With the Oreshnik Moment on pause, who will say what is to be gained, what risked, what lost when President Vladimir Putin decides to play Molotov (lead image, lower right) to these two Ribbentrops (lead image, top left and right)?
“We have so much in common”, President Donald Trump was told yesterday by Friedrich Merz, Chancellor of Germany with a 25.5% vote. “With your German provenance, I think this is a very good basis for close cooperation.”
Trump replied apologetically: “I’m the one that ended Nord Stream 2, uhh, going to a place called Germany, come to think of it. I’m sorry I did that, uhhh [smiling at Merz]. But I ended Nord Stream 2. Nobody else did”.
Reminding Trump that the next day, June 6, is the 80th anniversary of the landings in Normandy to open the western front against German forces, Merz said: “This is the D-Day anniversary when the Americans once ended the war in Europe.”
The Chancellor was repeating Adolf Hitler’s version of the war. Trump agreed. “That was not a pleasant day for you? Turning to the cameras, he repeated: “this was not a great day.” Merz replied: “Well, in the long run, Mr. President, this was the liberation of my country from Nazi dictatorship. We know that we owe you. But this is the reason why I’m saying that America is again in a very strong position to do something on this war and ending this war. So, let’s talk about what we can do jointly.”
Their joint plan, Merz and Trump agreed, means rearming Germany again, with US troops to remain where they are in Europe. This is war against Russia again.
Asked by a German reporter “if Germany is doing enough on defence”, Trump replied: “Well, I don’t know, I haven’t discussed it very much. I know that you are spending more money on defence now, and errr, quite a bit more money, and that’s a positive thing… I’m not sure General MacArthur [from 1945 to 1951 Supreme Allied Commander] would have said it’s positive. You know, he wouldn’t like it, but I sort of think it’s good. You [turning to Merz smiling] understand what I mean by that. He made a statement, ‘Never let Germany rearm’. And I always think about that… at least up to a certain point. There will be a point when I’ll say, please don’t arm any more if you don’t mind — [patting Merz on the leg] – we’ll be watching them.” – Min 9:26.
Twenty hours after Trump’s Oval Office press session with Merz, Rollcall.com has not yet published the full video record and verbatim transcript. This is an exceptional delay. As a result, the excerpts of the Trump-Merz session now in print come for the most part from the media supporting both Trump and Merz against Russia. Read these excerpts as I have transcribed them.
Lenin hasn’t been a favourite of President Vladimir Putin’s. He’s derided him: “Ukraine appeared in 1922…Now the grateful descendants are smashing monuments to Lenin, the founder of Ukraine.”
The second last time he mentioned Lenin, in February 2024, Putin blamed him. “For some unknown reasons, he transferred to that newly established Soviet Republic of Ukraine some of the lands together with people living there, even though those lands had never been called Ukraine; and yet they were made part of that Soviet Republic of Ukraine. Those lands included the Black Sea region, which was received under Catherine the Great and which had no historical connection with Ukraine whatsoever.”
The last time Putin spoke of Lenin he said he was in favour of burying him, but not of going against public opinion on preserving him in Red Square. Last December he said “The same goes for the burial of Lenin’s body. Someday, society will probably come to this. But today, especially today, we must not take a single step that would split the society in Russia. That’s how I see it.”
Putin has had less to say about Lenin’s method for deciding what to do at crisis moments for the survival of the country and himself. When Lenin asked in his 1902 book, What is to be Done? he described the choice to be faced this way. “We are marching in a compact group along a precipitous and difficult path, firmly holding each other by the hand. We are surrounded on all sides by enemies, and we have to advance almost constantly under their fire. We have combined, by a freely adopted decision, for the purpose of fighting the enemy, and not of retreating into the neighbouring marsh, the inhabitants of which, from the very outset, have reproached us with having separated ourselves into an exclusive group and with having chosen the path of struggle instead of the path of conciliation. And now some among us begin to cry out: Let us go into the marsh! And when we begin to shame them, they retort: What backward people you are! Are you not ashamed to deny us the liberty to invite you to take a better road! Oh, yes, gentlemen! You are free not only to invite us, but to go yourselves wherever you will, even into the marsh. In fact, we think that the marsh is your proper place, and we are prepared to render you every assistance to get there. Only let go of our hands, don’t clutch at us and don’t besmirch the grand word freedom, for we too are “free” to go where we please, free to fight not only against the marsh, but also against those who are turning towards the marsh!” .
Now that Putin agrees that in the present war Russia is surrounded by enemies on all sides, and he must make the choice between the “path of struggle” – since Sunday, June 1, this is now war at the point of nuclear arms — and the “path of conciliation” – that’s President Donald Trump’s peace terms – what will Putin decide to do?
Moskovsky Komsomolets, a mass circulation newspaper and tribune of popular opinion, has called for the same “determination and harshness” against Ukraine as Israel has shown against Hamas. Boris Rozhin, speaking for the Russian military opinion and editor-in-chief of the widely read military blog, Colonel Cassad, said: “I hope that the military-political leadership will find a way to adequately respond. The blow should be painful… As long as we are waging a limited war, the enemy is waging a total war, the purpose of which is the destruction of our country and people. And no peace talks will change this. The longer it is in coming, the more unpleasant surprises.”
The circle of advisors around Putin urge him to downplay the attack as “terrorism” and ignore the “terrorists” as European, not American proxies in the attack. Vzglyad, a Kremlin platform for strategy, has editorialized that “all this is being done with the connivance of Ukraine’s European partners. But such actions are not capable of intimidating Moscow. Now the initiative in the conflict belongs to Russia.” Vzglyadadded: “Maybe our new successes will still be able to bring Ukraine to reason. We openly demonstrate the ability to show mercy, which says a lot about the sincerity of the Russian authorities in their aspirations for peace.”
A well-informed Russian military source says Putin has decided not to retaliate for the moment. The launch of the Oreshnik is unlikely now, the source believes; perhaps later “only if there is certainty that Trump will not deliver. But [now] maybe a measured one [strike] to help him focus.”
The source explains Putin’s decision-making. “The political functionaries [Kremlin, Foreign Ministry] have their focus on the Memorandum and expect it will be signed. Now we wait for Trump to deliver. Rubio sent [Senator Lindsey] Graham to [Vladimir] Zelensky to accept it. He talks best with Zelensky. Our side has some more patience before replying to the ‘terror attacks’ [sarcastic laughter]. This is because all the assurance we have from the Americans is that the outcome of discussions will be positive. A Russian military response of large proportions can wait. We have patience. It will happen if [emphasis] Trump will not deliver Ukraine on Memorandum-1.” How long will the Kremlin give Trump? the source was asked. “Several weeks, not months.”
Several hours after the source said this, Putin confirmed this at a meeting on Wednesday afternoon with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and other officials. Putin did so by ignoring the Ukrainian attacks on the five nuclear bomber airfields. Focusing only on the bridge and railway attacks in Kursk and Bryansk, he called them “a targeted strike against civilians, and for all international standards such actions are called terrorism. All crimes that were committed in relation to civilians, including women and children, on the eve of the next round the proposed peace talks in Istanbul were certainly aimed at disrupting the negotiation process. [This was a] strike on the civilian population intentionally. This only confirms our fears that the illegitimate regime in Kiev, which once it had seized power, has gradually degenerated into a terrorist organization, and its sponsors become Accomplices of terrorists.”
Lavrov responded at the meeting, also by avoiding explicit mention of the airfield strikes: “Despite all this, Vladimir Vladimirovich, and despite the new major criminal provocations in the last few days, I would consider it important not to succumb to these provocative actions, clearly aimed at disrupting negotiations and continuing to receive weapons from European countries.”
Russian retaliation, it has been decided and now announced publicly, waits on the Trump Administration to respond to the Russian terms which have been tabled in Istanbul. Read Sections I, II, and III of the Russian Memorandum here.
Over the 72 hours since the Kiev regime claimed credit for planning and executing the successful attack on Russia’s nuclear bomber fleet, Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Secretary of Defense Peter Hegseth have kept silent. Asked for Trump’s reaction, the White House press spokesman was evasive, saying instead: “Well, look, the reaction is this war needs to come to an end. And this war has been, uh, brutal from both sides. Too many people have died and the president wants this war to end at the negotiating table. And he’s made that very clear to both leaders, both publicly and privately.”
That the June 1 attack may have removed the point for Putin to continue at the negotiating table is not accepted at the White House because the Kremlin has denied it. Putin’s message for Trump was conveyed Lavrov in a telephone call to Rubio eight hours after the attacks. Rubio’s “read-out” on the conversation was the shortest in the State Department history of crisis communications with the Russians.
The White House negotiator for peace terms, General Keith Kellogg, is, until now, the only senior US official to acknowledge that the Ukrainian strike was strategic warfare. “The risk levels are going up”, Kellogg told Fox News late on June 3. “Any time you attack the [nuclear] triad, it’s not so much the damage you do to the triad, it’s not so much the damage you do to the triad itself, the delivery vehicles, the bombers, it’s the psychological impact you have… it shows Ukraine is not lying down on this. We can play this game too.”
Kellogg added an apparent qualifier to his admission the Kiev regime has not been engaging in terrorism. “We [the Ukrainians] can raise the risk levels that are, to me, basically unacceptable”.
Listen to the discussion with Nima Alkhorshid and Ray McGovern.
The point is not whether the June 1 attack on the Tupolev nuclear bombers across Russia can be called a terrorist operation or an act of war; nor is the point whether President Donald Trump was knowing in advance, during or afterwards; nor is the point whether a proxy intelligence service or US intelligence agency was engaged. The point is that the gravest breach of Russia’s national security since 1941 has succeeded.
The Empire has now escalated to nuclear war against Russia by demonstrating that it can and will attack the deterrent nuclear balance between Russia and the US, that it has the will and means to defeat Russia’s capacity to defend against and deter a first strike of ingenuity, countrywide coordination, simultaneity, and surprise. Like never before, the red line of mutual assured destruction (MAD) has been crossed by Russia’s warfighting enemies.
Those in the US and in the allied states who believe nuclear war can be waged against Russia and won believe they have demonstrated that this is the way to MAGA by MEGA — Make American Great Again, Make the Empire Great Again.
“A decision has been made,” President Vladimir Putin told government ministers on May 22, “to create a buffer security zone along the Russian border. Our Armed Forces are working on this now. They are also effectively suppressing enemy firing points.” After the June 1 attacks, it is obvious that the enemy’s firing points have not been suppressed across the border; instead, they have multiplied inside the country. Their next targets may be the country’s nuclear power plants, nuclear enrichment centres, nuclear weapons storages, nuclear submarine berths, mobile nuclear missile launchers.
For the moment the Ukrainians hold, or think they hold, the initiative; behind them the US, the French, Germans, and British believe they control the escalation required to force Putin to submit.
In the analysis of Oleg Tsarev, the leading Ukrainian opposition leader now in Crimea, the end-of-war terms presented by the Russian side at Istanbul on Monday afternoon are “’not an ultimatum at all,’ [Russian delegation head Vladimir] Medinsky has stressed. Of course, Medinsky (lead image, left) is right. This proposal is not an ultimatum, but only a requirement for the complete and unconditional surrender of Zelensky.”
On the other hand, there is the force.
Moscow military blogger reports and the Defense Ministry bulletin on the battlefield operations of Monday indicate little change in the volume of Russian drone attacks, the Ukrainian casualties, and territorial gains around the May average. In fact, Monday’s casualty rate was fractionally below Sunday’s. While the Russian Army continues its westward advance along each of the five army group directions, there has been no resumption of the Russian electric war campaign. There has also been no reply to the Ukrainian operation of June 1 striking the strategic bomber airfields at Murmansk, Irkutsk, Amur, Ryazan and Ivanovo, and the bridge and railway attacks at Kursk and Bryansk. “I hope”, commented Boris Rozhin, author of the influential Colonel Cassadmilitary blog, “that the military-political leadership will find a way to adequately respond. The blow should be painful… As long as we are waging a limited war, the enemy is waging a total war, the purpose of which is the destruction of our country and people. And no peace talks will change this. The longer it is in coming, the more unpleasant surprises.”
On the one hand, at the Çırağan Palace on June 1, there was the meeting of 12 Russian negotiators (unchanged from the first meeting) with 14 Ukrainian negotiators (minor changes ) for just over one hour. The Russian delegation leader, Vladimir Medinsky, then briefed the press for nine minutes. He followed the press briefing by Rustem Umerov (lead image, right) for the Ukrainian side, also reading from a notepaper like Medinsky. Umerov, the Ukrainian Defense Minister, was the nominal delegation leader but outranked by Andrei Yermak, the chief policymaker for Vladimir Zelensky in the presidential office. Yermak told the press: “The Russians are doing everything not to cease fire and continue the war. New sanctions are very important now. Rationality is not about Russia.”
On the other hand, before the three o’clock session Medinsky met in private with the nominal head of the Ukrainian delegation, Defense Minister Rustem Umerov, for two and a half hours. There has been no disclosure of who also attended on each side and what was said, except that, according to Tass, “this predetermined the effective course of further negotiations.”
This fatuity cannot conceal that real negotiations had taken place. But the realities on the ground had already overtaken the agenda, as leading Moscow security analyst Yevgeny Krutikov points out. Because the Russian side had already received the Ukrainian term sheet on May 28, and the Russian term sheet was drafted before the Sunday rail, bridge and airfield attacks, “those two memorandums…no longer correspond to the changed realities, but they will have to be discussed, because this was announced in advance, this agenda cannot be abandoned… so the main task of the Russian delegation is to translate the negotiations into a constructive course, if there is any possibility.”
On the one hand, in Moscow on Monday President Vladimir Putin had just one official meeting in the morning; this was with Maria Lvova-Belova to discuss Children’s Day and the welfare of orphans across the country.
On the other hand, in Washington President Donald Trump’s schedule for the day was empty except for lunch, which he ate at one o’clock. He has issued no tweet or press statement on Russia and President Putin since May 27 when Trump announced: “What Vladimir Putin doesn’t realize is that if it weren’t for me, lots of really bad things would have already happened to Russia, and I mean REALLY BAD. He’s playing with fire!”
Interpreted in the warfighting context, as it must be, Trump was saying that the US, including its European allies and the Kiev regime, is holding escalation dominance and intends to keep it. This means the firepower to decide what happens to Russia next without being deterred by anything Russia says or does. The “fire”, Trump meant, he intends to keep for the US and its allies in the European war. The “fire” doesn’t and won’t belong to Russia – Trump means to deter Putin from “playing” with it.
Calling the five airfield strikes terrorism rather than acts of war; dating the operational plan to the Biden Administration, not to Trump; minimizing the physical damage, cost, and number of Tupolev bombers hit; unravelling the logistical details from source of explosives to drone launch; and faulting Russian internal security and airbase defence – these details, comments a well-informed Moscow source, are “beside the point. The reality of this is on Putin. So what did he tell Lavrov to tell Trump through Rubio on Sunday night? What did he tell Medinsky to tell Umerov and Yermak for Zelensky on Monday afternoon? This is now simple strategic either/or and yes or no – no more operational tit for tat. Either Putin told Trump to order de-escalation, or Russia will escalate and destroy the enemy’s capabilities to fight on. This is the Oreshnik moment.”
A western military source responds: “I’ve read the [Russian] terms from beginning to end but I can’t find a correlation between them and what we’re seeing, full spectrum, on the battlefield. Either Putin releases the General Staff to assert escalation dominance now, or there is no point in continuing negotiations on the memorandums and term sheets, no point in ceasefires, no point at all in meeting Trump or letting him grandstand for peace. The discipline, if I can call it that, of the Russian warfighters is unrealistic.”
Born with a large Russia-hating chip on his shoulder, Cai-Göran Alexander Stubb has been the ideal US Government recruit to be president of Finland. And so, since March 1, 2024, he is.
No one in Finnish politics has done as much as Stubb to cancel Finland’s post-war neutrality, drive the country into the NATO alliance, and establish US bases to escalate the war against Russia on the northern front. Four weeks after taking power, Stubb announced his policy of deploying US forces, including missiles, drones, aircraft and heavy ground weapons at Finnish bases. “When American war materiel is placed on Finnish soil,” he said, “it strengthens Finland’s defence.”
In one of Stubb’s schemes, NATO’s regional Multi-Corps Land Component Command (MCLCC) has been established and expanded at Mikkeli — 256 kilometres from St Petersburg as the missile flies – and subordinated to US command-and-control at Norfolk, Virginia. US F-35As, newly purchased by the Finnish Air Force (FAF), will be based at Rovaniemi airbase, 24 minutes’ flying time from St. Petersburg; the air defences for the base will be led by the medium-range, Israel-supplied David’s Sling, recently beaten by Iran. US-supplied rocket and artillery systems, such as the HIMARS, which have been defeated by Russia in the Ukraine, are to be based at Rovajärvi, where the US Air Force has been coordinating B-52 bomber operations this year. Rovajärvi is within HIMARS shooting range of the Russian border bases in the Murmansk region, such as Alakurtti and Kamenka.
Loaded on board the USAF B-52 and the F-35As of the FAF, Stubb is also trying to draw US nuclear weapons on to Finnish territory by ending the current Finnish law banning storage of US air-dropped nuclear bombs and nuclear missile warheads or moving them into firing position there. “We in Finland must have a real nuclear deterrent,” according to Stubb, “and that’s what we have, because NATO practically gives us three deterrences through our membership.” For the time being, he is opposed on deployment in Finland of nuclear weapons by officials in the current coalition government.
The outcome already, according to an analysis by a Moscow think tank, is the opening of a new warfighting front against Russia from Poland to Finland, with a surge of US weapons paid for by the Europeans but directed by US commanders. “The entire northern and north-eastern flanks of the [NATO] bloc will be subordinated to a single command centre, which will significantly increase their military and operational connectivity and create a potential unified theatre of operations from the Baltic to the Barents Sea… Once all Nordic defence initiatives are implemented, the United States will be able to unimpededly project its force right at the Russian border, posing a significant security threat to Russia.”
On March 30, Stubb made an unscheduled trip to play golf with President Donald Trump in Florida. “The presidents met over breakfast, played a round of golf and had lunch together,” Stubb’s office said no more at the time. Trump tweeted: “I just played a round of Golf with Alexander Stubb, President of Finland. He is a very good player, and we won the Men’s Member-Guest Golf Tournament at Trump International Golf Club in Palm Beach County, with the Legendary Gary Player, Senator Lindsey Graham, and former Congressman and highly successful Television Host, Trey Gowdy…President Stubb told me, in the most powerful of words, that the United States is STRONG, and BACK, AGAIN. I AGREE!”
Trump revealed that he and Stubb had made a deal for “strengthening the partnership between the United States and Finland, and that includes the purchase and development of a large number of badly needed Icebreakers for the U.S.” The icebreaker deal is worth several billion Euros. “If confirmed,” the Helsinki press reported, “it would be a crucial shot in the arm for Finnish heavy industry, which has struggled to fill its order books.” The Finnish vessel price is several times cheaper than US shipbuilders propose to charge; the standing US Coast Guard contract for one Polar Security Cutter (PSC) is $1.3 billion. Trump’s Stubb deal violates existing US law and breaches the pact which the Biden Administration had signed with Canada and Finland on icebreakers on November 13, 2024.
In matching payback, what Stubb promised to do for Trump’s friends and constituents like Elon Musk, is suspected to be lucrative in the billions of dollars, but remains secret. Not quite, because Trump’s friends like to boast.
Tomorrow, Monday June 2, the second round of “direct” negotiations between Russian and Ukrainian delegations will open with the exchange of term sheets, the Russian memorandum and what retired US Army General Keith Kellogg calls the twenty-two points which have been drafted by the US and FUGUP (France, United Kingdom, Germany, Ukraine and Poland).
Speaking for President Donald Trump and the Europeans, Kellogg has announced that he has read both term sheets, and that when the talks open in Istanbul, the Ukrainian delegation will have behind them the national security advisors of the US, France, UK, and Germany. Kellogg believes both sides in the talks, the US-backed Ukrainians and the Russians, have fresh escalation capacities still to be used against each other. According to Kellogg, Trump is aiming to prevent President Vladimir Putin countering each one of the Ukrainian allies now arming their escalation, including – he added – Finland.
“The reason I believe the US has to stay involved”, Kellogg said, “is because of escalation…You have an escalation ladder. You better know when to get off it. If you don’t get off, you’ve got a big problem.”
In this discussion of India’s Operation Sindoor against Pakistan last month, and Russia’s three-year Special Military Operation, senior Indian military officers (retired), Lieutenant General Ravi Shankar and Brigadier Arun Saghal demonstrate how effective the Indian forces were in destroying Pakistan’s capability for escalation, and compelling the ceasefire Pakistan applied for.
Together, we discuss the Indian lessons and apply them to the next stage of Russia’s negotiations with all its adversaries on the Ukrainian battlefield.
The first report came from RIA-Novosti, the Russian state news agency, on May 25 at 13:24.
“President Vladimir Putin’s helicopter (lead image, top) was in the epicentre of repelling a large-scale attack by Ukrainian Armed Forces drones during a visit to the Kursk region, said Yury Dashkin [Major General in command of the 32nd Air Defence Division, lead image, below) commander of the air defence division in whose area of responsibility the region is located. According to him, during the president’s visit, the Ukrainian military launched an ‘unprecedented attack,’ with 46 drones destroyed by the air defence system. ‘At the same time, we conducted an anti-aircraft battle and ensured the safety of the president’s helicopter flight in the air. [The helicopter was] actually in the epicentre of repelling a massive drone attack,’ Dashkin said.”
The drone attack on Kursk had taken place five days earlier, on May 20. Putin’s visit to the region, his meetings with local officials, the region governor, engineers and scientists at the Kurchatov nuclear power plant, and local medical, rescue and social welfare volunteers was not reported by the Kremlin website until the following morning. The report of the attack on the helicopter was kept secret at the time. The Kremlin has made no comment on the later press reports.
Note Gen Dashkin’s precise wording: he did not claim the President’s helicopter was targeted directly; he did not say Putin was on board at the time (the President also travelled in Kursk by motorcade); he did not reveal whether there was more than one helicopter in the presidential flight to Kursk; he did not say whether the air defence command was spoofing the electronic tracking technology which the US and the Ukrainians have been using for their drone and missile attacks in recent days.
The Kremlin pool reporter for Kommersant, Andrei Kolesnikov, reported on Putin’s movements and meetings after the 24-hour security delay. Kolesnikov noted in passing: “The situation was not cloudless: when the cortege of the president moved around the region, there were drones of the APU in the sky – they cannot be ignored on the video footage, which I saw. However, the region lives in such an environment not for the first year, as you know — so Vladimir Putin should have recognized how the region is working.”
Pick-up of the May 25 report by Newsweek of the US conceded: “This is the first known instance in which the Russian president is reported to have flown through an active drone attack.”
The magazine then adopted the Ukrainian version of what had happened. “Ukrainian officials haven’t comment on the alleged attack on Putin, but Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said that his country has every right to kill Putin if the opportunity arises, if doing so would protect Ukraine and its people. Zelensky told The Sun in Kyiv in November 2023 that he has lost track of the number of times Moscow has attempted to assassinate him since Putin launched a full-scale invasion of his country. ‘That’s war, and Ukraine has all the rights to defend our land,’ the Ukrainian leader said when asked if Kyiv would take a chance to assassinate Putin if such an opportunity arose.”
“Zelensky is no longer in Kiev,” a Moscow source in a position to know commented this week. “He spends much of his time travelling around the world, and then in a command post in Poland. He simulates his presence in country for PR purposes. He only goes to Kiev when foreign government officials visit.” In March 2022 Putin told former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett that he would not order an assassination strike on Zelensky.
Five years later, has Zelensky make an attempt against Putin? what role are the US electronic warfare forces playing in tracking Putin’s movements and targeting his position? When Trump tweeted on May 27 that Putin is “playing with fire!” had Trump fired first – and missed?
There is a risky way of being an American against the wars that President Donald Trump is aiming to fight, especially the one Trump claims not to be fighting against Russia on the Ukraine battlefield. The risk is that you may have to use words like imperialism, oligarchy, false consciousness, revolution.
Trump is right about one thing – Americans don’t have to go to Harvard on state grants and minority quotas to learn about words like those.
One of the first great Americans to run that word risk, miss Harvard, and do more than sympathize with the Russian revolutionists of the late 19th and early 20th century was Clarence Darrow. He is also one of the first and still the most eloquent of examples of being an American against American wars which is almost unremembered today. “If this war be called patriotism,” Darrow said in 1898 about the US war to take the Philippines from Spain, “then blessed be treason”.
Few enough words to make the tweet limit, but not rightfor endorsement in Truth Social. Too “WARPED RADICAL LEFT”.
Darrow (1857 -19384) was the greatest courtroom lawyer in American history, practising across the country in the defence of the oligarch-owned railroads and also union workers; big city mayors; blacks framed for the murder of whites; women who killed violent husbands; Jewish thrill-homicidalists; and the McNamara brothers who on October 1, 1910, dynamited the Los Angeles Times, killing 21 and injuring more than 100. After that trial Darrow was prosecuted himself for bribing the jurors; in his two-day address to the jury he had them in tears; they acquitted him on the defence of moral necessity.
“The great question between capital and labour,” Darrow said in 1912, “cannot be solved by marching”. Nowadays that last word would be replaced by tweeting.
“Clarence Darrow is the greatest power for evil in the United States today!” declared the California state prosecutor in Trump style – it was March 1913 and Darrow was on trial on a second bribery charge. The jury deadlocked – eight for conviction, four for acquittal – and the judge declared a mistrial.
In today’s podcast with Nima Alkhorshid and Ray McGovern, we discuss the Russian assessment of Trump’s tweets and the future sequencing of wars which Russians understand that Trump and his State Department and Pentagon are attempting – just as the Russians are sequencing their own war in the Ukraine and the future war against the Euro-Nazis led by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.
Russian officials will ignore President Donald Trump’s tweets in order to focus on the main chance.
“We do not consider the infantile attitude of Trump as a problem,” an official source said, responding to Trump’s statement and tweets of May 26 and 27.
“We consider he is the legitimate counter party [for end-of-war negotiations]. We consider he is a more adequate person than any of the European and British leaders. He is far from the worst of the leadership in the western world, whether on the left or on the right. He is not [ex-Prime Minister Elizabeth] Truss not [Boris] Johnson. He is not [French President Emmanuel] Macron. He is a real leader and [President Vladimir Putin] has no hesitation to talk to him with trust.”
“There will be a summit meeting even if it is often now that Trump speaks the last words he hears from Macron or [Finnish President Alexander] Stubb. But this is not a problem. He has an independent mind and he conveyed his wish to end war with Russia. This is the foundation on which it is necessary to build. He is trusted on this wish he has expressed.”
The official refused to be drawn into discussing the escalation of Ukrainian drone and missile attacks, including Putin’s helicopter in Kursk, or the Russian retaliation raids on Kiev and around the country. He did not touch on Putin’s decision “to create a buffer security zone along the Russian border. Our Armed Forces are working on this now. They are also effectively suppressing enemy firing points.”
Asked whether it is now the Russian negotiating objective to secure four, five, or eight regions, the official replied: “Look, our position has changed continually about the regions. No one went into this [the Special Military Operation] for land. We can stop where we want if our main, long-term objective is reached — demilitarization of all Ukraine and de-nazification. We have specific proposals on that. Very specific. So on these terms, land can be given for a peaceful treaty with the US on Ukraine. Only with US. Not with the Europeans. And the main discussions on security with the US then start with normal diplomatic and business relations at all levels. This is the minimum expectation and it will be met.”
The official passed over Trump’s latest tweet on Tuesday evening: “What Vladimir Putin doesn’t realize is that if it weren’t for me, lots of really bad things would have already happened to Russia, and I mean REALLY BAD. He’s playing with fire!”
The official responded: “We have changed our position that [Putin] will meet only on the conclusion of all the technical details. We are ready to meet at any stage of the technical Ukraine discussions. A meeting [with Trump] will happen.”
Either President Donald Trump (lead image, bottom) cannot comprehend the sequence of cause and effect. Or he cannot control his own military and intelligence operations in the war against Russia. Or Trump thinks he can deceive President Vladimir Putin (lead image, top), authorize an attack on him personally, and later, when the attack failed, and Putin retaliated with a counter-attack on Kiev, Trump is pretending “I don’t know what the hell happened to Putin…he’s sending rockets into Kiev and other cities and killing people, and I don’t like it at all.”
Trump then threatened Putin directly. “We’ll see what we’re going to do.”
Follow the sequence and decide what’s cause, what’s effect.
