By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

President Vladimir Putin will not run the gauntlet President Donald Trump has established around Cuba with the Russian Navy to escort Russian-flagged tankers delivering crude oil and petroleum products to Havana.

When Cuba’s Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla sat down in the Kremlin on Thursday to ask for more “solidarity, firmly demonstrated by you, the Government of Russia, and the Minister for Foreign Affairs, in the face of the tightening blockade of Cuba and the recent energy siege,” Putin responded enough is enough.

He meant that solidarity with Cuba is one thing, but not at the risk of military conflict with the Trump Administration and its naval forces in the Caribbean.

This is Mikhail Gorbachev talking, responded the Kremlin security analysis medium, Vzglyad, not Nikita Khrushchev.  

“Please convey my best wishes to the President of Cuba and Army General [Raul] Castro,” Putin told the foreign minister. “This year we will mark the centenary of Fidel Castro’s birth, and we will do so together.”

It is not the first time Putin has said there is nothing but historical memory to share between Russia and Cuba; and that he would trade Russia’s military positions in Cuba for its interest in business with the US. In a meeting with President George W. Bush on October 21, 2001, Putin had said he would remove the Russian military intelligence base in Cuba. “I don’t want to horsetrade or nickel and dime this thing or argue about who gets what,”  Putin said to Bush in a recently declassified record.  In the outcome that is exactly what Putin did – and the trade failed because Bush did not reciprocate.

Read more.  

In his meeting with Rodriguez, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was clearer in public what the Russian line means.  “We call on the United States to show common sense and take a responsible attitude,” he said – “refraining from implementing its plans for a naval blockade of the Island of Freedom. We categorically reject the far-fetched allegations regarding Russia and Cuba, and cooperation between them, which is presumably threatening the interests of the United States or any other countries.  All disputes should be settled exclusively through dialogue based on mutual respect and a balance of interests. We know that our Cuban friends are always ready for honest negotiations… All issues should be resolved solely through a mutually respectful dialogue aimed at finding a balance of interests. We know that Cuban friends are always ready for such honest negotiations. In turn, we will consistently continue to support Cuba, the Cuban people in protecting the sovereignty and security of the country.”

“I would like to reiterate our complete solidarity with our Cuban friends. I fully share the views on our relations and strategic partnership, which you [Rodriguez] have stated.  I would also like to reaffirm the complete unacceptability of actions by the United States, which, as you have reminded just now, has adopted an executive order designating Cuba as a threat to US national interests. At the same time, the document says that this alleged threat is exacerbated by Cuba’s cooperation with Russia, which has been described in the document as a ‘hostile’ and ‘malign’ actor. We are confident that all states should define their national interests in a way that will include recognition of and respect for the national interests of all other countries.”  

Between the lines of what Lavrov and Rodriguez know to be ironical and untrue, the intended Russian message is for the Castro family to negotiate the best terms it can from the Trump Administration; and for the Trump family, and also Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s family, to be confident that they can continue their blockade of the island without Russian military challenge until the Cubans agree to the US terms.

In Putin’s references to Fidel and Raul Castro, he was hinting at the Russian endorsement of grandson Raul Guillermo Rodriguez Castro, Raulito’s semi-secret negotiations with Rubio. Details of these talks “for the next Delcy in Cuba” were reported by Axios at the same time as the Foreign Minister’s meetings in Moscow. The Miami Herald has confirmed the details according to “a source with knowledge of the matter who asked for anonymity to discuss the sensitive issue.”  

Repeating these details to confirm that Russian intelligence believes the Axios report to be accurate, Vzglyad has editorialized that so long as there is no US invasion of Cuba, Russia is telling the Cuban government to accept the “Delcy” solution.  “The possible support that friendly countries, primarily Russia and China, can provide to Cuba is extremely important,” reported Yevgeny Krutikov. “Even if we assume that the transformation of the regime is inevitable, then in any case it is vital to ensure its painlessness and safety.”  

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by Editor - Friday, February 20th, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

The Ecuadorian Poison Dart frog, Epipedobates anthonyi,  doesn’t produce the deadly epibatidine poison out of personal spite. Indigestion, more like.

According to British toxicologists, epibatidine is refined by the frog’s innards from precursor chemicals, also toxins, which come from the flies, ants, beetles, and other bugs which live in the same environment and are within range of the frog’s tongue.  Captive frogs in a chemical warfare laboratory in the US, UK, Germany, France or Sweden would be unable to produce epibatidine unless the toxic insects the frogs eat are also captive. “Technically, a captive frog would need to be given the same variety of food that it eats in the wild,” a forensic toxicologist in England explains. “These ants, bugs, etc.  in the wild contain the toxins and chemicals which in turn the frog eats and then produces its own poison. So a lab would have a supply of these bugs that  are present in the frog’s natural environment in order for the captive frog to produce the poison. You would need to airmail live ants from Brazil to the lab. Not impossible, but if a toxicologist is going to detect the poison post-mortem anyway, why bother with such an effort.”

The British discoverers of the frog in the 1970s reported the great difficulty they had in isolating the toxicated from the untoxicated frogs in the Ecuadorian jungles. By the 1990s, however, this problem had been solved by scientists all over the civilized chemical warfare world. On payment from the military research budgets of their governments, they then synthesized epibatidine, so that the supply could be assured without the bugs and frogs on hand. In the Wikipedia summary of the science, “more than fifty ways to synthesize it in the laboratory have been devised.”  

The Americans came first in synthesizing and stocking epibatidine,  then the British.  More Americans followed in 1993.  The Chinese succeeded in their synthesis methodology at a university in Virginia, also in 1993.  The Russians were twenty years late. The first openly reported synthesis of the poison by Russian researchers was announced in 2013.  

In a British government press release, issued last week on February 14, it was claimed that “based on analyses of samples from Alexei Navalny. These analyses have conclusively confirmed the presence of epibatidine…Epibatidine is a toxin found in poison dart frogs in South America. It is not found naturally in Russia.”  

The allegation by five governments – the UK, Sweden, France, Germany and The Netherlands – is that “given the toxicity of epibatidine and reported symptoms, poisoning was highly likely the cause of his death. Navalny died while held in prison, meaning Russia had the means, motive and opportunity to administer this poison to him.” Referring to the Novichok allegations in Germany when Navalny was in hospital in Berlin and in the UK following the Skripal and Sturgess cases, the press release adds: “only the Russian state had the combined means, motive and disregard for international law to carry out the attacks.”

This is false.

The state chemical warfare establishments of the US and UK had not only synthesized epibatidine more than a decade before the Russians, but they had accumulated substantial stocks for battlefield antidote testing, as well as for commercial production of painkillers.

Like the role of Porton Down (Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, DSTL, see lead image) in producing and stocking Novichok in the UK before the alleged Russian attacks of 2018, and the German, French and Swedish laboratory roles in analyzing the Navalny samples in 2020, the means, motive and opportunity for falsifying the Russian poison story have been  openly documented for years.

Yulia Navalnaya’s presentations of the poisoning allegation confirm that she and the government agencies behind her have been preparing it for more than six months at laboratories they refuse to identify, and with evidence of tissue samples which, after two years, are forensically worthless. That means there is no proof that Navalny’s samples are genuine – that they have not been tampered with.

“Conclusive” may well be the evidence of epibatadine in the Navalny tissue samples, but it is “highly likely” —  the evidence standard identified in the press release —  that the poison evidence has been added after Navalny’s death. Speaking scientifically, tracing epibatadine from the Ecuadorian frog is herpetology; the same process in the current information war and in vulpine zoology has been recognized by forensic scientists as “the fox smells his own hole first.”

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by Editor - Wednesday, February 18th, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

Constipation causes desperation in middle age; incontinence causes desperation in old age. The Peskovite faction in Moscow is showing political desperation, and also the symptoms of its age.

The public attacks by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on the points of the plan for US-Russia economic concessions endorsed by Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov after their negotiation in Miami last month by Kirill Dmitriev, have exposed a loss of confidence in President Vladimir Putin which has not been acknowledged by Moscow sources since the two-day revolt of Yevgeny Prigozhin in June 2023.

Details of the Dmitriev plan, and the counterattack from Lavrov and other sources, have been reported here.  

A Moscow source in a position to know comments:  “I see this betrayal all round. The only certain thing is that the military and GRU have drawn their lines on the [Ukraine] map – I don’t  see any compromise on territory and military terms.  But the de-dollarization issue has been  thirty years in the making. It has been rebuffed by the Chinese. There could not have been another outcome. The Dmitriev plan is a stab in the back because Putin lost this before he started it.  All that the [Russian] business wants is to be trading with the Americans. The interesting thing is everyone is silent.”

In reaction, Peskov has announced that the plan for the Geneva talks “is to discuss a wide range of issues.” These issues, he said, “include[e] the key ones, which concern territories and all other things, and are related to the demands that we have put forth. This is why the presence of the chief negotiator – that is, Medinsky – is necessary,”    This explanation for Vladimir Medinsky, a junior ranking assistant in the Kremlin, is not believed by the Moscow sources.   For one thing, the sources say, he is outranked in Geneva on both the Ukrainian side and the US side. He is there because neither the Foreign Ministry, to be represented in Geneva by Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin, nor the General Staff represented by Admiral Igor Kostyukov,  the GRU chief, is trusted by Putin to make the concessions to the US side which he and Dmitriev have agreed.   

Altogether, the Russian delegation in Geneva is reported to number “more than twenty”.   This is intended to display the consensus which Dmitriev has upset and Lavrov has exposed.

Peskov told Tass: “Russian President Vladimir Putin is in constant contact with the negotiators; he gave them detailed instructions before their departure for Geneva.”  The problem of what concessions meet Putin’s instructions – and what concessions to the Americans the Russian officials are reluctant to make — has been acknowledged by Peskov:  “Dmitriev is on a separate track as a member of a working group on Russia-US economic cooperation.”

The implication – corroborated by Moscow sources – is that Putin’s instructions to Dmitriev are different (“separate track”) from the instructions to Kostyukov. The military will stand fast on the positions they presented in the Abu Dhabi round of talks; Dmitriev will give the Americans what was agreed in their Miami talks on January 31. Medinsky has been appointed as Putin’s stand-in – the sources believe – because the Foreign Ministry and General Staff are refusing to make the concessions on the end-of-war settlement which Dmitriev has told Witkoff he accepts while Putin is attempting to resolve the contradictions between them.

The role of the Peskovites is to hope he can do this and pretend if he cannot.   

Internal resistance to Dmitriev’s presence at the negotiating table in Geneva initially led the state media platform RIA Novosti to report on February 13 that Dmitriev would not be part of the official delegation in the trilateral talks with the US and Ukraine in Geneva. Instead, he would go to Geneva and separately “hold a meeting with members of the US delegation. It will also be held in Geneva.”  The Dmitriev talks were reported again by RIA Novosti on Tuesday afternoon: “Meetings of the working group on economic issues will also be held in Geneva, which includes the head of RDIF [Russian Direct Investment Fund] Kirill Dmitriev.”  

Before Galuzin took his seat in Geneva, the Foreign Ministry announced its version of Putin’s instructions. Sergei Ryabkov, a deputy foreign minister like Galuzin, has told Tass:   “The Russian delegation is heading to Geneva with the clearest possible instructions to act within the framework agreed upon by the presidents [of Russia and the US] during their meeting in Anchorage. Without this, success cannot be achieved.”  By the Anchorage framework – aka the Anchorage formula – Ryabkov means the undertakings Trump exchanged with Putin not to escalate the sanctions war against Russia.  

Ryabkov then used Soviet terminology to attack Trump’s escalation in the war at sea against tanker deliveries of Russian oil. “Moscow proceeds from the understanding that agreements on Ukraine must be durable in nature and eliminate the root causes of the conflict: We must ensure that any potential agreement is sustainable in nature. This means that, among other things, it must cover the settlement of issues that fall into the category of root causes of this conflict… Cuba is definitely in focus as yet another object of US imperialist actions, which completely disregard the norms of international law and the international law of the sea: We are unwaveringly engaged with this [the issue of Cuba]. Russia boasts sound experience of protecting the freedom of navigation and experiments of ill-wishers on ‘locking up’ the Russian fleet may end sadly for them: considerable experience is already in place here on implementing, including by our Navy, activities for protection of freedom of navigation. If somebody assumes ‘experiments’ may be continued, it may have a sad end directly for those experimenting.”   

Indirectly referring to Dmitriev, Ryabkov said: “Russia will continue working toward normalizing relations with the United States: This work will continue.”

Ryabkov was hinting that Dmitriev should continue negotiating for several months more — there should be no hurry now in Geneva to accept his plan under pressure from the US side. “Russia needs to see how the outcomes of the midterm elections in the United States in this November will impact the Trump administration’s foreign policy activity and how the agenda on which the Trump administration operates may evolve.”  

Trump himself has hinted that Dmitriev has convinced him that the economic terms have already been accepted by Putin, and that Ukrainian resistance to the Russian military terms is all that remains for his chief negotiators, Steven Witkoff and General Alexus Grynkewich, to  finalize in Geneva. “What are you expecting there?” a reporter asked Trump. “Well, we’re big talks. It’s gonna be, uh, very easy. I mean, it’s, look so far, Ukraine better come to the table fast, it’s all I’m telling you.”      

“Uh, we are in a position, we want them to come,” Trump trailed off. The position Trump thinks he is in at Geneva is the Dmitriev plan.

Peskov has responded with his agenda for the talks, omitting the Dmitriev plan: “They will discuss the key parameters of the settlement – military, political and humanitarian. The topic of the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant may also be touched upon.”  

A Geneva banker with long experience in Russian business says:  “the Kremlin is at a crossroads, with Putin potentially choosing a high-risk, short-term economic fix over long-term strategic realignment and military certainty. Whether this is a brilliant gambit or a profound miscalculation will depend on whether Trump can (or will) deliver the sanctions relief [of the Dmitriev plan] and whether the Russian military and its allies will accept the outcome. I am pessimistic about Trump.”

“The war has created a firehose economy—massive state spending fuels growth in military industries but creates acute distortions: critical labor shortages (exacerbated by mobilization), high inflation, and a crash in civilian sectors. It’s unsustainable long-term, draining the National Wealth Fund and diverting resources from infrastructure, health care, and education. The naval blockade directly attacks Russia’s primary revenue source: energy exports. The current high bank interest] rates are designed to combat inflation fueled by massive state spending (primarily military). This policy suppresses civilian investment and consumption, slowing growth. It is a calculated risk to achieve a soft landing.”

View or listen to the new podcast with Nima Alkhorshid recorded on Tuesday afternoon as the Geneva talks began.   

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by Editor - Tuesday, February 17th, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

President Vladimir Putin has given instructions to accept the Trump Administration’s demand that in exchange for lifting sanctions against Russia, US capital must return to Russia on preferential terms as soon as possible.

For the new round of negotiations in Geneva later this week, Putin has replaced Admiral Igor Kostyukov, the military intelligence chief, as head of the Russian negotiating team with Vladimir Medinsky, a lower ranking Kremlin official.  Medinsky’s instructions are that the military terms of settlement on the Ukraine battlefield, insisted on by Kostyukov at the Abu Dhabi talks, be subordinated to the terms negotiated by Kirill Dmitriev, Putin’s principal negotiator with the White House.

The change in the Kremlin line is reported in the Russian media as the “Anchorage formula” and the “Dmitriev plan”.

This has been publicly criticized by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in  coded attacks in media interviews and a speech last week to the State Duma, declaring “the reality is quite the opposite.”   Lavrov – Moscow sources say – was reflecting the consensus of the General Staff, the Foreign and Defense Ministries.   

Putin reacted through spokesman Dmitry Peskov in defence of the Anchorage formula. “The spirit of Anchorage” – Peskov told Tass – “reflects a set of mutual understandings between Russia and the United States that are capable of bringing about a breakthrough, including in the settlement between Moscow and Kiev…[and] are fundamental.”  

Faction-fighting around the Kremlin over what this means has triggered dismay among those Russian businessmen who have acquired their new economic power with takeovers of foreign assets released by the exit of US and European corporations since 2022. These Russian sources report resentment at the backing which Putin has given to Russian Central Bank (CBR) Governor Elvira Nabiullina’s continuing high-interest rate policy for Russian borrowers in parallel with Dmitriev’s plan for low-interest rate US investors to re-enter Russia, recover their former market share, and generate the appearance of an investment stimulus in the run-up to the the State Duma elections on September 20.

Nabiullina and Dmitriev have combined to persuade Putin to allow them to make these Anchorage formula concessions to US negotiators Steven Witkoff, Jared Kushner, and Joshua Gruenbaum. Their last session in Miami on January 31 also included US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.   

What makes these concessions a “fundamental breakthrough”, as Peskov calls them, has been revealed in a memorandum of conversation published on February 12 by Bloomberg. This reports a “high-level memo which was drafted this year…which was circulated among senior Russian officials”. No author, date, subject line, distribution list, or any other detail of the document has been reported by Bloomberg to authenticate it, or to indicate whether it was leaked by the Witkoff side or the Dmitriev side after the Miami talks.   

The published summary has seven points, listed without quote marks. They indicate “US participation in Russian manufacturing” in the Russian aviation sector; “allow American firms to recover past losses” in the Russian oil and gas sector, “including offshore and hard-to-recover reserves”; “preferential conditions for US companies to return to the Russian consumer market”; “cooperation on nuclear energy, including for AI ventures”; “Russia’s return to the dollar settlement system, including possibly for Russian energy transactions”; “cooperation on raw materials such as lithium, copper, nickel and platinum”; and “working together to push fossil fuels as an alternative to climate-friendly ideology and low-emission solutions that favour China and Europe”.

There was no mention of Dmitriev in the Bloomberg report.

The next day Putin’s spokesman was asked to respond. He then identified Dmitriev by name. “A group on economic issues is working. On our side, it is headed by my colleague [Kirill] Dmitriev,” Peskov said. “Indeed, issues of trade and economic cooperation – both potential and proposed – are on the agenda, and they are being discussed. We hope these discussions will continue. At the moment, the de facto situation is such that, in practice, until, let’s say, a Ukrainian settlement is reached, it is hardly possible to talk about anything concrete, and for now this is limited to discussions.”  

Peskov acknowledged to Tass that he was “comment[ing] on a Bloomberg report about a ‘Kirill Dmitriev plan’ that envisions the possibility of establishing joint ventures with the US and settlements in dollars.”  

Peskov did not deny the plan’s points which had been reported. He also explicitly endorsed one of the points. “Russia has never abandoned the dollar; the US restricted its use for transactions, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said at a briefing. ‘After all, no one abandoned the use of dollars. It was the issuing country, the United States, that restricted a number of countries’ right to use the dollar. And these countries, naturally, are using alternative payment methods, alternative forms. If the dollar is attractive, then, of course, everyone will return to using it, including alongside other currencies.’”  

Explaining Peskov’s endorsement of the Dmitriev plan, sources in Moscow believe Putin has been persuaded by Nabiullina of the CBR and other economic advisors that unless he agrees to the Dmitriev plan very soon, the Russian economy faces recession conditions before the September 20 national parliamentary elections.  Nabiullina’s refusal to lower the CBR’s key rate more than 50 basis points to 15.5%, announced on February 13, came with several warnings that Russia’s GDP is slipping below the 1% growth rate officially reported, and thus into recession. “We have revised our 2026 investment forecast slightly downwards,” Nabiullina said, “the gradual slowdown in economic activity is accompanied by labour market easing…The situation for Russian exporters is complicated by sanctions. In view of the global market trends, we have reduced our forecast of oil prices for the next three years. Accordingly, we have also adjusted the forecast of the value of Russian exports.”  

The CBR’s “baseline scenario” forecast is for GDP growth this year of between plus 1% and plus 2%. The “risk scenario” forecast is for GDP decline of between minus 6% and minus 7%. The deciding factor between the two outcomes in Nabiullina’s calculation is Trump strategy: “The risk scenario assumes escalation of international trade tensions, intensification of deglobalisation processes, import tariff increases worldwide above the levels predicted in the baseline scenario, and a sharp decline in the growth rates of the largest economies.”  

In advance of the Bloomberg disclosure of the Dmitriev plan, there has been sharp reaction to Putin’s concessions to the US from Russia’s strategic allies – China, India, and Iran.  The first signal of disagreement with Putin came from President Xi Jinping following their video conference on February 4. According to the readout from Putin’s national security adviser Yury Ushakov, “Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping also exchanged views on their countries’ relations with the United States. Their approaches almost fully coincide.”   This is diplo-speak for its opposite: it means Xi and Putin are unhappy with each other’s separate  deal with Trump.

A well-informed source in Delhi said in anonymity: “So while [Indian] nationalists are calling out the Modi government out for betrayal of multipolarity by agreeing to Trump’s demand not to buy oil from Russia or from the pirate fleet,  Putin has quietly surrendered to the Americans himself.”

A Dubai source engaged in trade payment arbitrage adds: “Even after the [Russian] Central Bank made the renminbi a reserve currency, the trade in renminbi has carried heavy costs for Russians, and many Chinese exporters simply refuse to do settlements in RMB.  With India, the Central Bank never looked at Indian rupees as a reserve currency and has been very lukewarm. Russian Big Business more so. Their only interest with India has been in making large profits in trade and nothing else. No investment, no joint production. So Putin’s backing for Nabiullina and Dmitriev means fixation on the US dollar and submission to US hegemony. By the way, this is egg on the face of every podcaster talking of BRICS currency and Russia’s Eastern Pivot as gamechangers in multipolarity.”

A Moscow source adds that the Dmitriev plan reported by Bloomberg leaves out a major Putin concession allowing the privatization of the $300 billion in CBR reserves in a US-Russian “development fund” to be directed by family members of Trump and Witkoff, alongside Dmitriev. For more details, click to read.  

“There is a crisis of decision-making around Putin now,” claims a Moscow source in a position to know. “If Putin breaks all his undertakings with the BRICS allies, especially China and India, and subordinates the military conditions for the Ukraine battlefield to ingratiating with Trump’s capital, then what is silent now will grow very loud and very soon.”

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by Editor - Sunday, February 15th, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

1. Jeffrey Epstein’s failure to develop any business or political connection to the Kremlin or Russian oligarchs.
2. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s open break with Kirill Dmitriev’s negotiating strategy with the US; indirect criticism of President Vladimir Putin.
3.Escalation of the US war at sea against Russian oil trade, sea lanes, and tankers, and the continuing delay in Putin’s orders to the Russian Navy.
4.The disagreement between Putin and President Xi Jinping.
5.The precarious balance of force deterring US and Israel from attacking Iran, and Russian assessments of the survivability of the Iranian government.

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by Editor - Thursday, February 12th, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

Made public for all to see, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has just declared that escalation of the US war at sea against Russia’s trade routes and shipping fleets is the “opposite” of the Anchorage formula which President Vladimir Putin and his spokesman insist is still “fundamental [to] move the settlement process forward and allow for a breakthrough.”

The Russian Navy is on Lavrov’s side. Kirill Dmitriev and the Russian oligarchs are with Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov.

According to Admiral Alexander Moiseyev – submariner, former commander of the Black Sea and Northern Fleets, now chief of the Russian Navy – the Navy’s role must now be to “ensure maritime economic security, freedom and safety of navigation, protect economic interests, and prevent the loss of civilian vessels and growing threats to the Russian Federation.”

Equally public, if also discreet, the Kremlin national security adviser Yury Ushakov has declared that in this month’s direct talks between the Russian and Chinese security council chiefs and then between President Putin and President Xi Jinping there is a serious point of disagreement. “Their approaches almost fully coincide,” Ushakov has announced. He is pointing at the black hole where “their approaches” do not “coincide”.

In the new Dialogue Works podcast with Nima Alkhorshid, the discussion focuses on this escalation of war, and the impact it is having on all of Russia’s allies, including India and Iran, as Trump Administration strategy attempts to split and scatter them all.

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by Editor - Tuesday, February 10th, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

When you are the fastest growing tree on the street, every dog in the neighbourhood will try to lift his leg on you.

When the tree is Indian, the American dogs express their resentment. They are Steven Witkoff, Jared Kushner, Howard Lutnick, Marco Rubio, Scott Bessent, and Stephen Miller. They also tell each other privately they can’t understand the accent Indian officials use when speaking English. They don’t have the same disability when listening to Hebrew-accented Israelis.  

Lutnick has just been appointed by a decree President Donald Trump signed at the White House on Friday (February 6) as the American watchdog to control Indian import and export trade with countries Lutnick considers enemies – Russia, Iran, China, Venezuela. The decree says: “The Secretary of Commerce [Lutnick], in coordination with the Secretary of State [Rubio], the Secretary of the Treasury [Bessent], and any other senior official the Secretary of Commerce deems appropriate [Witkoff, Kushner, Miller], shall monitor whether India resumes directly or indirectly importing Russian Federation oil, as defined in section 7 of Executive Order 14329.”  

This is the sharp end of President Donald Trump’s exchange of tweets with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on February 2, announcing – Trump’s words – that “he is one of my greatest friends” and that together “our amazing relationship with India will be even stronger going forward, Prime Minister Modi and I are two people that GET THINGS DONE, something that cannot be said for most.”  

The watchdog  is one of the weapons US officials aim to wield against the Indians as the negotiations on terms for a US-Indian trade agreement – first begun in February 2025, halted by Trump seven months later, in August — have now “reached a framework for an Interim Agreement regarding reciprocal and mutually beneficial trade (Interim Agreement).”  That is the lead line in the “United States-India Joint Statement” which the White House released on February 6 following negotiations Rubio and Bessent held two days before with Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar.

In his 9-line communiqué, Rubio identified no point of agreement with Jaishankar on “critical minerals exploration, mining and processing… shared energy security goals [and] expanding bilateral and multilateral cooperation through the Quad.”   The first of Rubio’s points is the so-called Pax Silica, launched by the US with its allies against trade with China. The second of Rubio’s points means the prevention of India’s oil and other trade with Russia; the third means the militarization of the Quad states – US, Japan, Australia and India – against China and Russia in the Indian and Pacific Oceans, and the Straits of Malacca connecting them.  

Bessent’s Treasury office released no record or readout of his talks with Jaishankar on February 4. Instead, Bessent tweeted that they had “addressed the importance of securing supply chains, as well as other national and economic security issues of mutual interest.”  The Indian ministry released a single line and a hand-shake picture.  

Supply chain security was low on the priority list issued by the White House — 10^th of 12 points.  What it means is the scheme the Trump Administration started in December calling it Pax Silica: this is a plan for the US and its allies to combat Chinese and Russian systems of fabricating critical minerals into semiconductor chips and other components of advanced computers and artificial intelligence systems with dual, civilian and military, applications. The allies who have signed on so far are Australia, Greece, Israel, Japan, Qatar, South Korea, Singapore, United Arab Emirates (UAE), and UK.  Another NATO ally on the list is The Netherlands.  The domestic pressure on the Modi government to join up is coming from US-backed opposition politicians like Rahul Gandhi.  

Trump’s subordinates – Witkoff, Kushner, Lutnick, Bessent, Rubio, and Miller — remain uncertain of India and uncomfortable with Modi. The emergence last month of India as the new strategic protector of the UAE in combination with Russia has caught the Americans by surprise.  

Russian sources confirm that Witkoff’s and Kushner’s value in negotiations on the Ukraine war has dwindled. “They have been telling us Trump’s aim is to project American power to keep peace in Europe. We’ve been telling them we keep peace on our terms. Now, finally, they’ve got the message. They agree – Russia has won in Ukraine. Also, they have been bought out,” one source says in Moscow, referring to the dealmaking for US companies and bribery for the Trump family which have been presented by Kirill Dmitriev, the Kremlin’s negotiator for economic cooperation.

In their place at the Abu Dhabi negotiations with the Russian military delegation on February 4-5, and then in Muscat with the Iranians on February 6, Witkoff and Kushner have been subordinated by US commanders and military intelligence officers.

Projecting their personal aggression into flashpoints at home and abroad has been the Witkoff-Kushner strategy for escalation control, for exercising dominance everywhere at once. But it’s not a tactic which they can easily adjust or sequence — one trade war, one military front at a time — when they run into more resistance than they have anticipated; their costs go out of control;  their domestic constituencies lose confidence in them.

For the time being, Miller’s miscalculation in militarizing US cities, especially the  murders in Minneapolis, and in directing the President’s racist tweets, have stopped his ambition to succeed Rubio as National Security Adviser and forced him into invisibility.  Last year Miller had been one of the lead officials pushing the anti-India line and triggering Trump’s reversal of his personal goodwill towards Modi.   

Bessent’s and Rubio’s combination of the anti-Russia,  anti-China,  anti-India lines  has also been tempered by the resistance  their tactics have faced, not only  from Russia, Iran, China,  and India, but also from the leading Arab states, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

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by Editor - Sunday, February 8th, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow, with Sahar Dadjoo, Teheran
  @bears_with

As tensions persist between Iran and the United States amid intensified military signaling and renewed talk of negotiations, critical questions remain about Washington’s real strategy and the risk of a broader regional conflict. In this context, Tehran Times spoke with John Helmer, a veteran journalist and geopolitical analyst based in Moscow, to examine the shifting balance of power and the prospects for de-escalation.

Published today here.  

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by Editor - Friday, February 6th, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

In Jeffrey Epstein’s decade between 2009 and 2019 he tried ever so hard to meet the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin.

That’s to say, between Epstein’s release from prison on his Florida state conviction and sentence for procuring a minor for prostitution and for soliciting a prostitute, and then his re-arrest and imprisonment in New York on federal charges of sex trafficking of minors, he asked his staff, friends, business associates, US Government retirees,  ex-government officials from Norway, Israel, UAE, and Japan,  and Russia’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Vitaly Churkin (died in February 2017), to procure an invitation for him to meet Putin.

They succeeded in getting Epstein invitations to business promotions in Sochi, Vladivostok, and St. Petersburg, at which crowd meetings with Putin were promised. But Epstein refused.  On May 13, 2013, he claimed in an email to former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak that Putin “had asked that I meet him the same time as his economic conference. I told him no. If he wants to meet he will need to set aside real time and privacy. Let’s see what happens.”

Nothing ever did.

Epstein’s scheme was simple. He targeted one connection to make another connection he believed the first already had to the Kremlin in order to then trade the appearance of the Kremlin connection for Epstein to others willing to pay Epstein introducing, consulting or finder’s fees if the appearance of Putin’s agreement could be fabricated into money.

Epstein also needed to prove that his criminal conviction and jail time counted for nothing in international politics, investment banking, high society. Like washing money, this was reputation laundering.  

“You can explain to Putin,” Epstein told Thorbjorn Jagland, a former Norwegian prime minister and Council of Europe politician, “that there should be a sopshiticated [sic] Russian version of bitcoin, It would be the most advanced financial instrument available on a global basis”.  

This was amusingly familiar to a Russian, especially one who knew enough English to appreciate the double meaning of Epstein’s misspelling; more importantly, it exposes the naïve superiority complex he was demonstrating to Russians whose experience in laundering, transferring, and crypto-hiding amounted to multiple billions to trillions of dollars more than Epstein had ever handled. As a money launderer, Russians understood Epstein was never clever enough himself and employed no organization to work for him.  

Jagland did nothing with the email. Jagland could do nothing for himself except exaggerate the group session he had at the Kremlin in December 2016 when the Kremlin published an 8-line speech Putin gave.   Two years later, in December 2018,  there were even more officials with Jagland at the table and Putin’s communiqué was three lines shorter. Jagland’s refusal to withdraw support for European sanctions of Russia on Crimea and for prejudicial judgements of the European Court of Justice against Russia left him in a tupik – that’s Russian for dead end.  That’s where Jagland’s “connection” with Putin ended too.

Its remaining value to Jagland was to trade it to Epstein in return for an evening’s accommodation and entertainment at his Paris house. “Is it same prosedure [sic] as last time that I can stay with you,” Jagland asked Epstein.  “I promise not make noice [sic] or ruin you.”

In both directions, Jagland’s and Epstein’s, this operation was a hustle. Jagland got what he didn’t pay for; Epstein got nothing.

Epstein’s trafficking of Russian women was more successful. The women proved their exceptional beauty and their relatively low cost compared to American women, and thus they proved to be the commodity that asset hustlers like Epstein always appreciate. He bought them cheap and sold dear. Also, the Russian women have kept silent.

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by Editor - Thursday, February 5th, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

Three out of four Russians expect victory in the Ukraine war. Even more of them trust the Russian Army to achieve it – the sooner the better, the voters think.

Four out of ten Russians believe that the Special Military Operation will end this year; in the same proportion, they also believe there will be a domestic economic crisis this year.

One in four Russians think it is equally possible that there will be an armed clash with the United States and NATO countries;  mass clashes on the national territory or mass public protests.

This combination of growing public impatience and pessimism about the economy has been  reported from a Levada Centre nationwide poll using face-to-face interviews conducted between January 15 and 23; the results were published on  February 3.  

In a related report of the same polling results, Levada has revealed: “The majority of Russians, 61%, believe that it is necessary now to move to peace talks, but over the past month [December 2025 poll] their share has decreased by five percentage points. At the same time, the share of those who think it is necessary to continue military operations has increased to a third of respondents (31%, an increase of 6 percentage points)…The majority of respondents (59%) believe that if achieving  peace with Ukraine is not yet possible, Russia should escalate its strikes on Ukraine, including using new types of weapons.”  

That last line is the signal that Russian voters are growing impatient with President Vladimir Putin’s reluctance to fire the Oreshnik missile for decapitation of the Ukraine’s command-and-control centres, and his readiness to give in to President Donald Trump’s requests for moratoriums and ceasefires in the electric war campaign. Voter support for Putin’s performance remains highly stable at 84% approval, compared with 87% to 84% between August and November of last year; disapproval has remained between 11% and 13%.   The difference in these numbers is within the margin for  statistical error.

Unlike Putin, Russian voters want Generals Winter and Cholera to seize control of Kiev and Lvov sooner rather than later.

An analysis of a related Levada dataset by a Harvard University think tank has confirmed the conclusion that “significant parts of the Russian public could support escalation vis-à-vis Ukraine if peace remains out of reach. While a majority still favours negotiations over immediate military continuation, [there is]  growing support for more force, and a slight rise in support of the armed forces. Taken together, they indicate a possible hardening of Russians’ attitudes toward the conflict…Together, these trends point to possible further normalization of a long war and reduced public appetite for compromise in Russia.”  

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by Editor - Thursday, February 5th, 2026
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