By John Helmer, Moscow
@bears_with
President Donald Trump believes – because his opinion pollsters tell him – that pre-emptive attack wins the battleground. That’s to say, the battleground states in US elections.
Federalizing California state firefighting troops and ordering them with US Marines – 5,000 of them so far — into action in Los Angeles is the latest example of Trump’s calculation that voter support for his war against immigrants will rally national support against his negative approval poll, and win him elections next year and in 2028.
President Vladimir Putin’s calculation is that delay is the best strategy for the moment. This is in order to preserve Russian voter approval and give Trump time to deliver an armistice for the Ukrainian battlefield on the Russian terms which were delivered at Istanbul on June 2.
Moscow sources in a position to know have been reporting that the drone attack on the nuclear-triad bombers at their bases on June 1 required delay in the military response. Publicly, officials have camouflaged the delaying tactic by describing the attack as a terrorist action by a terrorist organisation without Trump knowing in advance and approving. Moscow sources acknowledge this is smokescreen.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov publicly conceded as much on Monday: “Obviously, Ukraine is responsible for all that but it would be helpless without the support of the Anglo-Saxons. We can omit the Saxons now and just say — without the support of the English. It is possible that, by inertia, US intelligence services are still involved, but the British are involved 100 percent.”
Lavrov went on: “I sincerely hope constitutional norms will prevail in America – that President Donald Trump will not be constrained in exercising his constitutional authority, that he will not face obstruction, and that he will receive full access to information.”
Lavrov said this on Monday afternoon (June 9), Moscow time. By then he knew – and Putin was briefed — that two days before (June 7), from inside tightly secured Camp David, Trump had invoked his constitutional powers and ordered troops into action against “protests or acts of violence [which] directly inhibit the execution of the laws [and] constitute a form of rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States.”
Lavrov was trying to give Trump more time. “I am not aware of how thoroughly the US President is briefed regarding operations the Ukrainian regime conducts against our country. That numerous American advisors remain embedded within Ukraine’s security services is an established fact – they have not been withdrawn. That military instructors from other nations supplying weapons to the Ukrainian regime operate there is equally factual. That they advise Ukrainian armed forces on strategic operations, facility placement, and camouflage – this too we know. As I have mentioned, many modern weapons systems cannot be operated without the direct involvement of military personnel from the supplying nations.”
On Monday the Russians have read the court papers filed by California Governor Gavin Newsom declaring Trump’s military operation in Los Angeles illegal under Section 12406 of the Militia Act of 1903, the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, the Insurrection Act of 1807, and the US Constitution. The governor asked for an urgent court injunction to stop Trump’s escalation. Click to read.
On Tuesday, Justice Department lawyers filed a one-paragraph answer calling California’s challenge “legally meritless”. Trump was playing for time — the judge agreed to the delaying tactic. He said he would not open a hearing until Thursday. By then, Trump has already signalled his preemptive attack will have succeeded. “Well, if we didn’t do it,” Trump said in a speech at Fort Bragg, “there wouldn’t be a Los Angeles. It would be burning today, just like their houses were burning a number of months ago.” Fort Bragg is the headquarters of the US Army’s airborne and special forces commands.
When it comes to California politics, Russian oligarchs and their lobbyists at the Kremlin have long claimed to know much more than the Russian intelligence agencies. Not this week.
Moscow sources have been saying privately, military bloggers publicly, that there would be a special Security Council meeting this week to end the delay on Russia’s strategic response to the June 1 attack. This meeting, the sources add, would address the lingering argument over how to anticipate Trump’s actions towards Russia’s end-of-war terms.
The Security Council meeting took place, according to the Kremlin website, on Tuesday afternoon. The agenda, Putin said in his public opening, “focuses on improving the state policy of protecting traditional Russian spiritual and moral values…Let us discuss how the Plan of Measures for the implementation of the Fundamentals of State Policy for the Preservation and Strengthening of Traditional Values is being carried out overall, which tasks have been accomplished, and which issues remain unresolved.”
No military officers were present but for the first time at the Council this year, Defense Minister Andrei Belusov appeared wearing a military uniform. What was he signalling?
“The consensus on our goals in Ukraine is unambiguous,” an informed Moscow source says. “It is up to the General Staff to achieve it with minimal losses without a timetable. A political timetable will not be forced on the generals. But we see Trump takes no responsibility to end this but accuses only Biden. Never mind that is false.”
Click to listen to today’s discussion with Nima Alkhorshid and Ray McGovern.
US PUBLIC OPINION TOWARDS TRUMP
Source: https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/approval/donald-trump/approval-rating
Source: https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/approval/donald-trump/issues/immigration
RUSSIAN PUBLIC OPINION TOWARDS PUTIN AND THE WAR
Source: https://www.levada.ru/indikatory/
Denis Volkov, director of the independent pollster Levada Centre in Moscow, reported at the beginning of this week: “in May 2025, the share of Russians advocating negotiations with Ukraine reached the maximum since 2022. However, the increasingly likely disruption of the dialogue with Kiev will not cause a sharp public reaction. Most Russians have long wanted peace, but leave the solution of this issue to the discretion of the authorities…Our research also finds that if there is no need to choose between negotiations and a ceasefire, public support for negotiations is even higher. This is evidenced by positive assessments of the Russian-American talks in Riyadh (they were approved by 85% of Russians) and the May 15 Russian-Ukrainian talks in Istanbul (87% of support). There is a 73% level of support for the Russian formula of negotiations: first to agree on the elimination of the causes of the conflict and only then stop the fighting. In focus groups, supporters of the continuation of the Special Operation are often not against negotiations in principle, because you need to ‘exchange your point of view’, ‘explain your position’, ‘keep the communication channel open’, even while continuing the offensive…”
“If a negative scenario is being implemented as a result of failure of negotiations with Kiev and rapprochement with Washington, then, by analogy with the situation after the offensive of Ukrainian forces in the Kursk region, we can expect a certain decrease in the share of supporters of the transition to negotiations. However, the effect is unlikely to be sharp and long-term. In many ways, the depth of this decline will be determined by the rhetoric of the Russian authorities.”
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