a co-belligerent and we would have the right to strike them, strike them militarily.

He has backed down yesterday from that important red line, which suggests to Europeans and also to people like Lindsey Graham in the States and all of the hostile people to Donald Trump in the States, that Mr. Putin is indeed a paper tiger. That is a terrible thing for him to have done yesterday. As regards the second threat, I don’t agree that it’s the seizure of tankers. That is an ongoing threat. Generally speaking, the NATO countries are trying to establish a blockade, a sea blockade and an air blockade on the Baltic for Russia.

13:01
That is, under ordinary understanding, an act of war. And it is high time for Russia to say openly, gentlemen, this is an act of war, and we will go to war with you if you persist. So it is also with the seizure of Russian state assets that are frozen. What is now being discussed by the EU is very clever, but it’s too clever by a half. They’re not seizing the assets outright, but they’re calling them collateral for a loan to Ukraine, which will never be paid back.

In effect, it is seizing those assets. It is high time, if Russia has any self-respect, to say to Europe, “Seizure of state assets like these is, by international law, an act of war. And we declare war on you.”

The point is that Russia now has a military advantage over NATO and over Western Europe. That advantage is being diminished day by day as Europe spends this $150 billion in arms improvements, as Mr. Merz in Germany spends his one trillion euros to make Germany the biggest military force in Western Europe. And that will reach a culmination three or four years from now when Europe says it will be ready to fight a war with Russia. It is not ready now, which is to say that if Mr. Putin wants to defend Russia, he should do it now, not three years from now.

PressTV: 14:35
Okay, Mr. Debar, would you like to add anything to what Mr. Doctorow said, whether you agree with him or not? And of course, regarding the “paper tiger” comment, which just came up as well, Vladimir Putin hit back at that at the US President. He said, “If we’re fighting all of NATO and we’re a paper tiger, then what does that make NATO?”

Debar:
Well, I agree with Mr. Doctorow on facts and on his analysis, and I respectfully disagree about the conclusions, because [of] just the stakes. You know, there’s a very strong resemblance to me historically, and to others, it’s not original with me for sure, to the period before the beginning of World War I. And this is something that’s interesting, There’s the dramatic reenactment of the diaries of Robert Kennedy during the Cuban missile crisis called “13 Days Here”, where they have some of the, you know, the script basically contains the actual transcripts of the discussions that were going on in the White House during that event. And one of them was a reference to a book that had come out back in August of 1962, I believe, called _The Guns of August_.

15:39
And it was an analysis of the, basically, miscalculations that the various states had made about what each other would do under the stressful conditions that existed at that time. That they thought they knew this [glitch] going down the line, and that the miscalculations were all based on outdated data and consequently didn’t apply, and that people found themselves in a war that none of them wanted, apparently. This is the opinion of JFK through the transcripts. And yet, you know, it was this bloody, horrible, you know, Holocaust that swept over Europe. You know, that pales to the level of destruction that stands before us in the event of even a single nuclear exchange between Russia and/or Europe and/or the United States.

And I assume either China would play the role of the US if it could get, if it could do that, and watch and pick up the pieces later as the US did after World War II or participate. And I’m assuming it would participate on the same side as Russia. They’ve been manufacturing weapons for a very long time. They seem to have the skill and the set of factories that can crank out an awful lot of stuff pretty quick. So I’m guessing a war that included China as an adversary to the West and the US would be a very very significant one to be…

PressTV: 17:41
Mr. Debar, I want to stay with you for the next question. Russia says the Western military aid to Ukraine including the additional missiles would inflict damage but it won’t change the balance on the battlefield. Do you agree with those comments?

Debar:
Yeah, I mean, what will happen is– look, the way the West should conduct a war if Russia didn’t have nuclear weapons the way they would conduct it, if they’re going to attack Russia, the first thing you do is take out its ability to respond on the ground. You take out their airplanes and their missile silos, you know, and all of these different things.

That’s what they hope to do. Maybe they think they have a secret weapon that will enable them to do that, or a series of systems to minimize the response or whatever. But that is insane thinking. Whatever the United States does in terms of military action against Russia, a military action by proxy or otherwise is going to meet a response when it starts to affect on the ground at any scale. I mean, We’ve been looking at attacks inside Russia at the periphery in the mean, with the exception of a couple of terrorist attacks in Moscow and Saint Petersburg.

18:55
But an actual overt military attack on the target inside of Russia– particularly Moscow or St. Petersburg or any of the other major cities, Vladivostok, etc. even– there’ll be a response. There will have to be. And I agree with Gilbert there that at that point in time, Putin or whoever’s making policy in terms of this military aspect, that their hands will be tied, they will be forced to–

Look, part of the effort to– these people want Russia’s resources. And part of the effort to do that is to remove the government that is using those resources for the Russian people and for their own use, whatever it is, that it’s not filling the coffers of ExxonMobil, Chase Manhattan Bank, whoever it is that’s got the ear of a power hero or the hand of a power hero. But the people there, if they’re afraid and see that the government can’t protect them, will not be married to the government that they right now strongly support. And so that government’s existence basically is going to rest on it standing up at some point. Maybe that point is now, and maybe not.

PressTV: 20:06
Mr. Doctorow, your thoughts on the same issue as well. There was also the question, it has been looming since this war escalated: will this support result ultimately in this conflict spilling over into other regions and possibly turning into something bigger? There have been threats of nuclear retaliation on several occasions. There are also the scares with Poland and Bulgaria, if I’m correct.

Doctorow:
I’ll have a direct answer to your question. What is galling to Russian patriots? And by that I mean in the intellectual class, in the governing class, the political establishment in Russia. What is galling is that Russia has developed many conventional war arms that are very sophisticated, that are years ahead of anything in the West. It used to be said at the turn of the new millennium that Russia was a nuclear power but had no conventional forces that were worth talking about. And nuclear weapons by definition can’t be used because they will bring a direct response at the end of the civilization, certainly the end of the party that uses it first.

21:21
However, now with the new weapons systems, and in particular the hypersonic missiles that no one has deployed as Russia has, the Oreshnik, the Russian patriots are asking, why not finish this war tomorrow? Several Oreshniks directed at what’s called Bankovskaya Urytsa, that is the street in downtown Kiev where the main government offices, the decision-making centers are, would decapitate the Zelensky regime, would end the war tomorrow. And Europe would stand by powerless and speechless, and Mr. Trump would give a congratulatory handshake to Mr. Putin, because that is what Trump has been saying for the last several weeks, which Putin has not listened to. He’s been saying, “Vladimir, get it over with.”

PressTV: 22:21
Don Debar, let’s rewind to a past statement by then US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, who said one of Washington’s goals in Ukraine is to see a weakened Russia. Why does Washington want to weaken Russia and have the sanctions weakened Russia’s economy or have they somewhat backfired in your opinion, especially with European countries?

Debar: 22:47
Well, Biden spilled the beans– he’s not quite as sentient, I don’t know, as Austin– that the real goal was not just to weaken it. The reason you would weaken it is to set up for the next step. They want regime change there. And regime change not in the form of a different president, although it would likely include that, but rather they thought they took the resources in Russia in 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed, and in the period of the 90s, and particularly the oil and gas and some of the other more important aspects of Russian holdings. And instead they were taken back, and again they’re being applied to Russian aims, whatever that might be. I can see from being there that people are doing pretty well since this thing changed in about 20 years ago, 25 years ago now.

23:54
The goal is to get hold of Russia’s oil, gas, and other material wealth to remove it as a potential rival. I mean, Russia also stands as a strategic umbrella over China. And these people would of course like to move from being a 49% holder to a 51 or 100% holder, of ownership, of China’s industrial base. And so, you know, it’s a strategic purpose across the board, both to grab the resources and also to take away the possibility of a rival on the global stage.

PressTV:
All right, gentlemen, we’re going to have to leave it there. That’s all the time we have for tonight’s show. Thanks to radio host and journalist at CPR News Don Debar, joining us from New York. And thanks to independent international affairs analyst Gilbert Doctorow, speaking to us from Brussels. And a special thanks to you, our viewers, for staying with us on tonight’s edition of “Spotlight”.

24:46
It’s good night for now, and see you next time.

Conversation with Professor Glenn Diesen: Restoring Russia’s Deterrent or Emboldening NATO?

My latest essays and video interviews with Americans, Indians and Iranians disseminated as podcasts on  internet channels in the USA, in India and in Iran set out my impressions from Vladimir Putin’s 4-hour speech and Q&A session on Thursday, 2 October in Sochi at the 22^nd annual Valdai Discussion Club gathering. They stirred considerable controversy as you can see in the Comments sections of the respective videos and in my substack.com entries presenting the links.

I insist that stirring controversy in this way is good and is necessary. Too many of the Alternative Media broadcasts resemble the Mainstream Media they supposedly are countering by borrowing from one another and standing shoulder to shoulder behind interpretations that are not challenged. When there is no debate, the results tend to be second rate whether in the camp of the ruling class or in the camp of the Opposition.

The chat that Professor Diesen recorded with me this morning is likely to stir even more debate, which hopefully will remain polite and constructive.  I am suggesting that the era of Vladimir Putin is coming to a close, that his performance at Sochi demonstrated that he no longer has the courage of his convictions, that his threats meant to deter Western enemies are empty verbiage, indeed that himself he has pulled up the red lines he clearly set out just one year ago with respect to long range missiles being supplied to Ukraine, and that he is drawing out the war in Ukraine by not using the Wunder Waffe that Russia has in the form of the Oreshnik and other hypersonic missiles to end the war now, without taking or inflicting further casualties on the young and not so young men at arms on either side of the demarcation line, without letting the war roll on for several years until the West succeeds in the remilitarization that is now underway and has a chance of defeating Russia in a conventional arms war.

This question of Putin’s succession will play out in Russia whatever we may think, but I am saying that this eventuality which we never openly discussed now is ripe for discussion here in the West even if it is verboten in Russia.

I particularly recommend this video to the Community because you will find in it the impressions of someone who watched the Valdai proceedings from afar on the internet (mine) compared with the impressions of someone who was present in the auditorium in Sochi when Putin delivered his address and who compared notes with ambassadors, political scientists and other participants of the event (Glenn Diesen).  Do check to see how our impressions did or did not match up.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2025