By John Helmer, Moscow
@bears_with
It was Black Tuesday, December 2, in Moscow, when Russian leaders negotiated the crucial questions of war and peace with their chief enemy the US, and chief allies China and India. To understand what has happened, Chris Cook, editor-in-chief of the leading (last) independent radio for news analysis in Canada, asks five big questions:
Question (1): Who is claiming victory in the Ukraine now? (2) Why did Putin give an audience to the two underlings of President Donald Trump? (3) How to explain why Trump is negotiating battlefield armistice with the Kremlin with money men, not with army generals? (4) Why is Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney sending a fresh C$200 million to the Ukraine on top of more than C$22 billion already spent – is he Trump’s patsy to pick up the tab for the defeat? (5) To stave off this defeat, are we, the Europeans and Canadians, ready for an even bigger war with Russia?
Answer: the Europeans (and Canadians) are ready to lie for the war against Russia, but not to fight themselves, and emphatically not to lose the war through their proxies — yesterday it was the Chechens and Georgians; today it’s the Ukrainians; tomorrow it will be the Poles, Balts, Finns.
Translation: lies, deceit, cant – the thesaurus lists eighteen synonyms in English for the way in which Trump, Carney, and other leaders of the war alliance against Russia speak. The Gorilla Radio interviews have documented the full eighteen coming out of the mouth of Prime Minister Carney once he believed he was secure in the prime ministry. President Trump has a more limited range by contrast.
In response to the Gorilla’s questions, Trump remained silent for more than 48 hours.
He then answered White House reporters by acknowledging he doesn’t know the answers, repeating himself with pecksniffery: “I don’t know what the Kremlin is doing. I can tell you that they had a reasonably good meeting with President Putin. We’re going to find out. It’s a war that should have never been started…It’s a war if I were president — we had a rigged election. If I were president that war would have never happened. It’s a terrible thing. But I thought they had a very good meeting yesterday with President Putin. We’ll see what happens. President Putin had a very good meeting yesterday with Jared Kushner and with Steve Witkoff. What comes out of that meeting I can’t tell you because it does take two to tango. You know, Ukraine — I think we have something pretty well worked out with them…[Putin] would like to end the war. That’s what they — that was their impression. Now, whether or not — that was their impression. You know, their impression was that he would like to see the war ended. I think he’d like to get back to a more normal life. I think he’d like to be trading with the United States of America, frankly, instead of losing thousands of soldiers a week. But their impression was very strongly that he’d like to make a deal. We’ll see what happens.”
Listen now to anticipate what will happen next.
The new Gorilla Radio broadcast was recorded on Wednesday afternoon, British Columbia time. Yves Engler goes first; I start at Minute 32:
Source: https://gradio.substack.com/p/gorilla-radio-with-chris-cook-yves-f65
Sometimes President Putin cuts through the cant and answers directly.
For example, ahead of his visit this week to Delhi – several hours after the Gorilla Radio broadcast was recorded — Putin was asked by Indian reporters to say “how would you characterise Mr Donald Trump, the President of the United States of America?”
Putin replied: “You know I never give character assessments about my colleagues, neither those I’ve worked with in the past nor those who are current leaders of state…As for India’s purchases of energy resources from Russia, I would like to note that the United States itself still buys nuclear fuel from us for its own nuclear power plants. That is also fuel…If the US has the right to buy our fuel, why shouldn’t India have the same privilege. This question deserves thorough examination. And we stand ready to discuss it, including with President Trump.”
Indian source (excerpt): https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/russia-didnt-start-war-west-egged-ukraine-on-we-will-finish-it-when-our-goals-are-met-putin-to-india-today-2830929-2025-12-04 Kremlin source: http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/78649
Asked “what really happened” in Tuesday’s meeting with Witkoff and Kushner, Putin answered: “It’s premature to discuss that now. I doubt it would interest you to hear about it as it lasted five hours. Frankly, even I grew weary of it. Five hours is too much. Yes, and I was alone. Can you imagine it?”
“But speaking seriously, it was a very productive conversation, as what our American colleagues presented was, in one way or another, based on our prior agreements made before my meeting with President Trump in Alaska. We had discussed these very issues, to some extent, at the meeting in Anchorage. However, what the Americans brought us this time was truly new; we hadn’t seen it before. Therefore, we had to go through practically every point, which is why it took so much time. So it was a meaningful, highly specific, and substantive conversation.”
For more than twenty years Chris Cook has been producing Gorilla Radio from Victoria, British Columbia. For the archive, plus introductions to Canada’s Resistance and the history as it took shape and fought the battles that had to be fought, click here.
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