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NewsX: 8:37
We’re now joined by Gilbert Doctorow, who’s a Russian affairs expert, and he joins us from Brussels, Belgium. Gilbert, thank you very much for joining us on the programme. Gilbert, this G7 conference, formally G8, is coming to a close. What have been your thoughts on how everything has played out in regards to Zelensky’s presence and Russia’s absence?

Gilbert Doctorow, PhD:
Russia has been absent for 10 years, so that’s not a new development. But as regards to Mr. Zelensky, his trip was totally wasted. He was on his way into Alberta when he was apprised of the fact that Trump had already left hours before. I think Mr. Trump’s departure was motivated in part to avoid meeting Zelensky and to avoid participating in a discussion of the Ukraine war that was on the agenda for the day.

The fact is that Mr.– this is a meeting of seven, but Mr. Trump would find himself in the minority of one. He would have six fellow members, all grouped against him on the question of the Ukraine war. And that, of course, is not very agreeable or very constructive. As regards his mention of how sad it was that President Obama, together with Justin Trudeau of Canada, had decided to remove Russia as the eighth member of this group — he called this very sad and said that it was, had there been Russian participation in the G8, then there wouldn’t have been a war that we’re now fighting.

However, this is, these are pure rhetoric. The reality is that when Mr. Trump, sorry, when Mr. Putin was a member of the G8, he was in exactly the same disadvantageous and uninteresting position of Mr. Trump presently. He was a minority of one with seven allies in the West aligned against him who agreed, who met privately before he arrived at any conference, and agreed on a policy line which was all directed against him. So in that sense, the problems of today’s G7 are simply repeating the problems that existed in 2014, when you had seven members ganging up on the eighth. Now it was six members who were planned to gang up on the seventh, namely Mr. Trump.

11:18
Mr. Trump is not Mr. Putin. He is the most powerful man in the world. And so they could only lick their wounds and complain when he left, when he left early on the alleged reason that he had business to do in Washington that was more important.

NewsX: 11:39
Gilbert, the Kremlin has called G7 useless. Ukraine did want to make more gains than it did, but it did produce Canada’s massive support, some massive financial support from Canada. Do you think Russia is losing more ground diplomatically or gaining it?

Doctorow:
Well, whatever the G7 does, it really is not news in the sense that they are all aligned against Russia, not a day-to-day matter, not just when they convene together. So Mr. Zelensky left, as you said quite properly, he left this meeting with nothing in his hands other than what Canada could contribute. This may be of some small solace to him, but it in no way helps Ukraine to continue to fight effectively against Russia.

12:33
In point of fact, because of the Israel-Iran war, The United States has withdrawn a large part of its air defenses from Ukraine and moved them to the Middle East to provide some protection for America’s air bases and the 40,000 American soldiers who are stationed in the Middle East, should they come to blows with Iran. The United States also has reportedly stopped sending any further military materiel to Ukraine.

All of this is very bad news for Mr. Zelensky and bad news for his army. It is not a surprise that Russia is staging massive strikes on Kiev presently, as you have otherwise reported, because the air defences there are very weak.

NewsX: 13:25
Gilbert, prior to the G7, Putin and Trump had a direct phone call. They have so far agreed to commence talks again, once again, on the 22nd of this month. What are your hopes going into those talks, given Russia’s escalating strikes on civilian infrastructure across Ukraine? Do you think they’ll make any progress? And do you think peace is still on Putin’s mind when it comes to sending his delegation to Turkey?

Doctorow:
Oh, peace is definitely on Mr. Putin’s mind, but it’s a peace that he wants on his terms. In that sense, He is no different from Mr. Zelensky, who wants a peace on his terms. Both sides are looking for a capitulation of the other side, which of course is an impossible situation and does not indicate that they will reach any agreement until there is a definitive result on the battlefield. That’s, having said that, the meeting between the Russians and the Americans is really about technical matters. It is about restoring the functionality of their respective diplomatic establishments in the other country. Their embassies are operating on a very weak level because staff is missing.

14:48
Staff was thrown out in recriminatory exchanges going back several years. They are non-functional, and the intent is to restore functionality, because you cannot negotiate with the other side, over important matters of geopolitics, which is what Trump and Putin are trying to do, when you don’t have staff on the ground manning your embassy.

NewsX: 15:16
Gilbert Doctorow, thank you very much for joining us on the program and [for] your insight. We now move over to the Middle East–

Transcription submitted by a reader

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NewsX: 0:00
–expertise and sharing your insight with us. We had Ali Abushbakh join us as Middle East researcher. Now we move on to our next story. Russia and Ukraine have declared that a fifth exchange of dead bodies has taken place. Kyiv has confirmed that the bodies of 1,245 Ukrainian servicemen have been returned from Russia as part of a continuing effort under the Istanbul agreements.

These exchanges come after months of negotiations between both sides. According to Ukraine’s coordination headquarters for the treatment of prisoners of war, the repatriated remains include soldiers who died in intense combat zones, including Bakhmut and Mariupol.

Meanwhile, Russian presidential aide and chief negotiator Vladimir Medinsky told Russian media that Moscow is prepared to transfer an additional 2,239 bodies to Ukraine. He also confirmed that Ukraine has so far handed over 78 bodies of Russian servicemen to Moscow. Medinsky said that since the start of these agreements, Russia has returned a total of 6060 bodies of Ukrainian fallen soldiers.

1:24
Now we are joined by our guest, Gilbert Doctorow. He’s a Russian affairs expert, joining us live from Brussels. Thank you for joining us today. Welcome to NewsX World. What does this fifth round of body, fallen body exchanges signal about the current state of dialogue between Moscow and Kiev despite active conflict?

Gilbert Doctorow, PhD:
Well, it indicates that at the technical level, the two sides remain in contact. And of course it is extremely good news that there can be a closure to the suffering of the families of these soldiers. They can properly bury their loved ones. And something resembling human behavior returns to that land. Nonetheless, none of this has any implication for the chances of a ceasefire, let alone for the chances of a definitive peace between Russia and Ukraine.

The parties remain very far separated by their ambitions in what they will get from the peace. That is to say, each side is expecting and demanding the capitulation effectively, the capitulation of the other side. And under those conditions, it is not foreseeable that negotiations can result in any agreements.

NewsX: 2:57
And now you will stay with us as we have breaking news. Moscow confirms that newly planned Russia-US consultations have been canceled at Washington’s initiative. Russia’s foreign ministry says it hopes the current diplomatic pause with the United States won’t last long.

Now we come back to our guest discussion, Gilbert Doctorow. He’s a Russian affairs expert joining us live from Brussels. What is your reaction about the breaking news that we just took, that the consultations have been canceled at Washington’s initiative?

Doctorow: 3:41
Well, I don’t think it makes a great deal of difference. Washington’s mind right now is fully focused on the Middle East and on the ongoing conflict, armed conflict, between Iran and Israel. The United States is deeply concerned that its bases in the Middle East will be attacked by the Iranians. And so I don’t think they have too much brain power to spare to consider the furtherance of negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, which in any case have not yet produced any positive results.

NewsX: 4:25
And building on that, how does the asymmetry in the number of bodies returned– being 6,060 Ukrainian versus 78 Russian soldiers only– reflect the intensity or geography of the frontline losses, and is this being used by Russia as soft power here?

Doctorow: 4:49
I don’t think that the discrepancy in numbers of these corpses fully reflects the discrepancy in the killed or seriously maimed ratio of those in the Ukrainian armed forces versus the Russians. There are other elements here as well. It’s been a safe assumption among most experts that the Russians have enjoyed a seven to ten advantage over the Ukrainians, meaning that seven Ukrainians or ten Ukrainians have been killed or seriously wounded in the combat in Donbass versus one Russian. Now, when you speak about 70 soldiers, Russian corpses being exchanged for so far 6,000 and maybe 7,000 Ukrainian corpses, that, of course, is unrepresentative of the numbers I just gave.

But I think it’s accounted for by something else. The Ukrainians have notoriously left their fallen and dead on the battlefield and have run for their lives when they were subjected to a Russian attack. And I think the Russians have been much more careful about recovering the bodies of their fallen in the military conflict. That is probably a bigger factor than anything else.

NewsX: 6:16
Thank you very much, Dr. Gilbert Doctorow. He’s a Rus–

Russia-Ukraine exchange of dead bodies:  78 Russians for 6060 Ukrainians   Why the vast difference?

I am pleased that News X put this question to me in a brief interview yesterday.  As I explained, many more Ukrainian soldiers and officers have died in the conflict than Russians, but the usual ratio we speak about is 7:1 not 78:1 as in the current exchange of corpses.

The answer likely is to be found in the low priority Ukrainian military give to retrieving the dead and wounded from battlefields, whereas the Russians do everything possible to retrieve their own.  But there is also the mention by the Ukrainian side which the NewsX presenter cites at the start of the interview that many of the Ukrainian dead lost their lives in the fierce battles for the cities Bakhmut and Mariupol in the first year of the war. Particularly in Mariupol, many of the ultranationalists of the Azov battalion continued fighting when they were totally surrounded and largely hiding in underground industrial buildings, so that retrieval of bodies was just not possible.

I call attention to the ‘breaking news’ which interrupted this interview:  the presenter asked me about the just announced cancellation of scheduled meetings between the USA and Russia, cancelled at the initiative of the U.S. side.  Since I had no additional information to go on, I gave a nonspecific answer which, now that the facts are better known, should be corrected.  The talks in question were about improving the working conditions of the respective embassies and consulates in each country. Upon reflection, it would appear that Washington cancelled not only because its full attention right now is on the Middle East, but as a sign of displeasure with Putin that Trump could use at the G7 meeting in Canada yesterday, to hold out the possibility to his enemies there that he might yet come around to their views on why the war should be continued until Russia is defeated.

Transcript submitted by a reader

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Diesen: 0:00
Hi everyone and welcome. I am joined today by Gilbert Doctorow, a historian and an international affairs analyst. Welcome back to the program.

Doctorow:
Good to see you again.

Diesen:
Likewise. So I guess the big issue still remains the aftermath of this attack on the Russian nuclear forces. I find it personally frustrating that many people, especially in the political media establishment, do not seem to appreciate how dangerous this is, not only about not avoiding a nuclear disaster, but also the retaliation which seems almost required on the Russian side. However, the Russian response so far has been limited. Of course, it doesn’t feel limited if you’re living in Kiev, but there’s many good reasons, I guess, for why Russia should have retaliated in a much more powerful way. And many people therefore expected that there would come a response effectively heard around the world. How do you explain for this reaction or the muted one? Or Do you think the worst is yet to come?

Doctorow: 1:18
We don’t know. And there are a lot of things we don’t know. In my new book, you’re aware that I’m saying in the introduction that we are living in the fog of war. And that certainly applies to the question you’ve given. I was personally very disappointed with the weak, _ne adekbat_, the inappropriate or unsuitable response that the Russians have given so far. That’s more of the same blowing up more arms caches and blowing up more drone manufacturing and hitting the Dubno tactical aviation air base in western Ukraine — that’s all child stuff. How many hundreds of billions of dollars in armaments the West shipped to Ukraine?

They can spend another five years blowing things up and not get through all of it. So this is not a change, a step change or an escalation that you would expect given the escalation from the Ukrainian side in attacking the nuclear triad, part of the nuclear triad of the Russian Federation. However, I’m beginning to turn this around in my mind and think maybe I’m being unfair and unreasonable because I’m uninformed, as everyone else is, about what exactly Mr. Putin and Mr. Trump were talking about in their hour or hour and a half long phone conversation.

2:59
People were, the general, if you look at the independent media, alternative media, everybody was speculating on whether or not Trump was being asked how much he knew or didn’t know in advance or in real time about this attack. I don’t believe that now for a minute, in particular because of a stunning article that appeared in “Financial Times” today, explaining further how this was carried out. I mean, the first impressions we all had was “My goodness, the Ukrainians have struck 4000 kilometers into the Russian Federation. Boy, this is drone warfare.” It took us a while to understand that those drones were probably 20 or 30 kilometers away from the air bases when they were only 50. Anyway, they were close to the air bases in these trailers, special trailers with roofs that would open up on signal and so forth.

3:58
So that already put in question how much outside assistance you would need for this. And then today’s “Financial Times” raised a dramatic issue that these drones are the Mercedes of their class. They are highly advanced, they’re using AI, artificial intelligence, as self-targeting. So after they were– their release was done long-distance by remote, of course.

And they were launched. And then the last part of their trip to target was done by themselves. They had onboard sensors and cameras, and they had AI to identify what they should be going after, what they should be striking. There was no, this means that there was no satellite intelligence, which is what everyone’s talking about, people who are really military specialists. They’re talking about this drone strike as if it were a missile strike. It wasn’t. And it wasn’t coming from 1000 or 2000 kilometers away. It was coming from 50 kilometers or 100 kilometers away. And it was guided by itself. So the British and the US involvement was nil.

5:25
And yes, all people will say, “Oh, Doctorow was quoting the “Financial Times”. That’s just an English rag. And so–” Hey, wait a minute. I’m quoting it because it coincides with what I see on Russian television every day. But the Russians are doing it.

The point of the matter is that the Russians and Ukrainians are peers. This is a battle between equals in terms of technical competence in certain domains. Certain domains, not all domains, obviously. And drone warfare is what the game is today. The artillery warfare exists, but it has been overtaken by drone warfare, where the Ukrainians are equal to the Russians.

6:10
And they are both way ahead of the Brits and the US. How are we speaking about this nonsense to talk about assistance coming from the United States or Britain? Moreover, well, I mean, let me just explain because it’s not obvious from my last remark about what the Russians are doing. They are guiding their battlefield attacks, not by satellite intelligence, but by what their drones, their reconnaissance drones tell them in real time. Now, you don’t have to be a genius or military expert to understand that information that’s coming from a drone that is 10 kilometers away is much faster.

than the information coming from a satellite that is 500 kilometers away. Therefore, real time is real time when it’s done by drones. That’s the game today. And if the Russians have it, the Ukrainians have it, and talking about British or American assistance for the execution of it, it’s not the planning of it, but the execution of it is nonsense.

Now, if that is nonsense, then surely Mr. Putin knows that, and surely he never would have wasted time in a precious phone call with Donald Trump to talk about what the Americans knew or didn’t know. They would have been talking about something else and hopefully they were talking about finding a resolution to this war and moving the talks to Moscow, which seems to be the case right now.

Diesen: 7:46
But the Ukrainians made the point that this attack had been planned 18 months in advance. And as we’ve also learned from this New York Times article, was it a month or two ago, that almost all the military planning had been done by the United States. It is hard to imagine though that, I’m not sure about the extent of involvement, but that the US and the British at least, they must have had some knowledge of this, given that the drones have been shipped in, stored and they’ve been coordinated and planned in this way.

If not, only if not to you know, bite the hand that feeds you, because if the Ukrainians would do this without the knowledge of the Americans and keeping them in the dark, wouldn’t this have created a lot of divisions?

Doctorow: 8:40
Let’s go back to the start of your question, because it’s very important. I didn’t say that the Brits and the Americans were not involved in this. Of course they were. And just exactly as you’re describing, in the planning and the preparation for it. But preparation, who knows when the preparation ended? Could have ended a year ago. Could have ended two years ago. No, two years ago, no.

A year ago for sure. Someone had to bring in those drones and these trucks crossing through Belarus, as I understand. But more importantly, somebody had to locate them near the bases. Now, American intelligence, CIA presence in Russia, is not so much. The British presence in Russia is big.

9:25
And they had been involved in every scandalous false flag operation that we’ve seen in the last three years. They were deeply involved in Bucha. They were even not directly involved in the war, but to disgrace the Russians and Mr. Putin’s group in particular, they certainly were the ones who killed Navalny. And how did they do that? How could you reach Navalny in this remote location where the Brits have got their fingers everywhere?

And so I believe that they were deeply involved in the preparation of this attack when the drones were brought in and they were stored near bases. So there is a reason why Mr. Lavrov was singling out among the Anglo-Saxons, the Brits. The Russians have got it in for the Brits, and with good reason, because they have been really the barking and the biting dogs, unlike the poodles and lap dogs that we knew from Tony Blair’s time.

Diesen: 10:35
Well, I was wondering though how, to what extent, the, I guess, the muted response of Russia, do see this, you know, because it does create a lot of tensions within Russia. You know, the usual discussion is between those who argue that, you know, they’re sick of this. Let’s get it just done with. I’m not sure if that’s possible, just to get it done with quickly, even if they would want this without again blowing up entire cities. While the others are making the point that they’re doing everything right, what they’re doing now that is gradually wearing down the opposing army so you can have objective indicators measuring the lack of manpower, reduced equipment, increased economic problems, lack of social cohesion, desertions, I mean casualty levels.

11:29
You know, we have all these different measurements. You can assess the extent to which they are reaching their goal. But do you think this impacts how they responded? Because many thought this would give an excuse, if you will, to Russia to just turn up the violence to 100 and just push through and get a faster end to this war.

Doctorow:
You’ve omitted one factor in that list of measurements and parameters: will. And that is of vital importance. People can be losing, the attrition can be taking effect, they can be losing men, they can be losing equipment. But that doesn’t answer the question of will, will they fight for the last Ukrainian? Maybe they will. I think it was relevant that Mr. Medinsky said in his first discussion with the Ukrainians in Istanbul that he made reference to Peter the Great’s Northern War in 21 years, and we’re ready to fight for 21 years. Is he ready to fight for 21 years? Is Mr. Putin going to be there in 21 years? This is totally illogical.

And how long can the Ukrainians hold on? That is a really, that is a number one question in everyone’s mind. And it’s good that you raise it, I don’t have an answer. But I do say that the Ukrainians are far more capable, are far more determined, are less deserting and running from the field than a lot of my peers are saying or suggesting. And that at the same time, the whole logic of the timing of this war, starting in February of 2022, was based on window-of-opportunity logic.

13:14
That Russia understood that it was that Mr. Putin and his associates understood that they were sanction proof after eight years of preparing their financial system and trading partners and so on. And that they had strategic advantage over the West with their new weapons systems that were not only tested but also deployed. Now, we have to apply the same measure today. Is Russia, does Russia have an unlimited window opportunity?

I say no. When the West is throwing hundreds of billions of euros at it, was beginning to assign hundreds of billions of euros to ramp up military production, it will take effect. Not tomorrow, just speaking about a five year time horizon. Well, if Russia doesn’t solve this way before the five years are up, then we’re going to have World War III. Yes, indeed, I agree with you.

But it’s not tomorrow, because the West isn’t ready for tomorrow. Russia is. Therefore, if Mr. Putin is to follow the logic he used when he launched this war, he will strike now in a dramatic way, unless I’m dead wrong, which is possible, and he has reached some accommodation with Donald Trump that we don’t know about. It’s possible. I leave that open.

Diesen: 14:41
Yeah. Well, this is it. It’s very difficult to know what they’re talking about behind closed doors. And well, I would just add this comment: that they fought for 21 years. This was the Great Northern War from 1700 to 1721. So it’s been over 300 years. So the way society is structured, the willingness to fight prolonged wars, the economy that supports it, the nature of international relations, a lot of this changed over time. So I’m not sure if that would, 21-year-long war would be pulled off today, simply because it was pulled off three centuries ago.

15:21
But I guess it’s important to signal the willingness to keep on fighting until the objectives have been met. Again, especially if you consider this to be a war for survival and to signal clearly to the opponent that there’s no intention of at least making compromises on these key issues. But this attack on Russia’s nuclear forces, well, with these new powerful strikes now being launched against Kiev and other cities, it doesn’t just impact the way the war is fought in terms of the amount of force which is being used, but surely it will also have an impact on the peace which the Russians will demand. Do you see them, I guess, preparing to set higher demands now or– because the rhetoric became quite, well, much harsher, it seems now. Again, they talked about destroying Ukraine before, but now it’s becoming, I guess, louder.

Doctorow: 16:28
It would be better if they didn’t talk about destroying Ukraine, but talked about destroying the decision-making centers, which is also going back to February 2022. Why? Are they walking away from that? The implications are clear. If they want to be consistent, they should send the Oreshniks against wherever Mr. Zelensky happens to be with his close associates, and against Mr. Budanov and all of his associates, and leave the rest of Kiev alone. Because the broad population, even those who are working in these military organizations, they’re not the problem. The problem is the decision makers. And they’re being left untouched.

17:13
I find that very hard to understand. Here’s where I– Then the other question is, what are you doing for the West? Mr. Karaganov is coming back and back again with his remarks of the need for a dramatic strike in Western Europe to sober up minds. And yet to be sure you would think that this is implicitly very critical of Mr. Putin, but he is invited back and back again by Vladimir Putin. So that’s also a little bit hard to understand. Are the Russians going to make military strike against Britain? I don’t know.

Diesen: 17:53
Well, he’s more of a, I guess, hawkish element, but Karagonov, he also attends this Valdai meeting every year. And I saw him over the past few years, every year at Valdai making the same comment that perhaps we should change our nuclear doctrine. And Putin pushed back against it every year when we met in Valdai saying, “No, this is, you know, we have to keep it the way it is with predictability and stability,” all of this.

But then, of course, at the end, he ended up taking his advice, given that, well, what he argued that the West was becoming more and more irresponsible in terms of American long-range strikes into Russia. So at the end he took the more hawkish advice, if you will, and I guess now Karagonov is suggesting the same thing, like let’s take it one step further. We have to strike inside Western Europe to send a strong signal after all the attacks they’ve done on us.

18:57
But then I guess it makes sense to have him around in case Putin decides that, when it’s time to take that extra step. I did want to ask about your comment on not striking the political leadership in Ukraine, because I noticed recently that the Russians began to use the word terrorism more and more. Obviously, there’s some real events, which is the reason behind this, which was the Ukraine’s deliberate targeting of trains which had no military function. So again, deliberately only going after civilians. Now, so this is why it could be framed as terrorism if terrorism is targeting civilians to, I guess, elevate fear for political purposes.

But It’s also true that if this special military operation is defined more as a war on terrorism, it could, I guess, create the legal space for beginning to target political leaders as well. Do you see it in a similar way or do you think I’m reading too much into this?

Doctorow: 20:06
No, no, I think your reading is correct. It’s entirely possible. Look, Mr. Putin is a lawyer. That is a blessing and it’s also a curse, because many of his decisions are made looking for legal niceties in international law. When the United States and many other countries, Israel is an outstanding example, pay no heed whatsoever to international law. And they don’t think twice about it. Russia does, and I’m not sure that it is so wise, but nonetheless, that being said, by calling Ukraine a terrorist state, he’s preparing a way to legitimize the assassination of Mr. Zelensky and his associates. Yes, that’s true.

Diesen: 20:44
Yeah, and in terms of this peace, not only do they see it now more difficult to live with the current Ukrainian state in the future, in other words, any peace negotiation now would have to include at least a regime change. But in terms of any future peace, to what extent do you see the way Russia imagines living next to the West in the future? Because after this strikes, do you think the Russians are giving up on this reconciliation with the West after the war?

Because you keep hearing that once this is over, everyone will benefit from pursuing some reconciliation, start to trade together, have normal relations, which would benefit both sides. But there seems to be a lot of anger now, not just from the politicians and the military, but I also sense it from society that this desire to not kiss and make up, but seek to normalize relations after this war is done with, it seems to be going away. This becomes more obvious that the US has been pursuing the destruction of Russia, you have these very aggressive attacks. Now the Germans are talking openly about attacking Russia with Taurus missiles. Kaya Kallas speaking of how Russia should be broken up to smaller countries, it will be easier to deal with.

22:26
I mean, this seems to be changing some of the collective consciousness in Russia, they don’t seem that interested any more to get along with the West in the future.

Doctorow:
Well, in the comments sections, the Russian language version of your show, of other major video interviews, which are also being put into Russian and which have audiences that are like 100,000 people. Your own audience for some of these programs in Russia is as big or bigger than the English language, original ones.

Diesen: 23:04
Yeah, I noticed.

Doctorow:
And so I look at the comments and a lot of xenophobia, a lot of real anger at the West. And would– but comments are in general, one percent of the viewers. The other 99 percent I would take as an indication of how many thumbs-up there are, which usually outweigh by considerable numbers, the comments. Therefore it’s very hard to reach a firm decision, a firm conclusion, whether or not Russian society is really turning its back on the West. The people I know in Petersburg and in Moscow, they are an intellectual class, and they all would like to go back to Paris. They would like to let bygones to be bygones.

23:56
But I think in answer to your question more broadly, what Europe does will depend entirely on what Donald Trump can [do] and does. If he restores direct flights between the United States and Moscow, the European airlines will die. They will sweep all the politicians aside to have their flights into and over Russia restored. And it will be the same way with other industries. If the United States takes the first step, the Europeans will be tripping on one another to also restore normal commercial ties.

They will not go back to where they were before the operation, before the sanctions, because so many foreign companies have been displaced. Their properties in Russia were sold off and taken over by Russian entrepreneurs. And there’s no way back as it was, but there’s still room for substantial restoration of trade ties and certainly restoration of energy supplies and other critical raw materials, which Russia was providing Western Europe at bargain basement prices in the past. So I think there will be a way back.

25:17
That comes up in little things. I follow culture very closely. We just had the Queen Elizabeth piano competition, once-in-four-year event here in Brussels. Our whole Belgian society was– high society, of course, but not all, but cultural society was there vying for tickets to the … competition proper and then to the performance of the … winners, of the [six top-placed] people. I, we went to one of these, the ones performed who received the awards of four, five and six. Number six was a Russian.

This, despite everything, despite all of the … hostility I’d say towards Russia, the, his, this man’s exceptional talent was acknowledged. When the concert came, he didn’t receive any encore requests. The two others, a Frenchman and a Japanese, they were, ah, everyone rose to their feet, and they demanded an encore.

They got it. So the cancel Russian culture is over. That wave is gone. Russian culture is slowly crawling back into everybody’s consciousness, but there is a certain coolness, okay? That’s what I see will happen in other domains where the West and Russia have exchanges.

26:56
There’ll be coolness, it won’t be the overwhelming joy of sometimes in 1990s on the part of Westerners visiting Russia, xxxxx xxx xxxxx, but things will somehow restore. I think airlines will be the first thing.

Diesen:
I remember the first year of the war, everything had to be canceled. There was, I think it was a tree competition for old trees, and they canceled the Russian tree as a nominee. I was hoping that would be peak hate and after this we would start to let the cool heads prevail and return to something of normal behavior.

But we might hopefully be going back, because a lot of this seems to be irrational. A lot of the things have been done. But I was wondering how do you see, because we’re not going back to the old world anyways after this is over. This seems to be gone. Indeed, I think the world even that existed before the attacks on Russia’s nuclear forces also probably won’t go back.

But how do you see then the extent to which Russia’s foreign policy could be militarized as a result of this? I mean, to some extent, it already has. That is, the military might of Russia, its expertise in drone warfare, you can argue military culture, something has been built up over the past three years. Do you see this impacting future foreign policy, I guess? Having incentives to find military solutions to political problems.

Maybe not so much as speculation about the nature of the Russians, but instead as a historian, do you see, maybe it’s too specific, but the capabilities influencing the intentions? So in other words, if you have all this military power, then if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Do you usually see this through history, or… ?

octorow: 29:03
I think Russia will not be on a war footing economically, but the military component of its general economy will remain at a very high level, not just for its own needs. But when the war ends, Russia will begin to conclude contracts for sale of its advanced … equipment.

All of that has been suspended. India did not receive equipment that it contracted for, because everything the Russian factories are producing is going to the front, their own front, and they couldn’t care less about selling the stuff abroad at this moment. But once peace is concluded, then I think the Russians will start to commercialize very successfully what they have demonstrated to be superior to American and West European military equipment. And they have the videos to show it. And they have the trophies to show it, because they’ve hauled back Leopards and American equipment as trophies to Moscow.

30:01
So they will be in a very good position to have massive sales of arms and to be a real competitor to both Western Europe and the United States. So in that sense, the Russian economy, even after the war ends, will have a much bigger military component than it ever did before the war. Otherwise, I think the, you say militarized foreign policy, I don’t see that happening, because Russia’s foreign policy now is within the constraints of its agreements to Shanghai Organization, its agreements with its Central Asian neighbors, and of course, BRICS, and all of that will not support Russia being visibly militaristic in its foreign policy. I don’t believe that.

Diesen: 31:04
Well, that makes me think if obviously the Russian military industrial complex will be much greater and more competitive, that obviously will have an impact on geopolitics as well.

It kind of takes me to my last question, which is perhaps a bit too big in nature, but what will be the, I guess, wider geopolitical consequences of this war coming to an end? I mean, It seems as if we’re going to, there’s going to be a lot of resentment for many years to come on both sides. So I’m guessing this won’t come to a complete end. Even if it would in Europe, we won’t end up quarreling over Georgia or Moldova or the Black Sea, the Baltic Sea, the Arctic. We have a lot of possible areas of conflict.

31:52
We can have Belarus in there as well. But in other parts of the world, we’ve seen during the war the Russians pushing out the French. Well, they haven’t necessarily taken credit for it, but there’s other variables, but I’m sure the Russians had had their say in it. But how will the rest of the world reorient after this? Because this is, I think we’re moving towards a very humiliating defeat for NATO.

I mean, at least Europe, America’s been pulling back a bit, but Europeans, we really bet everything on this war. So what do you think will be the wider geopolitical ramifications of this war, assuming that it is being lost now by NATO.

Doctorow: 32:40
That’s a safe, I think that’s a safe assumption. But once again, I think we have to look at just what Donald Trump does, how, and– because he has the capability, the United States has the capability of really influencing what Europe does and how long the detritus in power today, by that I mean Kallas and der Leyen and our wonderful NATO boss, chief, how long they stay in their positions. The United States has the ability to influence their removal.

But for that, Donald Trump has to keep his political capital at home, has to score successes in his domestic policy. There are a lot of things that are unforeseeable or can’t be, which you cannot plan. I wouldn’t look for Europe to save itself and remove itself from the conflicts that we see today, the pro-war movement that it has become in the last several years under the guidance of von der Leyen. It will all depend on Mr. Trump, frankly, as I see it.

33:54
Like it or not, of course, many people don’t like him, but he has it within his power, or may have it within his power, to find a beneficial result, a change of political landscape in Europe that will facilitate the negotiation of a new security architecture. With the people in power today, it’s impossible. I don’t see any chance for Merz and Macron. They were so invested in their personality and political power in the war with Russia, which was for them, the unifying element for the new Europe, that I don’t see that they can stay in power. But the only one who has the strength to sweep them from power by one maneuver or another is sitting in the Oval Office in Washington.

Diesen: 34:50
Yeah, I think this is a key problem. The Europeans have gone down because they accepted, you know, not just throwing away all their weapons, but accepted this deindustrialization. The whole economic, I guess, utility or purpose of the European Union has been severely weakened. Indeed, the EU itself is now talking about itself as a geopolitical block. If you’re going to be a geopolitical block with internal cohesion, you really need that external threat. I mean, it’s a very different animal, the European Union, if you want it to be a geopolitical union instead of an economic block. So it remains to be seen what kind of problems they have, what kind of corner they have painted themselves in.

35:38
Anyways, as always, thank you for your time. I greatly appreciate it and hope to have you back very soon.

Doctorow:
All right. Thanks. Thanks for the invitation.

Diesen:
Thank you.

Doctorow: 35:51
Bye bye.

Listening to my chat yesterday evening with Professor Glenn Diesen of the Southern Norway University. I understood that his professional interest in geopolitics prompted him to pose questions that other interview hosts are not asking and which the audience should find refreshing because they look beyond the questions of this very moment to where Europe is headed when the Ukraine war comes to an end, whether Russia and Europe can re-knit commercial, cultural and other relations and the like. We are daily witnesses to a changing world order but how often do we lift our heads to consider these big picture questions?

I have no intention of spoiling the pleasure of discovering how we dealt with the big questions except to say that I am more predisposed to see the solutions not in what Europeans can do for themselves on their own but in how what the Americans do creates a scramble in Europe to catch up. For example, once Washington and Moscow agree on restoring direct flights between their countries, I expect there to be a stampede of European airlines to be liberated from the awful constraints of flying around instead of over the critical 12% of the world’s land mass, meaning Russia, which represents the only economically viable routing to East Asia. This obstacle is a major factor in explaining the great increase in passenger traffic on the airlines of the Gulf States these past few years. And so it will be with other commercial domains: the US rescinds sanctions and the Europeans fight among themselves to shed sanctions here.

Will the Russian foreign policy be overmilitarized when the war ends? Will Russia’s military industrial complex downsize or grow still further to support export sales of its world-beating arms?  Have a listen!

Of course, in the opening minutes we did spend a bit of time considering the adequacy or not of Russia’s response so far to the Ukrainian attack 10 days ago on the strategic bomber that form part of its deterrent nuclear triad at air bases across the Russian Federation.

I am appreciative of Professor Diesen’s flashing the front cover image of my new book War Diaries at the very start of our interview. Hopefully some viewers will get the hint.

Transcript submitted by a reader

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wC6IGxEnJhk

Napolitano: 0:33
Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Wednesday, June 11th, 2025. Professor Gilbert Doctorow will be here with us in just a moment. Just what is the Kremlin thinking and what is the Kremlin planning to do next? But first this.

Commercial

Napolitano: 2:21
Professor Doctorow, welcome here, my dear friend. Thank you for accommodating my schedule and thank you for all of the off-air communications that we have informing me of your very thoughtful observations. Are you satisfied that the Kremlin is satisfied that the drone attack two weekends ago was certainly perpetrated with the help of the British and probably perpetrated with the help of the United States?

Doctorow:
I think that there’s an article in today’s “Financial Times” which the viewers of this broadcast should follow up. I’m not a fan of the “Financial Times” regarding their Russian coverage because they’re quite biased, but occasionally they come up with something that is important that cannot be ignored, and today was the day. They had, one of the reporters interviewed the people responsible for developing the drones that were used in the attack on these four Russian air bases housing their strategic triad bombers. And it comes out from that that the Ukrainians were entirely capable of carrying out this act on their own. Of course, they go back 18 months.

3:45
And of course, 18 months ago, no doubt, the United States and Britain helped them to decide where to attack, what to attack, and maybe even the mechanics of the attack, not to be an attack from long distances, but from short distances. I have little doubt that British, with their extensive espionage network across Russia would have been facilitators in helping the Ukrainians to decide how and where they would hide their drones for eventual use, kind of sleeper drones we can call them.

But as regards the attack itself, I don’t think that the Brits or the Americans had anything whatever to do with it, because the Ukrainians were capable. And this is an important fact, which is overlooked, unfortunately, by the whole, virtually the whole, of independent media. We all assume that the Ukrainians are helpless fools, that they just throw their lives away by combating the Russians without their own means of producing weapons, and they’re entirely dependent on what they get from outside, often which is misaligned with their needs.

Nonetheless, the point that came out of this article today is that the Ukrainians are surely ahead of the United States and ahead of Great Britain in drone warfare. And why shouldn’t they be? They’re doing the battle on the battlefield, not the Americans or the Brits. And they are up against an opponent who had to catch up in drone warfare, but has done, I mean the Russians. And I’d say they are peers now. They both are the world’s leading fighters of drone warfare.

05:30
Now, why do I say that about the Russians? Because I watch Russian television, which some people disparage, but if you watch it properly, you’ll get something interesting and useful. The useful point is that the targeting of all Russian activity now on the front is not satellite reconnaissance. It is reconnaissance drones. That gives an instantaneous location of targets in, that’s the article [on screen], instantaneous location of targets even faster than you get from satellites, because they’re farther out, and it takes longer for real-time information to arrive.

The Russians are doing it, so why shouldn’t the Ukrainians do it? They’re not stupid, they’re very good at computer games.

Napolitano: 6:19
Is the media narrative, and this is not mainstream, I mean this comes to me from guests on this show, who are former intelligence officers themselves, that Ukrainian intel is wedded at the hip and subservient to MI6 and CIA. Is that necessarily proving to be accurate a hundred percent of the time?

Doctorow:
It’s accurate some of the time, not all of the time. It depends on what weapons we’re talking about. And when you talk about drones, as I say, the Ukrainians and the Russians are way ahead of everybody else. So what kind of help do the Ukrainians need from Britain? None. Once the drones were put in place, and this is months, if not years ago–

Napolitano:
What, do they have the intel or the satellite capability of knowing where the Russian targets are without British or American assistance? You don’t need satellite reconnaissance. That’s the whole point. The war is now done by drones which have artificial intelligence and they are doing their own targeting. That’s what this article is all about.

And I say it just is believable. I understand that this supports the overall editorial position of the “Financial Times”, which is not the position of you or me or nearly all of our viewers. That’s not the point. It doesn’t make their information less accurate.

Napolitano: 7:43
Agreed. And as you know, I devour the “Financial Times” every day, even though many times I grit my teeth at their editorial policies. Watch Foreign Minister Lavrov on Monday on this very issue. So Chris, cut number eight.

Lavrov: [English voice over]
It is obvious that the Ukrainian side is doing everything possible, but it would be absolutely helpless without the support, I was tempted to say Anglo-Saxons, but probably without Saxons, just without the support of the British. Although you never know probably by inertia, some US special forces would be involved in that, but the British are actually behind all those things I’m one hundred percent sure.

Napolitano: 8:34
Agree or disagree? Or is this misleading when he says the British are behind it? He didn’t say they paid for it or they crafted it, but they’re behind it.

Doctorow:
It’s misleading intentionally, which is another way of saying he’s lying. There’s obviously no reason to believe that Mr. Lavrov is an angel. He isn’t, why should he be? Angels do not serve at top levels of government for 20 years. They got thrown away long before that. So of course he’s saying what the current Kremlin policy is.

9:05
My insistence is that we as observers and as analysts should keep our sense of detachment from all sides, including the Russian side.

Napolitano:
Is the Kremlin finding credible or not credible President Trump’s denials of US knowledge and awareness? Because we do have this ambiguous statement from Secretary Hegseth, which I’ll play for you in a minute. But what does the Kremlin think of Trump’s denials to President Putin on the phone?

Doctorow:
If we follow up the logic of the article we were just discussing, I think President Putin was a hundred percent confident that Trump knew nothing about this. He knew nothing about it because there’s nothing to know. The actual implementation or execution of this attack on the basis was a hundred percent Ukrainian when it took place. I’m not speaking about the planning or the assistance in putting these drones where they were, but that goes back months if not years. In the present tense, the Ukrainians did it themselves.

10:14
Therefore, I’d say that Putin had to know the capabilities of those drones. And therefore he would know that Trump wasn’t informed because the US intel didn’t know exactly when this would happen.

Napolitano:
Here’s Secretary Hegseth. So it’s long. Chris will stop it after he says “following the drones in real time”. He both, he says both US knew. He’s under oath before the Senate Armed Services Committee. And he says both. “We didn’t know anything about it. Oh, and by the way, we follow the drones in real time.” You tell me what you think this means. Cut number ten.

House questioner:
Are we seeing the ushering in a new era of warfare, the use of drones from afar? After all, these drones were smuggled into Russia, hidden for a great span of time and then activated from 2,500 miles away. Are we prepared both defensively and offensively [let’s say Terry]

Hegseth:
It was a daring and very effective operation that we were not aware of in advance and reflects significant advancements in drone warfare, which we are tracking in real time inside Ukraine.

Napolitano:
Okay, we didn’t know about this, but we tracked drone warfare in real time inside Ukraine. I don’t know if he realized what he said with the second part, but I have to ask you about the first part. Is that credible that the US didn’t know about this?

Doctorow: 11:57
Let’s parse what he said.

Napolitano;
Because you’re smiling as I am over this.

Doctorow:
Let’s be very careful about this. He didn’t say that we followed this attack. He said we follow drone warfare, generic, right? I mean, you can interpret as you wish. I interpret it as a generic statement. We are monitoring drone warfare because the United States is interested. They have to have capability in this too, eventually. But he did not say that we saw this in real time.

Napolitano:
Are you satisfied that the United States did not play any role in this, notwithstanding what Foreign Minister Lavrov said? And then we’ll jump to another aspect of this.

Doctorow;
Lavrov was, look, Lavrov is not an independent party. He has been the loyal servant of whoever is his boss. When he was working for Putin in Putin’s first terms in office, he was Putin’s man and he was supporting completely the foreign policy that Putin sketched for him. When Medvedev took over and was promoting a foreign policy, I wouldn’t say 180 degrees opposite, but let’s say 90 degrees at variance with what Vladimir Putin was doing, Lavrov became a loyal servant of that policy. He is today a loyal servant of the latest Russian explanation of their policies, which is what you were just saying. It’s not, it is-

Napolitano: 13:30
Why would the Kremlin want to promote the false idea that someone was involved in this if they weren’t? Are they looking for an excuse to attack another country and widen the war? I don’t think so.

Doctorow:
Well the country involved was specifically named. They want to attack the United Kingdom. And let’s face it: they, the Brits, have been behind most every monstrous thing that has gone on in Russia, whether it’s the Navalny killing or it’s the Bucha massacre, which– these are all false-flag catastrophes that they put at the door of Russia. Who is behind this? MI6, no question about it. They have run way ahead of the Americans in this monstrous activity. The Russians know it perfectly.

14:19
If they were to sink, let’s just ask this question. If the Russians were tomorrow to sink two British nuclear submarines, what would come out of that? Nothing. The Brits can’t do a damn thing without American permission, and Washington is not going to let them go to war to see the United States cities hit the next day by Russian ICBMs.

Napolitano:
All right. If Donald Trump is telling the truth and if Pete Hegseth is telling the truth, who’s running American foreign policy? Are rogue CIA agents, or was the CIA’s hands clean of all this?

Doctorow: 14:56
Look, this is a very important question you’re asking and I’ve been in the middle of a debate over this and even comments on my appearance last week raised this question. “Oh, Doctorow says that the deep state is dead.” Ha ha ha. I’m sorry that my words have been misinterpreted intentionally.

I was saying that there’s always a deep state. The question is what kind of deep state? A deep state by definition is bureaucratic continuity. Officials have 20-, 30-year careers, and they see administrations come and go. That is normal, and it should give some stability and moderation to policy.

15:33
So nothing wrong with that. The question is, have they been purged to introduce a single policy or approach to policy? Under Dick Cheney, they were. American State Department and the agencies were purged. People who knew anything about Russia, Eastern Europe, were thrown on the street.

A lot of the career analysts were thrown on the street. And a large part of American intelligence was outsourced to commercial operations using open sources. Now, all right, then that created a new deep state, which was deeply hostile to what you believe, what I believe, and I think most of the viewers believe. Mr. Trump in his first days in office has had another purge in the deep state. When he threw out 40,000 employees of USAID more or less on the street [he] was going at the jugular vein of the neocon control of the federal government.

16:35
So when we speak about rogue CIA, I don’t believe it for a minute. I think those people have been, have gotten the fear of God in them.

Napolitano:
If Trump stops all US aid to Ukraine, can Ukraine continue to maintain the war using its superiority in drone warfare?

Doctorow:
Unclear. But the notion– There have been apocalyptic statements by my peers in the last week or two, how Ukraine is going down the drain, how it’s going to be overrun, how the Russians will be at the Dnepr tomorrow. I don’t agree with that. These are hyperventilating. Does that mean that Ukraine will go on for 20 years? I hope not. I also, again, keep our distance.

Let’s keep our distance from everybody. I keep my distance from Mr. Medinsky when he said, “Well, they did great for 21 years against Sweden. We can do the same.” No, you cannot do the same.

Mr. Putin will likely not be in office five years from now, let alone 20 years from now. Russia’s event, Russia got into this war in February of 2022 for one specific reason. They had a window of opportunity where they knew that strategically they were five to ten years ahead of the United States in weapons systems, particularly in hypersonic missiles, and not only. And they had made themselves sanction proof. In the eight years while the United States was building up Ukraine, the Russians were building up themselves.

18:17
So on these two grounds they were, had a window opportunity that would not extend forever. The Europeans now are throwing hundreds of billions of dollars into defense industry. There will be results.

Napolitano:
What is the pressure, if any, from either his inner circle, elites, or the public perception of the war going on and on and on, on President Putin? Is that pressure to maintain the slow, methodical, patient, and exorably slow pace of the war. or to just get it over with once and for all?

Doctorow:
We cannot say with any certainty. And let me be specific why. Look, I follow, you know, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, this particular program has a very large followership in Russia. They now have “Judging Freedom” is now, a few hours after it goes on the internet, it is available in Russian with a voiceover or synchronized lips, the whole thing, AI control, beautiful. And it gets 100,000 views.

It gets as many views per program, per individual and per topic, as you get in the English original. Now, I look occasionally at these videos. I look at the comments section. And I can tell you, I don’t like what I see. There is a very strong xenophobic current, anti-Western current.

They are not kind to you, they’re not kind to me, they’re not kind to anybody in the West. Now, is that justified? Of course it is. Is it nice to see? It certainly isn’t.

20:03
So these people are defending Mr. Putin, by the way. They’re questioning you or me or anybody who suggests in any way that Russia does not support their president. So that is a strain that is certainly present and that Mr. Putin’s advisors no doubt are watching. At the same time–

Napolitano:
As you have written, Russia is not the brutal murderous dictatorship that it was in 1942. It’s now a democracy in which people can express their opinion and Putin relies in large measure for everything he does on popular support, as it should be.

Doctorow:
I agree. By the way, the latest proof that it’s not what it was in 1942 were the pictures of the returning young men who were prisoners of war and were released in the exchanges that took place on Monday.

And they were interviewed with smiling faces and the people like Grymodinsky and others who were interviewed were speaking about humane policies now. Let’s remember what happened in 1942, 1945. Russian prisoners of war returning from Germany were incarcerated if they weren’t shot. That was the dictatorship of the 1940s of Mr. Stalin.

21:20
That is worlds apart from Russia today. Is Mr. Putin susceptible to the currents of popular thinking in Russia? Of course he is.

Napolitano:
Last question or last subject matter, Professor Doctorow: the Ukrainian nuclear assets, who has them? Does Russia have them? Does the United States covet them? Are they still Ukrainian?

Doctorow:
Let’s go back a few weeks. So this was something, a subject, I believe we discussed. And again, I got some real flack from readers of what, of my essays on this subject, to say, well, what … right does Mr. Trump have to make claims on the … Ukrainian nuclear reactors as a source of possible revenue to offset the shipments of arms to Ukraine during the Biden administration? Well, it sounded like a really peculiar thing. Where did he pull this out of, other than the fact that there will be money there, it’s clear. All of the coal burning and gas and the oil burning, traditional power generation has been knocked out by the Russians.

22:32
And I didn’t touch the nuclear plants. They’ve been shut down because of risk of war, but they can be started up instantly. And so this would be a likely source of important revenue which Mr. Trump would like to tap into. But there’s more to it than that, and it’s not my say.

It was the Russian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Ryabkov, who was quoted in “Commercant”– which is one of the more responsible business-oriented daily newspapers and online newspapers in Russia– as saying, “We’ll have to talk to the Americans about this.” He’s speaking about the Zaporozhzhye nuclear plant, which is Europe’s largest, of course, Ukraine’s largest, with six reactors on site. “We have to speak to the Americans about this because you know, four out of the six reactors are now fueled by Westinghouse. And there are American technicians who supervise the transition.” So it’s more complicated than it looks.

Napolitano: 23:29
I can’t make this stuff up. Professor Doctorow, thank you very much. Your analysis is always scintillating, even if you are iconic. I welcome it here. I welcome your views.

And of course, I welcome all of our Russian viewers. And thank you for reminding me that they are out there. I did have the opportunity to speak via the internet to a Russian gathering put together by our mutual friend, Dmitry Simes, and I’m happy that it was well received, particularly when I referred to Russia as Mother Russia. Professor Doctorow, thank you, all the best. We’ll look forward to seeing you next week.

Doctorow:
Thank you.

Napolitano:
Okay. And coming up later today at 11 o’clock this morning, Professor, oh, God, I don’t remember who we have on. At 11 o’clock, Colonel Douglas McGregor. Bear with me a minute here.

Sorry for that. At 11 o’clock, Colonel Douglas McGregor. At 3 o’clock, Daniel McAdams, who’s not new to the show, but who’s going to talk about, “do we still have a constitution?” And at four o’clock, what are the British up to? with our former British diplomat, Ian Proud.

Transcript submitted by a reader

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

Exposing the deep state and government overreach. You’re with Pelle Neroth Taylor on Today’s News Talk, The Pulse.

Taylor: 0:10
Welcome to the Pelle Neroth Taylor show. Well, we’re going to talk about Ukraine again today. I make no apologies for that. It’s a question of, an existential question for all of us. Trump famously said he’s not worried about global warming but he’s worried about the global warming that results from a nuclear explosion.

So with us today we’ve got Gilbert Doctorow, who for many of you he doesn’t need an introduction, but I’ll give an introduction anyway. He’s got a PhD in Russian history from Colombia and speaks fluent Russian. He spent most of his life in corporate Russia, with a focus on Russia. He’s written five books of essays and is well known from various podcasts and YouTube videos. And actually I’m a regular viewer of his, and so it’s a great privilege for me to have him. And he’s just published a book of a kind of war diary, which I guess covers his travels to Russia. I think he’s got a flat in St. Petersburg. Welcome to the show, Professor Doctorow.

Gilbert Doctorow, PhD:
Well, thanks for having me.

Taylor:
What, well, tell us a little bit about your book, and then we’ll spend the first part of the show on that. I’m quite curious, just because you’ve got inside experiences, I guess, of actually going to Russia, you speak the language, you watch the media closely, you have a finger-spitzke feel, a feeling of what’s really going on there, and you see how the country’s really doing, you talk to a lot of people there. And then maybe we can focus on some of the other stuff, like the momentous events that are taking place behind the scenes or in front of the scenes. So what would, tell us about your book and what it’s about.

Doctorow:
Well I say first of all what it isn’t. This is not a comprehensive history of the war. It is instead a view of how Russia fared during the war, based on my visits there both before the start of the special military operation and during. This book covers the periods ’22, ’23, when almost all foreign journalists had left Russia. And so my contributions, which you find in this book, to my observations on what is going on in Russia. By that I mean how consumers are doing, what the feeling of prosperity or poverty is, what the chattering classes are saying. And that comes from my following the major talk shows and state newscasts, which are widely watched and talked about in Russia.

So these are observations. Also books that were published which are very relevant to our understanding of this war. For example, a book about the 85 days in which the town of Slavyansk, which is in the center of Donetsk province, which gets a lot of news because it is the front line today. Anyway, this town was a kind of Alamo of Ukraine in 2014. It was the cradle of what the Russians call the Russian Renaissance, the rebirth. And it held out against vastly superior Ukrainian forces.

Well that was written about in a very competent book. It received very little attention in the West. And that’s the sort of thing that I covered and described in some essays. Or I described some documentaries that were produced in Russia relating to the experience of two nations living together for several centuries, that is Russia and Ukraine. These documentaries I found to be highly informative and they received no coverage in the West. Well, I covered them.

So aside from my own personal observations of what I saw in street markets, the supermarkets, in electronic stores and so forth, what I heard from my taxi drivers, and at least in the period of ’22, ’23, taxi drivers were a very good source of information on what’s going on, particularly if you happen to have, as I did once, a retired colonel in the military intelligence driving the car. So this is what you’ll find in this book.

It is, I just will say one more word, that I view my role here not as an historian in the sense of going through what happened after it happened, but as a chronicler of what’s happened around me and I recorded that. That’s why I call these diaries.

Taylor: 4:28
I think it’s an incredibly important perspective because a lot of us, a lot of people in the alternative media, independent media, call it whatever you like, we’re willing to give Russia, you know, the benefit of the doubt simply because of our own-side lies and propaganda, but you’re able to give a xxxx you speak Russian and you not quite as– you don’t watch Russia with quite the same rose-tinted glasses, and you have a more realistic view. Let’s say somebody who watches the independent shows and believes that the CIA does terrible things, and all that, I’m all on board with that. And read, I mean there’s that fantastic book called _Unprovoked_. I think Scott Horton is very good on that historical aspect. Reading your book, what perspective coming away from that, what piece of the puzzle would you be able to contribute that they wouldn’t get from us Anglophones?

Doctorow:
Precisely the Russian perspective. I am well aware of this _Unprovoked_. I bought the book. I glanced through it. It is a different approach, of course. It is documentary. It is, again, history looking backwards. It’s compiling relevant documents after the fact. What you find after the fact is very different from what you find around you in timepresent. My diaries are diaries in the sense that they are time-present.

They’re not making reference to landmarks. And this gives you advantages and certain disadvantages. The advantage is that you can understand what it’s like to live in the period. People living in the period weren’t reading history books. They were always guessing what comes next.

And part of this was the natural circumstances of what’s called the fog of war, where states intentionally conceal what is going on, because they don’t want to affect their electorate in a way that gets people very wound up, very militant, or very exasperated with the government. They want to keep people calm, so they don’t give out the facts. That’s true on both sides, both the Russians and the Ukrainian side. Then you have the distortions that are put in after the fact for political reasons. I think of something very relevant, very recent.

We all know that there was a nearly-signed peace treaty between Russia and Ukraine that was negotiated in Istanbul in the end of March 2022. We learned some details about this. When President Putin held it up in front of reporters, there was a thick document that you see, he initialed everything. It was all set to be signed off by the two presidents, himself and Zelensky. And then came Boris Johnson and persuaded Zelensky not to sign it, and it was finished. And we know that close to a million people have lost their lives ever since then in three years of war.

This is a very nice perspective, but I believe it doesn’t reflect the facts. Certainly, it doesn’t reflect what you’ll find in my book. I took diary notes. I hardly covered, and only one diary mention, did I speak about the negotiations in Istanbul.

At the time, it seemed improbable to succeed, with or without Mr. Johnson coming. In fact, his coming was hardly known. The point is that after the fact, we can say probably the Russians didn’t really want to implement that. And we certainly know the Ukrainians didn’t, because they staged the massacre in Bucha, which was used to justify breaking off all negotiations.

So could there have been a peace really signed in March, April, 2022? It’s not clear. And here we have a distortion that’s introduced into the current events, what you find in newspapers today, introduced actually by Mr. Putin, which gives us a false understanding what the chances were.

Taylor:
Well, I mean, that’s a very interesting perspective, because you’re saying that as somebody who is not you know, a Ukrainian fan boy, part of the mainstream media propaganda machine. I mean you’ve got a lot of integrity and you’re sort of saying something against the Russians here, saying that they, post the event, are reconstructing a story that makes them look more peace-minded. But how can you be sure that your contemporaneous perspective writing diary notes was more accurate than what was going on behind the scenes? I mean, maybe … they were keen on peace; they just didn’t tell the talk shows that you were watching or that the taxi drivers that you interviewing.

Doctorow:
Of course, nobody could be certain, and it probably will be 50 years from now before you can draw final conclusions, if then. History by its very nature is always being rewritten. Not necessarily distorted, but the events are viewed from different perspectives, because we know where they led. 20 years from now, 50 years from now, you know where they led. Today we don’t. And so you draw out different elements that took place in the time- present, today, and you give them a different interpretation.

9:43
I didn’t mean to say that Mr. Putin is distorting things, but he is omitting something very important. There was considerable dissatisfaction within Russian elites over what little they knew about that peace treaty, because it seemed to confer far too many concessions to the Ukrainians. And so I don’t think that– I don’t think, I know– that Russian elites, the people who set the limits on what Mr. Putin can do, because it is a democracy, different from ours, but is a democracy, and Putin is responsible and answerable to a large swathes of the population.

And they were not happy with it. So that is as much as I can say. Was this decisive? Would it have been executed if Boris Johnson had not intervened? Would it have been executed if MI6 did not stage the Bucha massacre, to put at the door of the Russians and find an excuse for breaking up negotiations? Who knows? But the question has to be posed. And looking at media discussions today, it isn’t being posed.

Taylor:
So I get you, I mean that’s interesting, because the Ukrainians rejected even something that the Russian elites thought was too generous to them, which makes me wonder whether anything will be resolved now when Putin is likely to be even harder. I mean that he might satisfy his public opinion, but he’s certainly even less likely to satisfy the Ukrainians, although of course they’re now losing, they’re be more amenable to a deal.

Doctorow:
You’ve identified precisely the reason why I raised this question. It’s not an abstract, it’s not something picayune, something of minor– no, no, it’s something major in understanding where we are today. Can the sides reach an agreement when they’re so far apart?

Taylor:
I mean, just what do you think the Russians were trying to achieve in 2022? I mean, I was talking to another guest and I’m wondering whether the West was trying to put, it’s called a Zugzwang in chess apparently, trying to make your opponent have just bad choices. Whatever he does, it’s bad. So if Putin didn’t invade, they’d carry on the boiling-the-frog method of putting more CIA bases into Ukraine, giving Zelensky his lines about, you know, rearming and getting nukes, reinforcing the Black Sea bases, which the British navy could then get into. And if they, so they get worse and worse for Putin. But if he did invade, they’d hammer Russia with sanctions and they probably believe that they could destroy the Russian economy that way. So that’s the Zugzwang, apparently. And Putin could see this, and he acted on that. Would you agree with that?

Doctorow:
Let me, something, a point that I make at the very beginning of my book, which is worth repeating here. There were many explanations made by the Russians of why they went into the special military operation. And some of them were the ones that you are thinking now, which are national security issues.

Others you have not mentioned, but were also very prominent. And that was the Russian national defense, defense of Russian national interests of the speakers of Russian in Ukraine who had been subjected to oppression, to military strikes on their residences. And I’m speaking now about those provinces in the east of Ukraine who refused to accept the coup d’etat of February 2014 and who rebelled. These were then supported largely verbally, diplomatically, very little militarily, by Russia from 2014 on. And to protect them from an ethnic cleansing or genocide, which is one of the reasons why Putin went in, in February 2022.

He had– his intelligence told him that the Ukrainians were ready to pounce. They had concentrated 120,000, 150,000, more than half of their total military they had concentrated on the border with the rebelling provinces. And they had been armed to the teeth by their Western friends. And so [it was] supposed by Moscow that there was going to be a genocide. And they moved in on the same principles as the West moved into Libya of the right to defend or the obligation to defend and protect.

So that is a big aside to the … special military operation. It is important, because that is something that Mr. Putin can address to his public. It speaks to the heart. It is our people, our brothers, our sisters are facing a massacre.

14:52
They certainly are facing daily bombardment for the last eight years from the Kievan forces, meaning that 14,000 civilians in these rebelling provinces had been killed by, largely by artillery shells and short-range missiles fired by the Ukrainian government at the rebels in their residences, in their playgrounds, in their hospitals. So that plays to the, that message plays to the heartstrings of any people, and the Russian people included. The other side of it, which you were discussing, I think was what really drove this. It was the national security, if the British succeed in establishing naval bases within easy striking range of Sevastopol [ewhere] the Russian Navy had its Black Sea headquarters. If missiles, long-range missiles are put in by the Americans and others into Ukraine, then Russia faces a severe security risk.

But you can’t talk to your people about that. People do not, people anywhere, they are not moved by these issues of military balance, of raison d’etat, state interests. People do not take that up, send their sons, their fathers, their husbands out to possibly die for these reasons. When you say that it’s to preserve the lives of your distant relatives, and of course there are many intermarriages between Russians and Ukrainians of your distant relatives, your cousins, your father-in-law, whatever, in these areas of Ukraine, then people are willing to sacrifice their lives for that purpose. So there are several reasons, as I say.

Taylor:
Very good. And you’ve actually explained it. I mean, I didn’t know that the Ukrainians had gathered quite so many. But it’s interesting, because Zelensky was telling the world media that he wasn’t expecting the Russians to attack even as he must have known it because he was escalating on the border there although I did know that the OSCE the organization that was patrolling the border and monitoring the border showed a huge uptick in fire, on shellings, just before the February invasion, which no one in the West reported.

We’re just going to go into a break and back after the break.
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Taylor: 18:42
Welcome back to the Pelle Neroth Taylor Show. We’ve got Gilbert Doctorow with us, who’s just written a book of war diaries, which covers him as one of the few sort of geopolitical analysts out there who’s actually speaks Russian and has been to Russia and regularly during this special military operation. I think he’s got a flat in St. Petersburg and he wrote a contemporary, contemporaneous diary, which I think fills in some of the gaps because I said history, we’re always looking back, and we kind of, even the best historians create a post hoc reconstruction of events and yours has got the freshness of being written at the time, and you explained very … clearly what Putin’s motivations would have been there. I just, this Bucha massacre, what’s been worrying about me, I mean, since that happened, is whether the Brits or someone else will stage another false flag to create something else, right?

You know, I mean, that was to stop– that was to create opinion in the West against peace. Would they do something like that again, because if the stakes are so high, and that might bring us into what Merz is doing, you know, the German Chancellor, he’s provoking, or, you know, the Russians must be absolutely neuralgic about this, a German Chancellor, Lavrov has been calling, comparing him almost to Hitler, perhaps either firing, knocking down the Kerch bridge which is of huge symbolic value, or maybe even striking Moscow which would force Putin to listen to the public opinion and maybe strike Germany and then we’re into World War Three territory. What is Merz trying to do, and what are the Russians doing to combat that?

Doctorow: 20:11
Well, the Russians have very effective air defence. We have heard in the last week, just before Mr. Trump said that he didn’t know what got into Putin, that Putin is absolutely crazy. Before he said that, and the reason he said it, how justified in saying that, is that all Western media were reporting on the devastating strikes. These are combination strikes of drones and precision missiles, either ground-launched or air-launched from significant distances, either from the Black Sea or interior of Russia, against major cities, foremost of them Kiev, but also other cities around Ukraine in the last week, or particularly concentrated over last weekend.

What our Western media has not reported was what touched that off. Again, throughout the war, it’s been a, the coverage has been like in a kindergarten playground where the camera shows the fellow who punches the other kid back, but doesn’t show how he was punched first.

And that’s exactly what we have here. In the lead-up to these Russian revenge attacks– that’s what they call them openly, revenge attacks– the Ukrainians had fired more missiles, so it was like 2,000 to 2,500 missiles were fired, say 50-50 between the Russian-occupied eastern provinces of Ukraine and Russian Federation proper. In the latter category, many of them were concentrated on the city of Moscow. The Russians claimed that they knocked down, which means either they shot them down or they used electronic warfare to down them, to disarm the software guiding the drones.

These were drones. And everyone talks about how Ukraine needs missiles in order to do damage to Russia. Well, this is absolutely empty talk. The Ukrainians are doing very well, thank you, with long-range airplane-like, airplane-shaped drones. And they cover 1,000 kilometers or more.

So the idea of striking Moscow or striking industrial or residential cities in the middle of Russia doesn’t require a missile. They’re doing very well with drones, and drones are actually harder to locate, to identify and to destroy than missiles are. So in that sense the Russians were very, very upset about 2,400 drones swarming. And although they nearly were all downed, that doesn’t tell you this whole story. We all know that drone attacks lead to deaths and damage, not from the drone hitting the target, but from the pieces of a destroyed drone coming down to earth.

And so there were deaths among civilians in Russia, even as the Russian military could claim that their air defenses stopped all the drones. And the response was what I’ve said. Russians say that they concentrated their efforts on identifiable military targets as confirmed by reconnaissance drones. And they’ve shown on television just what damage they did to this airport which was used to launch F-16s that themselves launched Storm Shadow missiles against Russia or against a container ship in the port of Odessa which had 100 containers of various assemblies for making highly high-powered drones, kamikaze drones. This type of site was destroyed.

And you’ve seen pictures of it. And then the Ukrainians are rushing to our press to say that the Russians have struck civilian targets. The numbers speak for themselves. If the Russians indeed launched in three days from this last weekend 1,000 or more drones and missiles. The Ukrainians speak of 13 or 30 civilian deaths.

What they don’t speak about of course is military deaths, which were, one can assume substantial because among the targets were barracks of mercenaries, French mercenaries, by the way, and Ukrainian armed forces. But civilian deaths, 30. This is negligible.

Taylor:
It’s incredible. I mean, it’s the … war with the least number of civilian deaths in history probably isn’t it? And the aim of this, of course, was to break up the peace talks between Russia and the rapprochement between Russia and the United States with the assistance of the Western media which just reports on what the Russians did and then allows Merz to say, sort of evoke pictures of terror bombings of World War Two somehow, and then maybe get those bone-crunching sanctions and then break off relations between Trump and Putin because the media– because Trump seemed quite surprised by what– when some reporter pointed out that the Ukrainians had struck first.

25:58
We’ve just got time for one last question, although I’d love to continue for longer. A lot of the independent media are kind of gone sour on Trump, you know. They say they feel he’s a traitor and that he’s listening to his neocons. But you made an interesting point.

Check out Gilbert Doctorow dot com for your essays and your transcripts of your interviews. You make the point that he’s actually a brave man and he knows what he’s doing. He probably knows much more than what people attribute to him. So you said this is the man who approved closing down USAID, the main instrument for regime change paid for by the CIA. The man who’s decapitated the US intelligence agencies now purging the State Department, who’s scaling back the National Security Council from a bloated 200 staff under Biden to a headcount of 60.

The man who’s doing all this cannot be a buffoon. He is a brave man, knowing what he’s doing and probably throwing out a lot of chaff to confuse people and his enemies while being kind of laser focused, you know, playing the buffoon but like he knows what he’s doing. Can you just expand on that for about a minute or two?

Doctorow:
Trump talks a lot. Trump talks too much. But his talk is intended to confuse people. He’s not confused, I assure you. And I’ve said the thing about Trump is follow what he does, not don’t follow what he says. What he says is intended to disarm his opponents, to let them believe that he’s a buffoon and that they can influence him and bring him around to their positions. If they believe that, then they don’t stick a dagger in his back. And that is what it’s all about.

But when you look at what he’s done, you just enumerated the things he’s done. He didn’t even talk about them. They, in fact, are destroying the power base of neocons in the federal government. And people heard about them because, oh, yes, because Elon Musk is saving money.

That was also a cover. Why exactly is the first place he looked to save money to close down USAID, which was the main instrument for CIA money to stage color revolutions around the world? So trust Trump that he’s no fool. He is not a likeable personality. I’m not praising him for his egotism and his in-your-face behavior, but he’s saving our lives.

And he’s certainly saving free speech, despite contradictions about about free speech over … Gaza and so forth. That’s all he’s [crazy for].

Taylor:
But I mean– sometimes I disagree with him over Gaza– but I mean if he stops the war in Ukraine, at least thank him for that. And there’s some people in independent media so blinded by his apparent kowtowing to Zionism that they can’t credit him for for Ukraine. Anyway, maybe that’s for another time or do you want to say some last thing?

Doctorow:
Well, it’s the last point. It’s all politics. I, He is, his feet are pointing now towards disengagement with Israel, not just with Netanyahu. But the question is, how can he put through his peace plan on Russia and Ukraine, or how can he withdraw the United States from that conflict, as he says he would like to do, without having political capital?

You don’t do anything without political capital in the federal government. And if he were to do the decent thing, the honest thing, and to denounce what Israel is doing in Gaza for what it is, genocide, he would lose in one day all of his political capital and would be able to do nothing to save you, me and the rest of the world from a third world war over Ukraine.

Taylor: 29:35
Absolutely. I agree with all that. Amen to that. Thank you so much, sir. It’s incredibly interesting discussion there. Gilbert Doctorow, you can see the name at the bottom with a dot com. You’ll find your website and you Google that, go to Amazon. I guess you can find that and in many good bookstores Thank you so much, sir.

This is the Pelle Neroth Taylor Show, and we’ll be back after the break.