By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

There was a map of the world on the wall of the Billy Mitchell Room of the Arctic Warrior Events Centre. That’s where President Donald Trump met President Vladimir Putin at Elmendorf Richardson Airbase in Anchorage, Alaska, on August 15, 2025.

On the map, the world was flat. Crisscrossing it were lines marked at the bottom with the title of the map, TRIPP. That stands for “Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity”. When Trump pointed it out, Putin thought he was joking.

Putin thought that what was said during the two and a half hours of their conversation was an agreement Trump would stick to. The Kremlin has called it the Anchorage Formula. The White House has never used the term.    

Putin repeated it last Friday (June 5). Trump had agreed that he and the US would be the “genuine guarantor” of Russia’s long-term security in Europe, Putin said. “Reliable guarantors are always helpful, but why the US administration and President Trump are being denied that role is beyond me.”  

Putin was replying to Vladimir Zelensky in a letter published the day before (June 4). “We have heard,” wrote Zelensky, “that you [Putin] were promised in Alaska the resolution of certain issues concerning Ukraine and Europe. But you can see for yourself that Ukrainian and European issues are not decided in Anchorage.”  

Putin insisted he believes in Trump’s security guarantee. “Overall, I want to thank Donald for that effort – it was certainly useful. But there is still room for improvement. The work needs to continue.” The Kremlin report has added that what followed was parenthetical “(Applause.)”   

There is still no certainty about what was on the wall of the Billy Mitchell Room in Anchorage.

The TRIPP lines crisscrossing the world map around Russia are no Trump joke, though. They are certain, and on May 26, this was confirmed by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio in documents he signed in Yerevan, Armenia.

 “First, the Secretary and Foreign Minister announced a bilateral framework agreement on the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP). This is a crucial accomplishment towards realizing the prosperous future envisioned in the historic commitments made on August 8, 2025, at the White House. The United States and Armenia are now one step closer to establishing unimpeded, multimodal transit connectivity within the region while respecting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Armenia.The text also describes the contours of the TRIPP Development Company (TDC), a joint venture between the United States and Armenia intended to support trade, transport, and economic development while enhancing international, inter-state, and intra-state transportation connectivity. The United States is also working closely with the Armenian government on a TRIPP engineering survey. The United States remains committed to expanding global trade, peace, stability, and prosperity in the region.”

“Additionally, the Secretary and Foreign Minister signed the Charter on a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership between the Republic of Armenia and the United States, and the United States of America-Republic of Armenia Framework for Securing of Supply in the Mining and Processing of Critical Minerals and Rare Earths. With these developments, the United States and Armenia demonstrate their joint commitment to expanding the bilateral relationship and continue to fulfill the promises made in the Memoranda of Understanding signed by President Trump and Prime Minister Pashinyan on August 8, 2025.”      

The TRIPP line on the map is also an American security tripwire around Russia, Trump announced two days later (May 28).   

“Soon,” Trump tweeted, “the United States and Armenia will break ground together on the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity, which will transform the South Caucasus, and help our wonderful American Energy Companies gain access from Central Asia all the way to the United States. For these reasons, Nikol has my COMPLETE and TOTAL Endorsement for Re-Election on June 7, 2026. With Nikol’s help, we will bring the United States, Armenia, the South Caucasus, and Central Asia to greater heights than ever before.”  

On June 7, Prime Minister Pashinyan’s party won the Armenian parliamentary election with almost 50% of votes cast.   The two pro-Russian parties of Samvel Karapetyan  and Robert Kocharyan  polled together just 33%. The Anglo-American media accused Russia of election interference, but not Trump.  The outcome is that Pashinyan will have seven seats less than he controlled before the election but still “a comfortable majority…For Moscow, the election turned into a geopolitical battlefield as it sought to protect its waning influence in the South Caucasus. The Kremlin likely assessed that it could not remove Pashinyan from power. It therefore focused on reducing his party’s gains and casting doubt on the legitimacy of his victory.”  

Putin’s cautions to Armenia have been ignored. “We would like to ask our Armenian colleagues to decide on their development path as soon as possible,” Putin said last week. “We have no objections. We will maintain good relations with Armenia no matter what development path it chooses to follow.”  A week earlier Putin had sounded tougher: “We would be forced, in certain areas –and indeed, by and large – to scale back almost all of our cooperation with Armenia in the economic sphere related to integration processes…There would also be a reduction in trade in services, tourism, transport services, and other sectors…workers from Armenia would become subject to the requirements that apply to migrants from CIS countries…We would also have to restore the permit procedure for Armenian road carriers. This would be unavoidable; it is a separate and highly complex area of cooperation.In addition, rail freight tariffs would have to be adjusted from the current domestic Russian rates – which are currently applied to Armenian carriers – to the tariffs applied to other CIS countries. And, obviously, energy prices would rise.”

Putin then sent Pashinyan a card for his birthday.  Trump’s birthday present proved to be what Pashinyan wanted, and at the poll Trump has defeated Putin.

He is now extending the TRIPP further south in the US-Israeli war for regime change in Tehran and the extinction of the Islamic republic in the Middle East. “Final negotiations on ‘Peace’ are proceeding,” Trump tweeted, “subject to ignorance or stupidity getting in its way. The Blockade will remain in place, and in full force and effect, until a ‘Final Deal’ is reached.  

According to Russia’s Foreign Minister, the Anchorage Formula – that is, Trump’s guarantee of Russia’s security in Europe – doesn’t exist. “I very much hope,” Sergei Lavrov said in Moscow on Monday (June 8), “that the experience of previous failures, when the West refused to fulfill its own supported agreements, will not be repeated in relation to the agreement in Alaska. But so far, unfortunately, our American partners have not shown any interest in this.”  

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by Editor - Tuesday, June 9th, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

Last week, the Supreme Commander in Chief of the Russian Armed Forces, Vladimir Putin, revealed two military secrets of his strategy for achieving Russia’s war aims on the Ukraine battlefield. They involve weapons he has fired in the past.  

The first was the launch of the Oreshnik missile (lead image) at a Kiev region target, Belaya Tserkov (Bila Tserkva), on May 24; the second was the launch at Kiev of the oligarch Roman Abramovich (lead image).

The missile and the money bag.

US and NATO intelligence estimates indicate there are at least a half-dozen Oreshniks in the current Russian military inventory, with the production line adding a new one every two months.  In addition to Abramovich,  there is one other oligarch weapon which Putin regards, he says himself,   as “trustworthy and honourable”:  that is Kirill Dmitriev representing the Russian oligarchs in collective talks with President Donald Trump’s representatives.  

The third military secret Putin has now revealed is that his confidence is unshaken in the success of these weapons despite the record of their repeated failure.

“I will share a major state military secret with you,” Putin told a group of journalists on June 4 about the latest Oreshnik strike: “we simply struck locations where it was possible to observe the results. This applies to Belaya Tserkov and, even more so, to the DPR [Donetsk People’s Republic] area within the main fortified zone. Afterwards, our drones flew into the structure we hit, and we meticulously observed how the separating warheads were dispersed, calculating everything to the millimetre. This is crucial for us to make future decisions on the full-scale employment of the Oreshnik against designated targets, including urban areas.”   

The second of his secrets Putin revealed the next day (June 5) to a business group at the plenary session of the St Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF).  “Three weeks ago [May 13], a representative of our business community contacted me with a matter. I have been acquainted with this individual for a considerable time; although we do not maintain close ties, I regard him as trustworthy and honourable. He called me and said: ‘Mr President, I am being invited to Kiev.’ I responded: ‘Well, by all means, go ahead; how does this concern me?’ He replied: ‘I felt it was imperative to inform you, as the discussion will likely involve issues pertinent to relations between our two countries.’”

“I advised him: ‘Listen, I cannot dispatch you in any official capacity; such matters should be the remit of qualified professionals from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Defence, and other relevant services – much as occurred during our negotiations in Istanbul. Therefore, I cannot sanction any official action on your part.’ He replied: ‘I merely wished to inform you of this invitation. I would go, listen, and subsequently report back to you on the discussions.’ I replied: ‘“I cannot prevent you; feel free to go.’”

“He travelled to Kiev, where he met with the individual, the author of that letter, at his residence, not at Valdai. Upon his return, I convened with him. Amidst the less substantive elements, the salient point was this: Mr Zelensky was requesting a meeting. I remarked: ‘I have never declined such requests. However, to convene merely for the sake of empty dialogue, as we say – I am well familiar with that…”

“Thus, I stated: ‘I see no merit in such a meeting.’ The sole objective, from the Ukrainian perspective, is to impede the progress of our Armed Forces, nothing more. We require agreements that endure not for mere months, not for half a year, but for a significant historical period. Let the specialists deliberate, devise solutions, and only thereafter can we convene, attend – as I mentioned – the signing of pertinent documents, or even append our signatures ourselves. However, a solution must first be formulated.”

“Now, to the most critical point, which the audience, particularly the Russian audience, will comprehend. This occurred, I believe, on May 21, and on May 22, Ukrainian forces executed a heinous terrorist attack on a college dormitory in the Lugansk People’s Republic, resulting in the tragic loss of children, adolescents. This constitutes a grievous crime. There were no military installations nearby, nor were there any military vehicles in the vicinity.  That morning, I contacted this – shall we say – colleague who had journeyed to Kiev and asked: ‘What does this signify?’ They ask for a meeting whilst perpetrating such horrendous crimes as the murder of children. What is the implication of this? He responded: ‘I am at a loss for an explanation. They are contacting me once more; I will speak with them and subsequently apprise you and keep you informed.’ I replied: ‘Very well.’ I have not communicated with him since.”  

After two days Vladimir Zelensky announced:  “Abramovich, he came to Kiev. He said…‘I have a message direct to you, and I want to get message and take message from you and to give it to Putin.’ But he said it has to be silently, without any kind of public messages. I said, ‘Look,  it’s your choice…He came and he wanted to give me the message that they are ready to, that they want to fi—that they want to understand what we are ready to do…we spoke about any kind of compromises. I said, of all the compromises, after ceasefire, ceasefire is the biggest compromise from our side to your side…When he got message from me, he said…he will go directly to Putin. I said, ‘Okay, I am ready to meet… and we spoke about outcomes, what can be, and etc.,…after that we’ve got messages that they are ready for meeting only if Ukraine will do what they decided in Anchorage. But it’s terrible what they speak about…You can’t make decisions without us, about us.  It’s unacceptable, and it will not bring peace.”  

Abramovich told the Financial Times: “Though Abramovich’s role has become less prominent since Russia began negotiating directly with the US last year, he remains involved in prisoner exchanges and other bilateral talks with Ukraine, including on aspects of a stalled US-led peace plan, according to people close to him. ‘He is needed because he is the only Russian they will tolerate. He gets along with everyone,’ one of the people said.”  

In the current propaganda war, Comcast’s SkyNews is an American drone; the Financial Times is an Anglo-Japanese missile; Zelensky is one of their multiple warheads.  This is how the separating warheads were dispersed, calculating everything to the millimetre.

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by Editor - Sunday, June 7th, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

It’s a brave king who fights on after losing his arms and his legs.

It’s a foolish king who asks his army and his people to believe in the certainty of swift victory and then requires them to pay the costs of attrition.

Or is it the other way round — the lionheart who promises blitzkrieg and instead gets protracted and permanent war; the fool who keeps fighting after his adversary has cut off his limbs?

President Vladimir Putin’s Finance Minister Anton Siluanov, his Central Bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina, and his special negotiator with the Trump administration Kirill Dmitriev are telling him that it’s now too late, too long, too expensive for the special military operation on the Ukraine battlefield. They say he must either cut the war short by armistice on the enemy’s terms; or the Russian people must pay for the attrition by mobilization of the young, by taxation of the poorest, and by cutting the budget deficit with the destruction of demand, real income, and investment in economic growth.

In response, the General Staff and Admiral Igor Kostyukov, head of military intelligence, tell Putin that if he gives the word, they will unleash such a continuous salvo as to remove the Kiev leadership; cut all power, water, telecommunications, and transport so that the Ukrainian state can no longer function; drive the Ukrainian forts and forces from the Donbass; and compel an armistice on Russian terms in just three months’ time.

Putin’s answer is to agree to both with a combination of half measures – half from the first faction; half from the second. This is neither brave nor foolish. There won’t be a word for it until the evening of September 20, when the votes are tallied and published for the elections to the State Duma.

In the meantime, in the new podcast with Jamarl Thomas we discuss the four strategic mistakes  arising from these half-measures, as Russian sources now acknowledge them — and the strategic outcome they make inevitable:

Strategic mistake No.1 — neither by attrition nor by decapitation, can Russia win its war aims – demilitarization of the territory to the Polish and Romanian borders; and denazification of the regime from Kiev and Lvov to Rzeszów.  This is because the US and NATO intend to keep up the permanent war on Russia. Replacing the limits on land forces, artillery, armour, rockets and missiles of the Istanbul draft treaty of April 2022, the combination of Ukrainian, American and European development of drone numbers, surge capacities, range, and firepower were not even counted for limitation then. They cannot be counted now because they extend across all of the NATO states.

Strategic mistake No. 2 – winning the hearts and minds of Ukrainian voters may be achievable by Russian military operations but they don’t count.  The Kiev regime will sacrifice them at the front or across the border, repressing whoever and whatever  opposition remains. Killing them or exiling them has made, will make,  no difference to the sustainability of the regime. The cuts in direct US financing for the war by the Trump administration have been and will be offset by NATO financing, weapons co-production, and integration of Ukrainian warfighters in NATO commands, bases and plans. American and European hearts and minds can also be won over but they are now equally impotent at changing the warfighting policies of regimes from Greece to Finland, Ireland to Estonia.

Strategic mistake No. 3 — de-nazification is a myth for Americans, Europeans and Japanese.  Even if Vladimir Zelensky were replaced by Andrei Biletsky, the Azov commander, or Kirill Budanov,  the current presidential office head and former GUR chief, the US and NATO don’t care if they are fascist, any more than they cared ninety years ago that Adolph Hitler was fascist. The target was then, is now, and will remain for another hundred years of war — Russia.  

This, by the way, is the reason Poland and Israel will put up with the current glorification of the Banderite executioners of hundreds of thousands of Poles and millions of Jews during World War II.  

Strategic mistake No. 4 — Putin is now in command of the destruction of the Russian economy for the benefit of the financial sector and the resource export sector – that’s  to say, the commercial and state banks, the Central Bank, and the oligarchs. The outcome is a budget deficit which can only be funded by state borrowing, windfall profit taxation, or by cuts to social welfare,  industry and regional support; and protected by the repression of the critics and their means of communicating through the internet. When the alternative is mobilization and militarization of the economy, Putin believes he can preserve political equilibrium.

Strategic outcome — this is permanent war at high profitability for the oligarch-controlled economy without industrial recovery, plus corruption and intensifying repression;  a pause for Russian rearmament without the financial means to match the escalation of US and NATO capacities. In this future, President Xi Jinping, Putin’s strategic friend, is not unhappy; Iran, North Korea, and Cuba, Russia’s strategic allies, must fight on — almost alone.

“I believe this is mostly correct,” a military source in a position to know comments, “except that making Ukraine unfit for anything except bare subsistence existence has not yet been tried; nor has going after the likes of Biletsky. They [Banderites] are not that hardy, not at the top, and not at the bottom.”

Another Moscow source, also in a position to know, says: “The question has been asked: so what if we have Sarmat, Zircon, Oreshnik? So what? There is no answer. Only that we should talk to the Americans and the Americans alone because they are our equal. But the Americans have cancelled everything and stopped talking a decade back.  Faced with this reality, there is only one choice and that is to fight on until a compromise can be reached. My understanding is [Putin] wants an end to war before the Duma elections and declare some victory. Otherwise he will lose.”

Click to view or listen to the podcast, first broadcast on Thursday.

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by Editor - Thursday, June 4th, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

Bringing the war home was a powerful slogan of the American anti-war movement in the decade between 1965 and 1975,  as the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army advanced towards their victory, forcing the White House to armistice terms in Paris in January 1973, and then to evacuation of Saigon in April 1975.

There is no anti-war movement in the streets of the US today. Instead, there are podcasts inside Americans’ desktops, telephones, and earplugs.  

The US Army hasn’t begun cracking up as it once did on the battlefields of Hué, the Mekong Delta, and Saigon.  The anti-US armies continue to advance – Russian forces across the Ukrainian battlefield, Iranian forces from the Hormuz Strait across the Arab sheikhdoms to targets inside Israel.

The politics for winning, losing, pausing, then resuming the 100-year war which the US aims to fight against the century-old enemies – Russians, Chinese, Arabs, Iranians, and the banana republicans of Central and South America – remain the same.  Expressed in the Washington language of the present,  this is the politics of the Fall budget review and the November midterm elections.

In the new podcast with Nima Alkhorshid, the discussion focuses on the dynamics of war financing and electioneering for President Donald Trump and for President Vladimir Putin. To answer the question of what happens next in the false ceasefire and pseudo-peace negotiations in the Middle East and in Europe, we focus on money and votes – and what Trump, Putin and their political rivals think they must do to stop the loss of public confidence in their leadership, and in their own futures.

Click to view or listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVcXeOl-LSw

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by Editor - Wednesday, June 3rd, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

Tehran Times spoke with John Helmer, a veteran journalist and geopolitical analyst based in Moscow, to assess the implications of the conflict for U.S. policy toward Iran, the role of domestic political calculations in Washington, and shifting regional alignments. In this interview, Helmer examines coercive diplomacy, regional security dynamics, and the limits of U.S. strategy.

The full text of the interview follows.

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by Editor - Tuesday, June 2nd, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

When it comes to heads of state and government like Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, there’s nothing new under the sun.

Unfortunately, the sun doesn’t shine often enough to reveal what they say in secret so that this can be compared with what they are saying in public at the same time; and in order for the record they are making to be measured against the records of their predecessors and successors.  

That sun can shine on the future if it exposes enough of the past. When White House and presidential documents from the past are declassified and published years after they were filed, they reveal a great deal about truth-telling (that’s called history); about the character of the individuals (psychopathology); about calculated and miscalculated deception (war).

From the release of White House records on private meetings and telephone conversations over the past decade, much has been learned from Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin, and Vladimir Putin out of their own mouths – which the Kremlin continues to keep shut. For example, here are some of the records on Yeltsin (2016)   and two years later in 2018.   The records of Putin speaking in secret with President George Bush can be read here (2025)  and here (2026)  

For much longer the sun has been shining on Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger. However, because Kissinger managed to stay alive for so long, public release of the tape-recordings he made himself of his telephone calls with Nixon, as well as with other White House and administration officials has been delayed until now. Tom Wells, an American historian,   has just published the book, The Kissinger Tapes — Inside His Secretly Recorded Phone Conversations.    The records start in January 1969 and end in August 1974. The new book leaves out Kissinger’s secret tapes of his time in the Gerald Ford Administration, 1974-77.   

Wells introduces his record with the story of how Kissinger cleaned and changed the transcripts of what he had said, and also prevented the release of the sanitized version while he remained alive; he died on November 29, 2023.  There are about 15,000 telephone records and 20,000 pages of transcript for the Nixon period.

For the first time this archive allows comparisons between the Kissinger-Nixon record and the record which President Donald Trump is making today. From this comparison, it is possible, as never before, to show that Trump’s foul mouth is no fouler than Nixon’s and Kissinger’s mouths were. “Bullshit” was the Nixon-Kissinger preference; it was recorded thirteen times. On February 5, 1972, for example, when Nixon was anxious that his orders for bombing North Vietnam were not being implemented, “bullshit” was his way of emphasizing that he wouldn’t brook delay at the Pentagon. “Give him [US Army Chief of Staff, General Creighton Abrams] this responsibility to see that carriers are moving and the [B-]52s are moving. I don’t want any bullshit…I want the air force and navy to follow this without compromise. I want them to hit everything in the B-3 area [Central Highlands of South Vietnam] or northern part of the DMZ…Knock the hell out of them. One of the problems before was that they never concentrated on anything.”

“Shit” was less popular; used four times by Nixon, three times by Kissinger referring to people they disliked. “Fuck” was used three times by Kissinger, once by Nixon. “Prick” was used once in five years – in Nixon’s hearing by his friend and lawyer, Leonard Garment. The two of them  meant it about the Republican Senator, Lowell Weicker.

Trump has made his swear words public to appeal to US voters; Nixon and Kissinger kept theirs a state secret. The difference isn’t between them; it’s between the way the American public and media interpreted the expletives then and interpret them now.  

It is also revealed for the first time that a half-century ago, the White House believed there was an exceptional “fondness” for the Jews inside the Kremlin just as the Trump White House knows it of Putin today.  Then Leonid Brezhnev was sitting in the General Secretary’s seat of the  Communist Party of the Soviet Union. “Hebrew”, Kissinger was saying on the telephone on June 11, 1973 —  “I think he [Brezhnev] would love, particularly given the Russian fondness with Jews.”

Kissinger was speaking at the time with the chief executive of Paramount Pictures about the dubbing of films Kissinger was requesting for the entertainment of Brezhnev when he arrived in Washington for a state visit. On paper and in retrospect today, this comment may be interpreted as sarcasm, meaning the reverse. The telephone record of 53 years ago suggests not. In the Trump White House there is no secret of their confidence in, and no sarcasm about Putin’s fondness for the Jews. 

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by Editor - Sunday, May 31st, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

President Vladimir Putin has ordered his two spokesmen, Dmitry Peskov and Yury Ushakov, to deny Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s statement that the General Staff has been authorized to escalate war operations to regime decapitation in the Ukraine.

On Monday evening, May 25,  Lavrov telephoned US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and told him he was speaking for Putin: “On behalf of the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin,” the readout said, “S.V. Lavrov officially brought to the American side information that in response to the ongoing terrorist attacks of the Kiev regime against the civilian population and civilian objects on the Russian territory, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation begin systemic and consistent strikes on the facilities located in Kiev, used for the needs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and on the relevant decision-making centres.”   

Lavrov was repeating the new phrase, “systemic and consistent”, which his ministry had published in reverse order four hours earlier.  

Russian “patience is exhausted,” the ministry had declared. “In this situation, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation are beginning to launch consistent and systemic strikes at enterprises of the Ukrainian defence industry in Kiev, including specific facilities for designing, manufacturing and programming drones and preparing them for operation…We are urging residents of the Ukrainian capital not to approach facilities of the military and administrative infrastructure of the Zelensky regime.”  

The Russian statements followed the strike over Saturday night-Sunday morning (May 23-24) by an Oreshnik missile on the Bela Tserkva airbase, south of Kiev, which doubles as an underground drone factory  and a military command-control bunker. Click for a summary of local and Russian reporting of the targets.  

The Oreshnik failed, according to Moscow sources.

No high-ranking casualties have been reported by either the Russian or Ukrainian media; there has been no evidence of emergency ambulance movements and medical evacuation flights taking high-ranking casualties to hospitals in Poland, Germany, or the US. There was a reported surge of medevac flights from  Rzeszow,  but that occurred on May 22, before the Oreshnik strike on Bela Tsekrkva.   

Surface damage at Bela Tserkva recorded on social media shows no greater damage than earlier drone strikes at Bela Tserkva last August.  

Former president and deputy head of the Security Council Dmitry Medvedev called the Oreshnik, Iskander, Zircon and Kinzhal missile operation, including the Kiev city targets hit, a success in a strategy of persuading Ukrainian hearts and minds; this has not been publicly declared as a war aim by the Security Council before. “The ruins and gray ash on the site of their capital symbols,” Medvedev claimed, “demoralize the enemy no weaker than the loss of the battle banner.”  

Lieutenant General (retired) Andrei Kartapolov, head of the State Duma Defense Committee,  repeated that the weekend strikes were a new operational initiative. But he qualified the targeting: the aim, he said, is not the Ukrainian parliament Verkhovna Rada but instead “decision-making centres [which are] underground fortified [military] command and control centres…you need to understand that they are not located in the centre of Kiev. These are hidden, well-fortified points. And our task is to identify them and expose them with the help of existing weapons.”     

Kartapolov added that the decision on whether this new decapitation operation now extends to Vladimir Zelensky is made by “only one person – our Supreme Commander-in-Chief”. About Putin’s decision — signed, suspended, postponed, canceled — Kartapolov said he preferred “not to engage in speculation”. This was published on the afternoon of Tuesday, May 26.

Putin had decided already to announce he didn’t mean decapitation at all.

He ordered first spokesman Peskov to deny Lavrov’s statement. “Systemic does not imply any specific frequency. It doesn’t mean regular,” Peskov announced. “In fact, the Foreign Ministry laid it all out clearly in its statement,” Peskov added, reversing what the ministry statement had said.  

For the President,  Peskov had more to say.  “We generally prefer to achieve our goals peacefully, by diplomatic means”, he claimed on Thursday (May 28).   Peskov added that Putin is looking forward to a new round of talks with Trump’s messengers,  Steven Witkoff and Jared Kushner: “As soon as they are ready, we will be glad to see them and we, indeed, wait for their arrival. As soon as time allows them to do that.”  By his last sentence, Peskov meant the US war against Iran.

Second spokesman Ushakov followed on May 28 with more disclaimer from Putin: “regarding [the question of] the Russian military’s shift to systematic strikes on defence industry facilities in Kiev, but has not yet received a response [from Trump]: We have issued a statement on this matter, and our recommendation has also been conveyed to the Americans through the appropriate channels. As far as I know, no response has been received yet… Russia has not conveyed any message from Russian President Vladimir Putin to US leader Donald Trump regarding the strikes on defence industry facilities in Kiev: No, no message has been conveyed.”   

By the phrase “no message has been conveyed”, Ushakov meant that Lavrov had not been authorized to speak on Putin’s behalf to Rubio, as Lavrov had claimed. Ushakov’s use of the phrase “defence industry facilities” meant that  he was denying that “decision-making centres” are the new targets. Out of Ushakov’s mouth, Putin is now overriding and countermanding the foreign minister and the lieutenant general speaking for the General Staff and for parliament.

This is the first time in the four years of the Special Military Operation – the first time in Lavrov’s history as foreign minister – that the Kremlin has publicly contradicted him and repudiated one of his statements. Twice over in ninety seconds.  

Kirill Dmitriev, Putin’s special emissary for negotiations with Witkoff and Kushner – faction leader against Lavrov, Medvedev,  and the General Staff — tweeted with Putin’s authority that “if Ukraine has a critical shortage of air-defense missiles, it may be better to focus on peace than on provocations and escalation. Peace is always the best strategy.”  

This is Dmitriev’s signal that Putin expects Trump to deal with Zelensky, and that Putin will not allow his General Staff to do the job for him.

No system targeting, no consistency, no frequency, no end of war before the September elections — no change.

by Editor - Thursday, May 28th, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

Reading is more effective for understanding Presidents Trump, Putin and Xi than listening.

This is because reading uses more of your brain to process the incoming information, compare and fact-check it, than listening or viewing podcasts.

American brain scientists report new experiments which prove this. “To mirror the transient nature of spoken sentences, visual input was presented in rapid serial visual presentation format. The results showed a common core of amodal left inferior frontal and middle temporal gyri activation, as well as modality specific brain activation associated with listening and reading comprehension. Reading comprehension was associated with more left-lateralized activation and with left inferior occipital cortex (including fusiform gyrus) activation. Listening comprehension was associated with extensive bilateral temporal cortex activation and more overall activation of the whole cortex.”  

In other words, think of yourself as an Artificial Intelligence (AI) machine with less electricity for powering your chips to process a smaller data base, and that’s you listening. When reading, however, you are going full throttle with more chips processing more calculations at a faster speed with a bigger database.    

There’s also a big difference in the power of thinking triggered by radio broadcasts compared to video podcasts.

When you read text, you control the speed. Your eyes scan shapes, link them to sounds, and allow you to pause or re-read to grasp complex ideas. With podcasts, the brain is forced to process at the speaker’s speed. Because spoken words are a continuous, fleeting stream, your working memory must work harder to retain information before it vanishes. When you listen and view a podcast, your brain processes the speaker’s vocal inflections, rhythm, and tone, which naturally adds emotional context and influences intuitive reasoning.

That’s a neuroscientific euphemism for persuasion.   

In the podcast called Judging Freedom, for example —  sponsored by firms selling money betting  on the price of gold, silver and other commodity futures —  retired army officers speak from interior decoration behind them which includes campaign citations and busts of victorious generals like Napoleon and Ulysses Grant; professors from desks and bookcases loaded with texts;  and spy agency veterans with antique furnishings acquired on undercover Middle Eastern postings. This display is meant to overload the cortex with data irrelevant to the truth or falsity of the information being propagated. You are meant to think you’ve come to your conclusions and convictions because the source is credible to look at, not because the evidence is accurate in the reading (and checking). Your short-term memory loses the data and cannot double-check; it remembers that you believed the man on the screen. That’s propaganda and subversion for you.

Gorilla Radio, presented from Canada for the past twenty-five years by Chris Cook, beats these AI limitations. It uses the auditory cortex but frees the visual cortex to double-check the readable world – without the interior decoration. It’s the antidote to propaganda.

So when Trump launches missile attacks on Iranian speedboats in the Strait of Hormuz and bombs targets in the port of Bandar Abbas, at the same time as he, Vice President JD Vance, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio   say they are hopeful of negotiating end-of-war terms with Iran, the meaning of the contradictory and confusing data is best transmitted by this new broadcast.

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by Editor - Wednesday, May 27th, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

Zugzwang is the position between adversaries when one is forcing the other to make the next move, but whatever move he makes will be his defeat.

President Donald Trump (lead image, left) is in it.

The only way out for him is to play for time, disguising his predicament with as much noise, camouflage, and confusion as his supporters can manage.

When this happens to presidents, everyone who can deserts him while throwing up subterfuges, shams, and smokescreens. This is what Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the leading candidates to succeed Trump in two years’ time, are doing.  

Those whose corrupt fortunes tie them to Trump and his successor, Eric Trump, have no alternative but to do all they can to damage the Democratic Party alternative.  This requires a combination of making war against Iran, Russia and China; making peace to reduce the price of oil, fertilizers, and inflation at home; making the European, British, and Asian allies nervous enough to keeping paying and stay loyal.

Inside the Deep State —  where the supply of money depends every budget season on action, not inaction; operations which Congressional committees like to vote for, not those they dislike and vote against — there is a loosening of vertical command and oversight from the White House, an increase in experiments, adventures, trial balloons, faits accomplis, stabs in the back. The Central Command operation on Monday, May 25, for example, was announced as “self-defense strikes in southern Iran today to protect our troops from threats posed by Iranian forces.”  It achieved nothing militarily. Politically, however, it drew Trump’s prompt endorsement: “Negotiations with the Islamic Republic of Iran are proceeding nicely! It will only be a Great Deal for all or, no Deal at all — Back to the Battlefront and shooting, but bigger and stronger than ever before.”   He then added a reminder of who his real targets are:  “The Dumacrats and Media have totally lost their way. They have gone absolutely CRAZY!!!”  

Trump also warned his successors and their campaign financiers that he isn’t a lame duck yet. “Just finished my 6 month physical at Walter Reed Military Medical Center. Everything checked out PERFECTLY. Thank you to the great Doctors and Staff! Heading back to the White House.”  

Zugzwang is also the position in which Presidents Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping find themselves uncomfortably. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, too.

If  Russia, China and India each face wars with multiple adversaries led by Trump, what is to be done to conserve their domestic political power and maintain enough escalation control on their battlefields to deter Trump’s adventurism. When a Ukrainian press agency asked for China’s reaction to the escalation of Russian strikes against the Ukrainian leadership in Kiev on Sunday, the spokesman for Foreign Minister Wang Yi responding for President Xi answered: “China’s position on the Ukraine crisis is consistent and clear. Dialogue and negotiation is the only viable way out. We call on parties concerned to work together for deescalation as soon as possible and accumulate conditions for restarting dialogue and negotiation.” 

Saying nothing, doing nothing is a zugzwang, too.

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by Editor - Tuesday, May 26th, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

The best way of learning how the men inside the Kremlin think is in the history of the Byzantine Empire which began in the 4^th century AD and whose last day, the anniversary of the empire’s last day,  we celebrate this week – May 29, 1453.

The Kremlin men, fresh from their trip to the Forbidden City in Bejing, don’t think the American Empire will last for a comparable thousand years. They also don’t believe, like the Chinese, that the American Empire is close to an end which Russians and Chinese should be preparing to celebrate.

In their manuals of tactics and strategy and in the annals of their negotiations,  treaties, and wars, the Byzantines, like the Kremlin men, tell themselves that the best way of deterring an enemy’s army from  testing the red lines they say they will defend is,  first of all,  to announce their red lines; and then to bribe the enemy from crossing them. Only if the bribes are paid, the red lines crossed by force, and the bribetakers have reneged, is war inescapable.

At that point, the Byzantines long accepted, the force to be applied to those enemies who have violated the commitments they took bribes to accept must be  ruthless, comprehensive, total.

“Do nothing unless you really have to,” advised the Byzantine treatise on strategy, De Re Strategica,  composed in  the 10^th century AD, “but watch the enemy’s moves carefully, so that you can strike effectively if action is unavoidable.”  

Bribery was a strategic method for achieving political objectives by postponing war. It was more predictable in outcome and cost less to carry out. But the Byzantine emperors and their advisers and commanders also understood that bribery is temporary because it’s always personal, psychological. One way  they employed it to extend its effectiveness was to lull the bribe receivers into false confidence in their power, kill them, and replace them with newcomers whose lack of confidence increased their dependence on fresh bribes and thus delayed their readiness to go to war.   

Buying time with a combination of bribes and regime decapitation has been the strategy of President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in their war against Iran in June of last year and since February 28 of this year. But this has been a failure; time is now running against them both.

They have also failed on one of the Byzantine strategist’s pieces of psychological advice – never hate your enemy so much that you don’t understand him, can’t anticipate him, or you end up underestimating his capacity to deceive you and succeed in his counterattack.

President Vladimir Putin doesn’t play chess like the Byzantines and he hasn’t studied their strategy history, especially the annals  where they explain how and why they defeated the Russians. Putin  and his associates have also failed to follow another of the Byzantine strategist’s pieces of psychology – never love your enemy, or want to be loved by him so much that you end up underestimating his capacity to deceive and counterattack.

In the Kremlin department of loving the Americans and wanting to be loved by them too much, the vizier in charge is Kirill Dimitriev, Putin’s special representative for arranging bribes to Trump, his sons, and friends.  

“The sad reality”, concludes  a modern Greek historian of Byzantium, “that the emperors in Constantinople had to face was that the limited resources in money and manpower constituted the waging of war in more than one theatre an almost inconceivable prospect, especially since the maintaining of an active army posed a heavy burden”.  Their solution “was to praise the use of diplomacy, the paying of subsidies, and the employment of stratagems, craft, wiles, bribery and ‘other means’ to deceive the enemy and bring back the army with as few casualties as possible; a strategy of non-engagement that made perfect sense in military terms.”  

A Jewish historian of Byzantium in his manual for the Israeli leadership has warned that the “strategic advantage that was neither diplomatic nor military [is] instead psychological”. It’s a warning they haven’t comprehended. “Subversion is the best path to victory. It is so cheap compared to the costs and risk of battle that it must always be attempted, even with the most unpromising  targets infused with hostility ior religious ardour…the Byzantines had certainly discovered that religious fanatics can also be bribed, and indeed often more easily – they are creative in inventing religious justifications for taking bribes…”

In the new Capitals Uncovered podcast with Pelle Neroth Taylor (Sweden) and Martin Sieff (US), we focus on how to interpret the Russian General Staff’s Oreshnik strikes on command bunkers in Kiev and Bela Tserkva, and what to expect next if, as the Russians believe, Trump has signalled a green light to the escalation of their military operations.

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by Editor - Monday, May 25th, 2026
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