By John Helmer
  @bears_with

In their hour-long Oval Office meeting on May 22, President Donald Trump repeatedly attacked South African (SA) President Cyril Ramaphosa. This is the longest,  continuous face-to-face verbal assault on a foreign head of state in recent Trump history.

As the lead image shows, Ramaphosa and the state ministers sitting at his right are black. Trump, his Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Peter Hegseth, and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick are white. “It was a full-on ambush,” observes a black American source, “and an attempt to make the South African delegation, Ramaphosa in particular, look small.”

“In an extraordinary scene clearly orchestrated by the White House for maximum effect and reminiscent of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s US visit in February,” responded a former US Ambassador to South Africa (2013-2016)  Patrick Gaspard,    “Trump confronted Ramaphosa with false claims of genocide against SA whites, including allegations of mass killings and land seizures…Trump had turned the meeting with Ramaphosa into a shameful spectacle and savaged him with some fake snuff film and violent rhetoric. Engaging on Trump’s terms never goes well for anyone.”  

Gaspard added: “Bizarrely, Trump has cued some video of a political rally of a minor Party in SA  of Julius Malema and others going on about land seizures in South Africa as if that’s ‘evidence’ of a ‘genocide’. Just bizarre. And Cyril is doing all he can to maintain his composure and dignity.”  “Pretty extraordinary to see billionaire Johan Rupert pleading Trump for some deal for Elon Musk and Starlink to come ‘save’ South Africa. I think that this grift from Musk lies at the heart of this entire performance.”  

The Russian reaction came in the Kremlin-backed security analysis internet publication, Vzglyad. The writer is Yevgeny Krutikov, a former GRU field officer and Russian strategy analyst who is an expert on Russian policy in Africa; he is white and speaks Afrikaans.

“Ramaphosa is the exact opposite of Zelensky in terms of human qualities. He is smiling and funny… he has a wonderful sense of humour which gives him a charm that is unexpected.  This even affected Trump, who apparently counted on conflict in the conversation, while Ramaphosa constantly joked, laughed, and smiled even where it was difficult to do so; for example, on the issue of ‘genocide of whites’ and the murders of farmers…Apparently, this attitude was planned in advance by the South African delegation with all its Soviet experience of former underground fighters…the whole show ended in a draw… Cyril Ramaphosa really wants to bring South Africa onto the big political stage, including by participating in the negotiation process on Ukraine. For South Africa, his visit to Washington was not only an attempt to restore and reset economic relations with the United States, but also to establish himself as another source of diplomatic efforts. And, despite the elements of the show program, he succeeded. This is a very positive sign for Russia, as South Africa is not only our traditional partner and ally, but also another independent vector of power that Trump’s typical pressure failed to break.”  

Watch the Oval Office session posted by the White House here. It ended with Ramaphosa quipping to Trump about the press: “they like you so much.”  Read the full transcript.  

Read the analysis by Krutikov in yesterday’s edition of Vzglyad.   The Russian original has been translated verbatim into English without editing. Links, illustrations and captions have been added for clarification.

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by Editor - Friday, May 23rd, 2025
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By John Helmer
  @bears_with

The war in the Ukraine is a sideshow for President Donald Trump because he is escalating his preparations for war against Russia on other fronts and concentrating his main forces against China on the ground, Russia in space.  This is Trump’s MEGA – Make the Empire Great Again.

This is also the reason he is signalling his readiness to make battlefield concessions to President Vladimir Putin which the European leaders are reluctant to accept.  Their reason for that is the enormous new cost in US arms which Trump is demanding they start to pay.

“It’s a pretty evil world out there,” Trump announced on May 20.  He was referring to Russian and   Chinese nuclear missile capabilities to strike the US. Reviving President Ronald Reagan’s “evil empire” threat from Moscow, and his “Star Wars” space shield, Trump said he is going one better.

“We will truly be completing the job that President Reagan started 40 years ago, forever ending the missile threat to the American homeland. The success rate is very close to 100 percent, which is incredible when you think of it, you’re shooting bullets out of the air…Now we’re number one in space by a lot. It’s not even close…I think you can rest assured there’ll be nothing like this. Nobody else is capable of building it either.”

Trump is repudiating Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), the doctrine of strategic deterrence in practical effect between Washington and Moscow for more sixty years.  Trump’s new idea is not MAD; it’s LUNACY – Launch Under Nuclear Ascendance Confidence Yessiree.

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by Editor - Wednesday, May 21st, 2025
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By John Helmer
  @bears_with

Is it MAGA or is it MEGA?

When President Donald Trump negotiated with President Vladimir Putin on Monday, May 19,  was he aiming to lower the cost of the Ukraine war to the domestic US economy, or to enrich it by transferring the war cost to the Europeans, particularly Germany, so that most of their planned €150 billion in loans  and €650 billion in country budget outlays  for the “ReArm Europe Plan” to fight Russia will get spent in the US?

Is Trump counting on Putin to give him enough of a battlefield pause or armistice in the Ukraine so that Trump can expand US force deployments and allied  military procurement further north along the front from the Baltic Sea to Finland and Greenland; south along the Iranian frontier; and east against China?

The last of these, the eastern front war against China – explained Secretary of State Marco Rubio in a Senate committee hearing on Tuesday – is now the strategic priority for the US. Implementing it requires sequencing Trump’s wars.   “Every minute we spend,” according to Rubio, “every dollar we spend on this conflict in Europe is distracting both our focus and our resources away from a potential for a much more serious and much more cataclysmic confrontation in the Indo-Pacific…they are related but they’re related both ways — they’re related on the one hand by the precedent that it could set,  but they’re also related by the fact that every minute that we spend on this conflict that cannot be won by military means,  every resource that’s expended into it is money and time that’s not being spent on preventing a much more serious confrontation from a global perspective in the Indo-Pacific.”  – Min 53:51.

This is bigger, “much more serious” than MAGA – Make America Great Again. It’s MEGA – Make the Empire Great Again.

When Rubio went on to explain what the Putin-Trump telephone call was aimed at doing, he was confident the US is taking advantage of what he called Putin’s political weakness, the vulnerability of the Russian economy, high battlefield casualties, and the slowness of the Russian military advance. “I think [Putin] approaches it — we have to assume – from a cold, calculated cost-benefit nation-state evaluation of what’s in the best interest of his view of Russia. What I’m pretty certain of is this is not the war [Putin] thought he was getting when he first invaded Ukraine.  I think he anticipated that the government would collapse and that, uh, he would be greeted as a liberator. It has not turned out that way,  and in fact Russia today controls less territory than they did after the first two months of the war so they’ve suffered significant losses —  they’ve suffered the losses of at least you know by some estimates 200,000-250,000 men in uniform and the Ukrainians have suffered less but nonetheless suffered as well. It is a battlefield today in which the front lines move 10 kilometres at a time in one direction or another. Even if [the Russians] are advancing, they’re advancing at a tremendously high cost. But the challenge Russia faces now is their entire economy stirring up. In their regard we want to see the conflict end in a way that’s enduring,  meaning not a peace that lasts three months and then restarts again,  but something that’s enduring that both sides could live with for a long period of time without it restarting again.”  Min 2:46.50.

The idea that Putin cannot and will not challenge MEGA in Europe except slowly and weakly  on the Ukrainian battlefield reinforces the American conviction that if Trump gives Putin enough rope now in the Ukraine, he will hang himself later in the face of MEGA strategy on all fronts, especially on Iran and China, as Putin did in Syria.

Even current critics of Trump’s negotiating tactics with the Russian president believe that Putin doesn’t want to fight MEGA, but aims to come to terms – business deals — that will undermine Russia’s alliances with Iran, North Korea, and China. Putin, as one of the critics claimed this week, “has clearly avoided winning the war because for him it can be achieved for a much greater purpose, a Great Power settlement, a new Yalta.”  Min -8:47.

A NATO veteran responds: “The Chinese are in an ill humour. They will take a dim view of any Russian double-dealing, including facilitation of Trump’s sequencing which we can be sure they are aware of.” Regarding Rubio’s answers to the questions he was asked by senators this week, he adds: “I view that hearing with Rubio as nothing more than a council of war.”

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by Editor - Tuesday, May 20th, 2025
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By John Helmer
  @bears_with

On Monday President Donald Trump telephoned President Vladimir Putin and they talked for two hours before Trump put lunch in his mouth and Putin his dinner.  

On the White House schedule, there was no advance notice of the call and no record afterwards. The White House log is blank for Trump’s entire morning while the press were told he was at lunch between 11:30 and 12:30.  

Putin went public first, making a statement to the press which the Kremlin posted at 19:55 Moscow time; it was then 12:55 in Washington. Click to read.   

Trump and his staff read the transcript and then composed Trump’s statement in a tweet posted at 13:33 Washington time, 20:33 Moscow time. Click to read.  

If Secretary of State Marco Rubio and General Keith Kellogg, the president’s negotiator with the Ukraine and FUGUP (France, United Kingdom, Germany, Ukraine, Poland), were consulted during Trump’s prepping, sat in on the call with the President,  or were informed immediately after the call, they have remained silent.

The day before, May 18, Rubio announced that the Istanbul-II meeting had produced agreement “to exchange paper on ideas to get to a ceasefire.  If those papers have ideas on them that are realistic and rational, then I think we know we’ve made progress.  If those papers, on the other hand, have requirements in them that we know are unrealistic, then we’ll have a different assessment.”  Rubio was hinting that the Russian formula in Istanbul, negotiations-then-ceasefire, has been accepted by the US. What the US would do after its “assessment”, Rubio didn’t say – neither walk-away nor threat of new sanctions.

Vice President JD Vance wasn’t present at the call because he was flying home from Rome where he attended Pope Leo XIV’s inaugural mass. “We’re more than open to walking away,” Vance told reporters in his aeroplane. “The United States is not going to spin its wheels here. We want to see outcomes.”   Vance prompted Trump to mention the Pope as a mediator for a new round of Russian-Ukrainian negotiations, first to Putin and then in public.

Kellogg is refusing to go along.  He tweeted on Sunday: “In Istanbul @SecRubio  made it clear that we have presented ‘a strong peace plan’. Coming out of the London meetings we (US) came up with a comprehensive 22 point plan that is a framework for peace. The first point is a comprehensive cease fire that stops the killing now.”   

FUGUP issued their own statement after Trump’s call. “The US President and the European partners have agreed on the next steps. They agreed to closely coordinate the negotiation process and to seek another technical meeting. All sides reaffirmed their willingness to closely accompany Ukraine on the path to a ceasefire. The European participants announced that they would increase pressure on the Russian side through sanctions.”   

This signalled acceptance with Trump of the Russian formula, negotiations-then-ceasefire, and time to continue negotiating at the “technical” level. The sanction threat was added. But this statement was no longer FUGUP. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer was omitted; so too Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk. The Italian, the Finn and the European Commission President were substituted. They make FUGIFEC.

Late in the Paris evening of Sunday French President Emmanuel Macron attempted to keep Starmer in Trump’s good books and preserve the ceasefire-first formula. “I spoke tonight,” Macron tweeted, “with @POTUS @Keir_Starmer @Bundeskanzler  and @GiorgiaMeloni  after our talks in Kyiv and Tirana. Tomorrow, President Putin must show he wants peace by accepting the 30-day unconditional ceasefire proposed by President Trump and backed by Ukraine and Europe.”    By the time on Monday that Macron realized he had been trumped, the Elysée had nothing to say.

By contrast, Italian Prime Minister Meloni signalled she was happy to line up with Trump and accept Putin’s negotiations-then-ceasefire. “Efforts are being made,” Meloni’s office announced,    “for an immediate start to negotiations between the parties that can lead as soon as possible to a ceasefire and create the conditions for a just and lasting peace in Ukraine.”  Meloni claimed she would assure that Pope Leo XIV would fall into line. “In this regard, the willingness of the Holy Father to host the talks in the Vatican was welcomed. Italy is ready to do its part to facilitate contacts and work for peace.” 

For the time being, Putin’s and Trump’s statements have put Rubio, Kellogg and the Europeans offside.   Decoding the two president’s statements shows how and why.

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by Editor - Monday, May 19th, 2025
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By John Helmer
  @bears_with

In Soviet days Russians were famous for not smiling, at least not in public. In private, smiling was strictly between consenting adults.

Now it is a marketing ploy of Sberbank — the state savings bank run by Yeltsin-era leftover, German Gref – to invite its customers to smile whenever they make payments. This  combines several bank profit-making lures in two formulas — spending is more to smile about than saving; borrowing money you don’t have to spend is even more to smile about.  

The bank is also selling facial recognition technology to reduce its cost of securing computer and smartphone transactions and cutting the compensation it must pay out for fraud.  About that, Gref’s advertisement for the smile-as-you-pay scheme shows a popular television actor who plays a fraudster who is smiling because he has reformed himself and is spending money he hasn’t stolen.   

So, are Russians happy because they are convinced their money is secure? Or are they smiling to con the bank that the money they are spending will not be paid back?

According to President Vladimir Putin a few days ago, telling Central Bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina to smile at a business conference:  “Elvira Sakhipzadova, I’ll give you my word now. You see, smiles too, mean everything is all right. Everyone is smiling, everyone is in a good mood.”

Asking Russians if they feel happier these days, when the country is at war, is not as straightforward as several of the NATO warfighting countries may believe. This is because Russians have long been far more anxious about the threat of war than the populations of those  countries fighting Russia. Russians know their history better and remember the past more accurately than the President of the United States and the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

According to the independent national pollster Levada Centre of Moscow, “since 1989, the main fears of Russians remain the diseases of loved ones (51% in April 2025), war (48%),  and loss of employment due to illness or accident (38%). Also, one in four are afraid of old age and  helplessness (27%), natural disasters (26%), and poverty (24%)…In recent years, respondents have become less afraid of illness among loved ones (decrease by 7 percentage points since July 2019);  poverty (decrease by 15 percentage points since February 2021); the arbitrariness of the authorities (decrease by 11 percentage points since July 2019), and revival of mass repression (decrease by 6 percentage points since February 2021).”  

Fear of war is on the rise in Europe, but this apprehension is still less than half the Russian level.   Americans, by contrast, are much more anxious about domestic violence at home than war abroad.

Russians are measurably happier than Americans with the direction they think the country is taking. According to Levada’s  last poll,   “in February 2025, the mood of Russians improved slightly compared to the end of last year and the beginning of this year: the majority of respondents (68%) have been in a normal, calm state in recent days. Since the last measurement in January, the proportion of those who experienced tension, irritation, and fear or melancholy has slightly decreased (to 16%), and the proportion of those who were in a good mood has slightly increased (to 15%).”

“As the experience of recent years shows”, VTsIOM — the All-Russian Centre for the Study of Public Opinion – reports “the level of happiness demonstrates amazing resilience to external shocks. Let’s recall the pandemic. Contrary to the pessimistic forecasts, it did not discourage Russians: in April 2020, shortly after the introduction of the first coronavirus restrictions, the level of happiness was close to today. Moreover, until the end of 2020, the indicator didn’t fall below 80%; this partly indicates the psychological strength of our fellow citizens.”  VTsIOM is state owned and contracted.  

What Russians tell pollsters by telephone or face to face isn’t quite, much less all, they are feeling.

Three measurements of how they act are more revealing: that’s how much alcohol Russians  drink; what painkiller tablets they swallow; and what the pharmaceutical companies report to be the volume of their sales of anti-depressant drugs. Since the Covid pandemic began in 2020 and ended in 2021, and then the Special Military Operation commenced in February 2022, the figures show that vodka consumption is almost unchanged but whisky, brandy (cognac) and cocktail mixes are on the rise. Painkillers and analgesics are falling in volume of off-the-shelf sales. But by contrast, doctors’ prescription sales of anti-depressants have hit an all-time record high in 2024; the consumption through February of this year has been growing at a rate of between 15% and 17%.

This is either a dramatic change in the Russian mind;  or it’s a revolution in the Russian treatment of pain;  or it’s the result of more money, more doctors — more smiles at the bank,  as Putin recommended.   

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by Editor - Monday, May 19th, 2025
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By John Helmer
  @bears_with

In the outcome, it’s the old story come true again.

That’s the one in which Tarquin, the ancient Roman king, wanted the Cumaean Sybil to sell him the nine books of prophecies known as the Sybilline Oracles. When the king dismissed the Sybil’s price for the nine, she burned three and asked the same price for six. When the king held out again, she burned another three. In desperation, the king then paid for the three remaining at the price he had refused for the original nine.

For two thousand years this has been known as the art of the deal.

As if they didn’t know the story, on Friday the leaders of France, United Kingdom, Germany, Ukraine and Poland (FUGUP) telephoned President Donald Trump and told him to keep fighting President Vladimir Putin until he accepts their price. FUGUP told POTUS  to burn Putin until Russia will have nothing left to pay with.

Two leaks from the Istanbul meetings confirm what has happened. According to Oleg Tsarev’s account from the Russian side,  the Russian delegation said they would agree to a ceasefire if the Ukraine withdrew its forces completely from the four regions – Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporozhye, and Kherson. The Ukrainians refused. In reply, the Russians said that next time there will be five regions.

According to a London newspaper’s leak from the British adviser to the Ukrainians, the Russian delegation said they would agree to a ceasefire only if the Ukraine withdrew its troops from the four regions, and if Kiev refused, Russia  would take two more regions – Sumy and Kharkov. The head of the Russian delegation, Vladimir Medinsky, had reportedly said that Russia “does not want war but is ready to fight for a year, two, three — no matter how long it takes. We fought with Sweden for 21 years. How long are you ready to fight?  Perhaps someone sitting at this table will lose even more of their loved ones. Russia is ready to fight forever.”  

Trump was sitting in his aeroplane flying north from Abu Dhabi, two hours and a thousand kilometres south of Istanbul when he got the call from FUGUP.  The day before, he had told reporters ““we will be leaving tomorrow but you know,  almost destination unknown because it could be here, it could be there, but probably we’re back to Washington DC tomorrow.”

An hour before he took off, he said: “You know, they all said Putin was going, Zelensky was going, and I said, if I don’t go, I guarantee Putin’s not going. And he didn’t go…We’re going to get it done.” Trump added he would meet Putin “as soon as we can set it up. I would actually leave here [Abu Dhabi] and go [to Istanbul]… in two or three weeks we have a deal.”  

As Russian forces accelerate their spring offensive west, north and south, burning what Trump, Zelensky and the Europeans have to fight over, the terms of the Russian deal are now far greater than Vladimir Medinsky, the Russian lead negotiator, accepted at Istanbul-I in March 2022 but were repudiated when he returned to Moscow. Before he set out for Istanbul-II last week, the consensus in Moscow was unanimous, as Putin demonstrated at his lengthy Kremlin session in the evening of May 14 with ministers, intelligence agency chiefs, and senior military commanders from the General Staff and from the front.

“Andrei Belousov [Defence Minister] and Valery Gerasimov [chief of the General Staff]  also delivered reports. All commanders of the groups of armed forces in the special military operation zone reported on the situation in their respective sectors along the line of contact. The meeting participants conducted a detailed joint discussion of all reports. Based on these briefings, the President summed up the meeting results, set tasks and charted the negotiating position of the Russian delegation in Istanbul.”  

In Abu Dhabi,  Trump’s staff had left a four-hour gap in the timing of his flight back to Washington in order  to meet with Putin in Istanbul on condition that Trump ordered Zelensky to leave Turkey beforehand and Putin agreed to a summit announcement of an immediate ceasefire. Zelensky was removed to Albania but the Putin’s ceasefire conditions remained unchanged. Trump then abandoned his summit meeting plan; the record of his flight log was erased.  He announced his personal success instead – “in two or three weeks”.  

For the terms of the Russian consensus, and Putin’s agreement to meet Trump in the future, listen to the podcast with Dimitri Lascaris, recorded in Greece on Saturday, May 17.

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by Editor - Saturday, May 17th, 2025
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By John Helmer
  @bears_with

On Monday, May 12, the United States pushed the Council of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), the aircraft safety watchdog, to vote behind closed doors to adopt a secret resolution convicting Russia of shooting-down Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 on July 17, 2014.

Unlike the Dutch show trial which in November 2022 convicted two Russians and a Ukrainian of the same crime,  the ICAO reached its verdict without the appearance of an open proceeding or of openly tested evidence. It’s a put-up job.

William Raillant-Clark,  the ICAO communications chief at the Montreal headquarters, was asked to provide a text of the resolution and identification of the countries voting for, against, abstaining,  and absent. Raillant-Clark replied: “In accordance with the Council’s Rules of Procedure, the vote was taken by secret ballot.” He refused to disclose the resolution itself; the numbers of votes without the names of the countries; or the reason for keeping everything but the conviction of Russia secret. He answered: “The  Council’s considerations  based on reason of law and fact, will be issued in the coming weeks.”

The spokesman was then asked for a copy of ICAO’s Rules of Procedure. He refuses to answer.

The decision of ICAO to go to war with Russia, using its aviation safety mandate to cover up the evidence of what really happened to MH17,  destroys the organization for the future. It follows the destruction of the global organization for the safety of nuclear power generation,  the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA);    the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW);  the International Committee of the Red Cross;   and the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres.  

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by Editor - Wednesday, May 14th, 2025
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By John Helmer
  @bears_with

In his 48-minute speech in Riyadh,  President Donald Trump was applauded many times for rewriting the past of US wars in the Middle East,  and also the future of US wars in the region, and elsewhere. From the Arab point of view, the outcome of these wars has been the destruction of Arab national ideology by Jewish national ideology, and independently,  the success of Arab oil money.

All that remains of the former is the Yemen resistance of Ansar Allah and the Houthis. “We had 52 days of thunder and lightning like they’ve never seen before,” Trump claimed. “This was a swift, ferocious, decisive and extremely successful use of military force…” And Iran:  “The biggest and most destructive of these forces is the regime in Iran, which has caused unthinkable suffering in Syria, Lebanon, Gaza, Iraq, Yemen and beyond. There could be no sharper contrast with the path you have pursued on the Arabian Peninsula, than the disaster unfolding right across in the Gulf of Iran.”  “if Iran’s leadership rejects this olive branch and continues to attack their neighbors,” Trump proposed “o inflict massive maximum pressure, drive Iranian oil exports to zero, like I did before.”

For the past of the war against Russia, Trump repeated the falsehood that “[US withdrawal from Kabul, August 30, 2021] is probably why Putin decided to go into Ukraine, something he never would have done if I were president.”  

For the future, Trump said he was sending his men to Istanbul – Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Keith Kellogg, Steven Witkoff.  “Talks are being held in Turkey later this week, probably on Thursday and they could produce some pretty good results. Our people are going to be going there, Marco’s going to be going there. Others are going to be going, and we’ll see if we can get it done.” Trump’s earlier hint that he might go himself has been removed.   

Enroute to Qatar, about noon on Wednesday, Moscow time, Trump was asked if he would meet President Vladimir Putin in Turkey; he replied that he might and that he might not. “[Putin]  would like me to be there and that’s a possibility if we could end the war I’d be thinking about it. So we have a very full situation now, that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t do it to save a lot of lives and come back. But, uh, yeah, I think they’re thinking about something. I don’t know that he would be there if I’m not there.”  

Trump has arranged for Zelensky to meet Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and wait in Ankara for Trump to appear. Zelensky has already said he has agreed with Erdogan, Trump and the European allies on the formula – “full and unconditional ceasefire” first,  negotiations to follow. Zelensky’s ultimatum is that he will go to Istanbul with Trump if Putin comes — “Putin is the one who determines everything in Russia, so he is the one who has to resolve the war. This is his war. Therefore, the negotiations should be with him.”  

Responding to Zelensky’s challenge, Peskov said: ““We respond only to Putin’s statements.”   Russian officials do not refer to Zelensky by a title because his current rule by martial law is not recognized, and because new elections to replace him are a Russian condition for denazification of the Ukraine. New elections are also on the Russian term sheet sent to Trump for tabling in Istanbul.

“We remember the 2019 summit in Paris,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Maria Zakharova has posted,  referring to the last and only meeting Putin has had with Zelensky, “for Vladimir Zelensky’s provocative negotiating tactic when he suddenly refused to approve the outcome document despite the fact that it was already drafted and coordinated by the parties involved, including Kiev. He asked to remove the provision on the separation of forces along the entire line of contact and insisted on replacing it with a provision which provided for the separation of forces in three sections only. However, he failed to deliver even on these commitments which he had articulated himself… Today, these same countries are pushing [Zelensky] for a 30-day truce to give Kiev a respite and enable it to restore its military capabilities to be able to continue confronting Russia.”  

Until hours ago, the Russian lineup in Istanbul appeared to be the same as with Rubio, Witkoff, and the now sacked Michael Waltz  in Riyadh in February –  Sergei Lavrov, Yury Ushakov, Kirill Dmitriev.  Lavrov may have conveyed this in a telephone call with his Turkish counterpart on Tuesday night.   On Wednesday afternoon,  however, Lavrov was reported by Kommersant as not participating in Istanbul.  

Since then Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov cautioned: “The Americans are well aware of our position. We remain in contact. However, this is not the word [coordination] to use in this particular case,”  After meeting with the Turkish ambassador in Moscow on Monday, Ryabkov told Tass:  “The topics are the same that we have talked about repeatedly, which has been on the agenda lately.: how can we ensure a reliable, sustainable settlement of the situation, first of all addressing the primary sources of this conflict, resolving issues related to the denazification of the Kiev regime, ensuring recognition of the realities that have recently developed on earth, including the entry of new territories into the Russian Federation.”  

Click on the podcast here.  

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by Editor - Wednesday, May 14th, 2025
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By John Helmer
  @bears_with

When politicians fight wars to truce or ceasefire, there’s a mistake they often make. That is to give up escalation dominance, escalation control, to the adversary so that he gains confidence  that when he is ready, he will resume fighting in a much stronger position than he was at the truce. In short, ceasefire doesn’t deter the resumption of fighting; it doesn’t make for ceaseforce.  

As President Vladimir Putin prepares for Istanbul-II — the resumption of negotiations with the Ukraine proposed for May 15 — he has announced that he understands the difference better now than he did at Istanbul-I in March 2022.  The Russian General Staff and the intelligence services believe so.

The aim of “serious negotiations”, Putin read from a statement,  “is to eliminate the root causes of the conflict and to achieve a long-term last peace…in the course of these negotiations it will become possible to agree on some kind of new truce and a new ceasefire. And a real ceasefire that…would be the first step, I repeat, towards a long-term, sustainable peace, rather than a prelude to continuing armed conflict after the Ukrainian armed forces have been rearmed, re-equipped…Who needs such peace?”

The President took no questions from the press assembled to listen to him at 2 am on Sunday morning.   

While Putin was addressing the departing heads of government and of state who had joined in the Moscow celebration of Victory Day, the strategic Russian ally who was absent, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, sent Putin a message of his own after his brief war with Pakistan.

Through his air force chief, Air Marshal A.K. Bhakti, briefing the press later on the same day,  May 11, the message was:  “[It is] time to convey a message to our adversaries…We have the capability to target every system at these bases,  and more. However, it was only a measured response to install good wisdom to our adversary to deter further escalation.”  

In this podcast, Nima Alkhorshid, Ray McGovern and I discuss the tipping of the strategic balance which Russia is aiming to achieve against the Zelensky regime in Kiev and those who finance, arm and instruct it – Donald Trump, Friedrich Merz, Emmanuel Macron, and Keir Starmer. In parallel, Modi believes he has achieved this strategic tipping in the dismantling of Pakistan as a platform for China to threaten war against India in the future; we discuss whether the Indians are right to claim a strategic victory against China, too.

These are big questions for discussion. The answers are surprising, and although they are recognized in Moscow, they are not yet for public discussion. Click to watch.  

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by Editor - Monday, May 12th, 2025
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By John Helmer
  @bears_with

As if it wasn’t already clear, the mainstream media led by Reuters, a Russia warfighting propaganda platform based in New York, have just announced that when President Donald Trump says he is for peace with Russia, he is either winking at his Defense Secretary Peter Hegseth or blinking at President Vladimir Putin.

Or else the coordination between the President’s mouth and his eyes fails from time to time and he cannot control his officials, staff, and advisors because they can’t follow when he contradicts himself.    

Reporting on a Trump and Pentagon order for the US to halt arms deliveries to Ukraine, through the Polish hub at Rzeszow,   and then retraction of the order and resumption of the delivery flights, Reuters says infighting is rife within the White House and the Pentagon,  and that either Trump is unaware or he is unable to control it.     

“The cancelations,” according to Reuters, “came after Trump wrapped up a January 30 Oval Office meeting about Ukraine that included Hegseth and other top national security officials, according to three sources familiar with the situation. During the meeting, the idea of stopping Ukraine aid came up, said two people with knowledge of the meeting, but the president issued no instruction to stop aid to Ukraine. The president was unaware of Hegseth’s order, as were other top national security officials in the meeting, according to two sources briefed on the private White House discussions and another with direct knowledge of the matter. Asked to comment on this report, the White House told Reuters that Hegseth had followed a directive from Trump to pause aid to Ukraine, which it said was the administration’s position at the time. It did not explain why, according to those who spoke to Reuters, top national security officials in the normal decision making process didn’t know about the order or why it was so swiftly reversed.”  

The January 30 Oval Office meeting was secret. The official White House schedule for that day reveals only that Trump held a press briefing in the morning on the fatal helicopter and airliner crash over Washington the night before; lunched with Vice President JD Vance; and then signed executive orders for the rest of the afternoon.  

What Vance decided that day with Trump isn’t revealed by Reuters’s sources, some of whom have been fired from their Pentagon and National Security Council posts.

According to the news agency, “three sources familiar with the situation said Hegseth misinterpreted discussions with the president about Ukraine policy and aid shipments without elaborating further. Four other people briefed on the situation said a small cadre of staffers inside the Pentagon, many of whom have never held a government job and who have for years spoken out against U.S. aid to Ukraine, advised Hegseth to consider pausing aid to the country. Two people familiar with the matter denied there was a true cutoff in aid. One of them described it as a logistical pause…It’s unclear if Trump subsequently questioned or reprimanded Hegseth. One source with direct knowledge of the matter said National Security Adviser [Michael] Waltz ultimately intervened to reverse the cancelations. Waltz was forced out on Thursday and is expected to be nominated as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations…At least one of the staffers who had previously pushed for the administration to pull back its support for Kyiv, Dan Caldwell, was escorted out of the Pentagon for a leak he claims never happened. Caldwell, a veteran, served as one of Hegseth’s chief advisers, including on Ukraine.”  

For more on Trump’s peace-is-war inside his own administration, the Caldwell sacking, and the Ozymandias strategy for outcome, read this.  

The Reuters story has been amplified by the Russia warfighters in Washington, London, and Kiev to persuade Trump to escalate against Russia, not withdraw.  “Despite the brief pause in February and the longer one that began in early March,” Reuters reports, “the Trump administration has resumed sending the last of the aid approved under U.S. President Joe Biden. No new policy has been announced.”  

“This expose[s] a chaotic decision-making process and an unclear chain of command within former US President Donald Trump’s administration,” concludes Euromaidan Press, a Kiev propaganda outlet.  

In this podcast with Nima Alkhorshid and Graham Fuller, we discuss how this is now playing out on all fronts – Russia and Ukraine,  Iran, Yemen, and even Canada.

With the last of these, Trump has forced newly elected Prime Minister Mark Carney to make a public capitulation. Twitching with nerves in the Oval Office on Tuesday (May 6),  Carney did not challenge Trump as he repeated his threat to annex Canada, insult Carney’s predecessor prime minister, Justin Trudeau; claim personal credit for the outcome of the Canadian election; and falsify the resource and goods trade between the US and Canada.   Trump also arranged a diplomatic snub for Carney when his aircraft landed.    

Click to view the hour-long podcast here.    

(more…)

by Editor - Wednesday, May 7th, 2025
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