By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

War fighters like President Donald Trump can’t be seen to run away from losing their wars.

As Trump recently declared from the deck of the USS Harry Truman, celebrating the birthday of the US Navy: “We won World War I, we won World War II, we won everything in between. We won everything before… In Vietnam, the Navy unleashed Operation Rolling Thunder and deployed a brand new unit, the Navy Seals, to tear up Mekong River Delta. Problem with Vietnam, we, you know, we stopped fighting to win. We would’ve won easy. We would’ve won Afghanistan easy, would’ve won every war easy. But we got politically correct, ‘Ah, let’s take it easy.’ It’s, we’re not politically correct anymore, just so you understand. We win — Now, we win. We don’t want to be politically correct anymore.”  

In the latest blitz of Anglo-American press leaks, Trump has authorized his chief prompter Vice President JD Vance (lead image, centre), his bagman Steven Witkoff, and Vance’s university chum Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll (right) to concede 28 of the 31 points of Russia’s June 2 term-sheet for ending the Ukraine war;   to tell the newspapers this is their “new peace plan for Ukraine”;  and demand that the Zelensky regime and their European allies “under pressure both on the battlefield and on the home front (due to a burgeoning corruption scandal), will have to accept what’s on offer.”  

Cautionaries have followed from the Russian Foreign Ministry and the Kremlin to look through  the smokescreen.

“We’ve seen numerous biased articles and articles that describe various processes in every possible way,” said Maria Zakharova, spokesman for Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, “only to be refuted later, and so on. I will say what we should base our assessment of such publications on. There are official channels known in the United States for resolving relevant issues, discussing them, and conducting negotiations. These channels must be used by all means. The Foreign Ministry has not received any information from the American side in this context.”  

Dmitry Peskov, President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, said: “Moscow and Washington are not working on any new initiatives regarding the Ukrainian settlement beyond the agreements reached by Russian President Vladimir Putin and US leader Donald Trump in Alaska”.  As for Driscoll’s newly publicized role as go-between, Peskov said “there are no plans” to communicate with him.

Russian officials like Kirill Dmitriev have been telling American reporters “he spent three days huddled with Witkoff and other members of Trump’s team when Dmitriev visited Miami from Oct. 24-26. Dmitriev expressed optimism about the [new peace] deal’s chances of success because, unlike past efforts, ‘we feel the Russian position is really being heard.’”  This is Russian for “I’m in control here and not to worry”. After that notorious fabrication from US Secretary of State Alexander Haig when President Ronald Reagan had been shot, Reagan recovered; Haig did not.   

View the new podcast with Jamarl Thomas to measure the American retreat and what the Russians are doing to force it.

“I think there is a healthy competition between the official diplomacy and the unofficial”, Oleg Tsarev has commented on the public notes from the Foreign Ministry, Kremlin, and Dmitriev. “I’m cheering for both sides. Let Russia win.”  Tsarev is a leading Ukrainian opposition candidate for president currently based in Russian Crimea.

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by Editor - Thursday, November 20th, 2025
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

Start with the condition of President Donald Trump’s brain, according to his mouth.  

“Question: Mr. President, could you tell us why you needed to get an MRI? I, I understand that the results were good, but what was it for?

Donald Trump: Because it’s part of my physical. Getting an MRI is very standard. Well, you think I shouldn’t have it? Other people got it. I had an MRI. Here’s what you s- — serious. I had an MRI. The doctor said it was the best result he has ever seen as a doctor. That’s it. But I had an MRI as part of my standard yearly or every w- — I think they do it every two years, but I have the physical every year. And the result was outstanding.

Question: Is it your brain or —

Donald Trump: Uh, I have no idea what they analyzed, but whatever they analyzed, they analyzed it well. And they said that I had as good a result as they’ve ever seen. Now the other thing I took is I took as you know, a, uh, advanced, very advanced test on mental acuity. Because I think a president should have to do that. And as you probably heard, I aced it. I got a perfect score. I got the highest one, I got a perfect score. And the only reason I tell you that is it’s one subject, unlike Biden and others, that you can take off your plan.”  

Now measure the distance which Trump’s legs have been running from his warmaking fronts against Russia in the Ukraine, Germany, India, and Venezuela – and in the latest debate over Gaza peace terms in the United Nations Security Council. Listen to the new podcast with Nima Alkhorshid.   

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by Editor - Tuesday, November 18th, 2025
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

It is just five weeks since President Donald Trump failed to win the Nobel peace prize. The armed resistance of Iran and Venezuela has already forced him to postpone his Plan A – that’s  for regime change by what Trump likes to call his “obliteration force”.  Trump’s Plan B is for regime change by covert operations.  In Kiev, Berlin, Tallinn, Ottawa, and Delhi these are turning out to be just as noisy and as dirty.   

To clean up behind Trump, this news-breaking podcast from Dimitri Lascaris, aired from Montreal on Sunday morning, is double-length, four-ply, and forest-friendly.

Part I, the first 65 minutes, focuses on US plotting to replace Vladimir Zelensky and replace him with others equally bent on continuing the war against Russia; on German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s scheme for making his political party and the German army great again by continuing the war against Russia; and on the media battle for Canadian votes as Prime Minister Mark Carney continues the war against Russia.

Part II, for 30 minutes, opens with the terrorist bombing in Delhi last Monday, the Pakistan directions, the Trump connections, and India’s military options for the days ahead,  as they will be discussed in Moscow on Monday when Russia’s allies gather together in the Shanghai Cooperation Council meeting.

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by Editor - Monday, November 17th, 2025
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

Estonian politics are being turned upside down because of a leaked report into the diversion of defence spending.

The timing is not an unlucky coincidence. It is the result of the country’s leaders claiming kudos for leading the NATO alliance in lifting the military proportion of their Gross Domestic Product (GDP) from 3.4% to 5.4%.

This increase was enacted in April when the Estonian government and parliament approved a four-year €2.8 billion additional defence funding bill in order to meet the NATO target dictated by President Donald Trump. The increased spending will lift Estonia from the 19^th rank of the global defence/GDP ratio, four ranks behind Poland (4.15% as of 2024  ) and one rank behind the US (3.42%), to lead the NATO member states.  

“I really, from this podium, in this building, want to applaud your leadership on meeting the five percent defense spending target, not years down the road but in all of your countries in 2026,” US Defense Secretary Peter Hegseth announced at a Pentagon meeting with Hanno Pevkur, the Estonian defense minister on July 25; beside Pevkur were his Latvian and Lithuanian counterparts. “It underscores your dedication to the Alliance’s security and sets a very clear example for others to follow.”  

Pevkur replied: “Our meeting today is a testimony to the strong and trusted partnership between the Baltic States and the United States…We stand up for one another and we defend each other when it’s needed. This is what brotherhood in arms truly means.”  

In the Estonian language, that last sentence of Pevkur’s means brother’s hands in each other’s pockets.  

According to official announcements in Tallinn late last month, Pevkur has agreed to spend $4.73 billion on new US HIMARS artillery systems and ammunition.   More than €10 billion ($12 billion) in defence spending is now planned for the four-year period, 2026-2029.  The Estonian media report that “procurement accounts for 37 percent of the budget, ammunition for 25 percent, personnel costs for 14 percent, operating expenses for 13 percent, intelligence and early warning for 3 percent, support for the Defense League [citizen mobilisation] for 3 percent and infrastructure investments for 5 percent.”   

More than half of this total is expected to go directly to the US military-industrial complex and a Ukraine-sized percentage of 10% to 15% return to Estonian middlemen as commissions. US and European military companies are also being invited to invest in new production of weapons and security technology in Estonia itself. “Estonia also plans,” the government says, “to invest €50 million in defence industry and innovation, including the establishment of a Future Capabilities and Innovation Command and a new defence industry park in Pärnu County.”   The list of Russia warfighting allies to supply – sell to Tallin — was published in this Estonian government report, issued before the Trump increase was implemented.     

This is the greatest boondoggle in the history of Estonia since the country pinned its hopes on Adolf Hitler and German military investment between 1941 and 1944.

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by Editor - Friday, November 14th, 2025
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

Since Chrystia Freeland (lead image) was dismissed from her Canadian Cabinet ministry on September 16,    she has become the “Special Representative for the Reconstruction of Ukraine.” This is a camouflage uniform.

According to the official filing in parliament on November 5 by the Privy Council Office (PCO) on behalf of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, Freeland has no staff for her post, no office, no budget, no travel expenses, and a pay cut of $79,700. The Privy Council Office, reporting to the House of Commons, says it has “searched its financial records and did not find any costs, start-up or otherwise, related to the role of the Special Representative for the Reconstruction of Ukraine.”   

As the longest-serving warfighter against Russia in Canadian government, Freeland is now a full-fledged foreign mercenary on the Ukraine battlefield.

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by Editor - Wednesday, November 12th, 2025
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

For the time being, the Trump Administration has put its strategy for regime change by obliteration on hold in Iran and Venezuela, where Russian-backed defences are increasingly  deterring and US voters hostile.  Instead, as Trump has signalled himself, the US is focusing instead on covert operations with the same goal – kill targets, topple resistance, risk no US military casualties, make money.

“Sometimes people have to fight it out a little bit longer,” Trump said last week of the war in the Ukraine as he abandoned his demand that President Vladimir Putin accept an immediate ceasefire.   

“I don’t think we’re going to necessarily ask for a declaration of war,” Trump had said of his campaign against Venezuela on October 23.  “We’re just gonna kill people that are bringing drugs into our country, OK.  We’re gonna kill them. You know, like they’re gonna be, like, dead.”

 “The US is not currently planning to launch strikes inside Venezuela and doesn’t have a legal justification that would support attacks against any land targets right now, according to sources familiar with the briefing conducted by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and an official from the White House’s Office of Legal Counsel.”  

The Trump officials were responding to the joint House and Senate resolution, introduced on October 16, ordering “the removal of United States Armed Forces from hostilities within or against Venezuela that have not been authorized by Congress.”   The text declared as a finding that Trump had issued an “authorization for the Central Intelligence Agency to conduct covert lethal operations within Venezuela”. There was no objection to this,  nor was there a finding that Venezuela did not pose a threat to the US. Instead, the resolution declared that under the war powers provision of the Constitution, Congress should decide “the question of whether United States forces should be engaged in hostilities within or against Venezuela should be answered following a full briefing to Congress and the American public of the issues at stake, a public debate in Congress, and a congressional vote as contemplated by the Constitution.”

Covert operations could continue without any of that, but if land targets were to be attacked, that would require “full briefing” in Congress and the press, public debate, and a vote. If Trump attacked with the naval, air and Marine forces currently in the Caribbean, Congress proposed to stop the money.  

To head off this direct challenge, Rubio, Hegseth,  and a White House lawyer promised to stick to covert operations against President Nicolas Maduro, and restrict military operations to alleged drug-running at sea.   On November 6 the resolution drew 49 Senate votes, but it was defeated by a majority of two, 51 to 49.   

“The Trump administration is seeking a separate legal opinion from the Justice Department that would provide a justification for launching strikes against land targets without needing to ask Congress to authorize military force, though no decisions have been made yet to move forward with an attack inside the country, a US official said. ‘What is true one day may very well not be the next,’ said that US official when discussing the current state of the policy, pointing out that Trump has not decided how he will handle Venezuela.”  Trump was uncharacteristically silent in his press gaggles and tweets after the Senate vote on November 6.
He has reverted to covert operations against “drug cartels”; for details click here   and here.  

This is not the first time in Trump history that he has been compelled to retreat by greater force than he dares to risk engaging directly.  The sustained crowd booing against Trump in Landover, Maryland, on November 9 shows that the smokescreen is also failing. Click to listen.  

In the new podcast with Nima Alkhorshid, the discussion focuses first on Trump’s covert operations goals in Syria, following the Washington visit of acting Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa (Al-Jolani); in the Ukraine,  as threats to the Zelensky regime mount on the battlefield and in the Kiev government itself; and in India, following a terror group bombing in the centre of Delhi, as the Indian Government prepares for President Putin’s visit on December 6.

In the last segment, we discuss the only covert US operation for regime change for which the White House has explicitly apologized*, and then continued to implement – so successfully that no further US intervention has been needed because the government is totally subservient. This is Australia on the 50^th anniversary of the November 11, 1975, dismissal of the Australian Labor Party government of Gough Whitlam, followed by the 1977 plot to appoint a new head of state, Governor-General Zelman Cowen.

Click to view and listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGCzc8JpFlg 

For elaboration of the evidence, alternative assessments, and independent sources, read on.

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by Editor - Tuesday, November 11th, 2025
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

Russians are crying over the milk they can no longer afford to buy. The reason is that their income isn’t keeping up with the rapid rise in the price of milk, butter, and cheese.

Elvira Nabiullina (lead image, left), Governor of the Central Bank of Russia (CBR), is to blame.

The explanation, according to the National Association of Milk Producers (Soyuzmoloko) and dairy industry experts, is that Nabiullina’s policy of keeping the CBR’s key interest rate high is driving the economy into loss of demand and supply, falling investment, output and  income, and at the same time rising prices combining altogether into a recession spiral.

“A slight reduction in the interest rate in question will not solve the problems in the industry,” says Sergei Blum, chief executive of Agromilk, publisher of the industry bible Dairy News. “The profitability of milk production has dropped significantly, and the current rate, which is essentially prohibitive, cannot affect this in any way. At a rate of 10%-11%, we will see stagnation in the industry. Recovery is possible only between 5% and 7%. The current level of the key rate has had a very negative impact on the leasing market, as well as on the secondary market of [used] agricultural machinery. Obviously, no one will give much clarity about how the key rate will change — this is not practiced anywhere in the world.”  

In fact, accompanying the October 24 reduction of the key rate to 16.5%, Nabiullina issued CBR forecasts for three years – stagnation this year, and in 2026-27 recession with negative GDP growth rates between 2.5% and 3.5%. “The upward deviation of the Russian economy from a balanced growth path is narrowing,” Nabiullina reported this euphemistically and then admitted the truth. “The Russian economy’s potential and its growth rates will both decline. GDP will be contracting during two years. A significant decline in supply will be fuelling inflation.”  

In the farmyard, at the dairy, and on the grocery store shelves, what this means is the slaughter of more cows, lower production of raw milk, higher processing costs, jumping retail prices, growing stocks of unsold products. They are not combining to reduce price inflation, as Nabiullina insists her monetary policy must do.

Instead, this is the recession which Russia should have, as Nabiullina’s protégée and former first deputy governor of the CBR, Ksenia Yudaeva, has assured the US Treasury and the Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) since November of last year, when Nabiullina sent her to Washington to fill Russia’s IMF seat.  In April 2022 the Treasury sanctioned Yudaeva;  Nabiullina wasn’t sanctioned until five months later in September 2022.  Now, however, Yudaeva is the highest ranking Russian Government official to enjoy US sanctions relief.  

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by Editor - Sunday, November 9th, 2025
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

Over the last three days the General Staff’s electric war strikes have continued to intensify on their targets and extend right across the Ukraine, with local utility companies announcing blackouts  from Kharkov in the east to the western regions (lead image).    

In itemizing the targets on the map, Mikhail Zvinchuk, chief of the Rybar military blog, reported that “Ukrainian sources stated that the night raid on gas production and processing facilities was the largest since the start of the special military operation. This is indirectly confirmed by the estimated number of munitions fired. The gas infrastructure in the east…has already been the target of massive attacks multiple times and has suffered significant damage. Therefore, it is quite likely that the consequences of the new raid could indeed be very severe for the enemy. It is also worth noting that the Russian Armed Forces have concentrated on sensitive nodes of electricity generation and transit of the enemy. On November 8, the state company Centrenergo announced the shutdown of all thermal power plants in the country.”  

“Contrary to fears,” Zvinchuk commented, “the campaign of strikes on the fuel and energy complex of the so-called Ukraine is only gaining momentum.” He means that Russian military analysts are well aware and are now reporting that since the electric war campaign first began in October 2022, the number of strikes has been limited in duration, firepower, and damage effected, and the momentum of the campaign stopped short.  

But not this time, military sources in Moscow believe.

Some of the sources have claimed the General Staff did not have the capacities to fully implement the electric war in the first two years, and that they still need more time and more resources to sustain the momentum to achieve the full countrywide blackout they are aiming at. Click to read the archive of the campaign here.  For an all-source timeline, read this.  

Other sources believe the military resources, logistics pipeline, targeting intelligence, and weapons accuracy and survivability were not as available to the General Staff in October 2022 when the campaign began,  as they have been since October of this year —    and this is the reason momentum has been suspended in each of the earlier years.  

One source says that President Vladimir Putin imposed restrictions on the extent and duration of the campaign but gradually he has been persuaded to relax them;  although even now, the source points out, the Defense Ministry’s daily bulletin continues reporting the electric war strikes, not as war strategy but as tit-for-tat operations responding to Ukrainian “terrorism” – that is, Ukraine drone and missile attacks on civilian infrastructure in the Russian hinterland. “In response to the terrorist attacks by Ukraine on civilian targets in Russia, from November 1 to November 7,” the Ministry bulletin announced on Saturday, “the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation carried out seven group strikes with precision weapons, as well as unmanned aerial vehicles, as a result of which enterprises of the military industry of Ukraine and facilities of the gas and energy complex that provided their work, the transport infrastructure used in in the interests of the Armed Forces of Ukraine…”    

A source in a position to know says the restrictions on the electric war have been political, not military, and for the time being Putin appears to have lifted them.

“I have a tough time believing that the General Staff did not have the intelligence, let alone the weapons accuracy and survivability necessary to prosecute the electric war from the start,” the source comments. “First, as the vast majority of the Ukrainian electrical grid, especially the 750kV backbone, was, and still is, more than fifty years old, Soviet-era equipment. Information on the Ukrainian electrical generation, transmission, and distribution network was, and still is, widely available in open source. There is no way that the electrical or civil engineers employed by the General Staff could not know what to target and what firepower was necessary. In terms of weapons, the Russian forces had then, as they do now, stocks of cruise, ballistic, and other air-dropped weapons, not to mention sabotage capabilities, to destroy the critical Ukrainian electrical nodes. There are approximately 35 major Ukrainian substations — so again, the available information for targeting is open source.  Looking at the data provided in these sources, the General Staff have had more than enough ordnance to take them all out. They didn’t. Moving forward from this line of thinking, I am curious to know why Ukrainian electrical laydowns [storage areas] and service vehicles have not been targeted. Are we to assume these could not be seen? This defies  rudimentary understanding of enemy logistic and repair capabilities. Quite obviously, the delay to date in achieving the complete collapse of the Ukrainian grid was and is the product of political decision-making, not any lack of capability on the Russian military’s part.”

The new frankness from the Moscow sources follows what they believe to be language from President Donald Trump encouraging the Kremlin to speed up its military operations.  “Sometimes people have to fight it out a little bit longer,” Trump told Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban last Friday, “ but I think we agree that the war is going to end in the not too distant future.”   At their meeting, Trump said his phrase, “not too distant future”, three times over.  

He was also repeating his line, “sometimes you have to let them fight it out”, from February 27, 2025;   June 15;    and November 1.   

by Editor - Sunday, November 9th, 2025
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

Did Xi Jinping demonstrate escalation dominance over Donald Trump at their meeting in Busan on October 30 (lead image, right) in a way which Vladimir Putin failed to do with Trump at their meeting in Anchorage on August 15?  Has the Zhongnanhai strategy been more effective in deterring US escalation of trade war and of military measures against China than the Kremlin strategy has managed against the US and NATO?

Listen to the new podcast with Nima Alkhorshid for the answers which aren’t publicly  acknowledged but vigorously debated in private in Moscow, Beijing, and Washington.

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by Editor - Tuesday, November 4th, 2025
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

Question: Did a new RAND report recommending the US moderate its escalating conflict with China influence President Donald Trump’s backdown in Busan? Answer: No.

Question: Does the Russian escalation of words in defence of Venezuela and the Chinese silence deter Trump from launching his plan to kill Nicolás Maduro? Answer: not much.

Question: Do the hacked emails between Jeffrey Epstein and former Israeli prime minister and defense minister Ehud Barak reveal untold influence on the Kremlin? Answer: Not likely.

Question: Does Russian Central Bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina hold President Vladimir Putin’s purse strings to finance the war? Answer: Yes.

In this week’s opener on Reason2Resist, Dimitri Lascaris and I elaborate on these answers. Click to watch and listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6_RVBieQ6A 

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by Editor - Sunday, November 2nd, 2025
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