By John Helmer, Moscow
@bears_with
Revealed for the first time in public is that President Vladimir Putin believes that international terrorism of the radical Islamic type is not the result of Middle Eastern conflict or of regional poverty or of Great Power proxy warfighting. Rather, he thinks it is a form of competition of the Marxist-Leninist type between Islamic and Jewish capital. At least, that’s what Putin told President George W. Bush when they met in China in October 2001.
Also revealed is the consistency of Putin’s three-step method for dealing with US presidents — first by ingratiating them personally; then by lecturing them with lessons on history, economics, and strategy; and lastly by offering unilateral concessions in return for promises of US benefits to follow.
As the releases of declassified records for the George W. Bush presidential archive continue, the evidence mounts that this method of Putin’s is the one he is repeating today with President Donald Trump.
The new evidence is that Putin’s method is a repeated failure. One reason for this is confirmed in the new documents from the Bush archive — US presidents never do what they say. This is American deception.
The second reason is that the understandings Putin reaches with US presidents are those Putin has in his head – they are never those in the American heads. This is Russian self-deception.
There are eight documents in the new declassification and publication series dating from July 6, 2001, to March 18, 2003. Three documents were released last month; read them and the analysis here.
The telephone transcripts are brief; the shortest call was five minutes long, the longest 21 minutes. The meeting transcripts are also brief – 40 minutes, 60 minutes, 75 minutes.
Click to read the new declassified publication from the National Security Archive in Washington.
This is the first documented evidence of Putin’s fluency in English. For the 9-minute duration of the first call, Putin’s remarks were not translated into English. He spoke in English, and Bush commented: “Your English is getting very good”.
In this call Putin attempted to ingratiate at the personal level with remarks like “I await with impatience the possibility of meeting you in Genoa and think this will be another good opportunity. Mr. President, this is all I wanted to say. I don’t want to take too much of your time”.
At the same time, Bush recorded there had been no concessions from Putin in their negotiations on US sanctions against Saddam Hussein of Iraq or on US operations to aid the Albanian National Liberation Army in attacks on the Macedonian government, to limit Russia-made arms deliveries to the latter government, and to introduce NATO occupation of Macedonia as peacekeepers. Putin responded that he had set up two working groups “from the foreign ministry and defense ministry, to continue our talks on the basis of strategic stability arrangements.”
In their next telephone conversation, Putin was calling on the morning, Washington time, of September 12, 2001, the day after the attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York and the Pentagon in Virginia. Putin had telephoned the day before, but that text has not been declassified and released.
On the day following Bush told Putin he was in a hurry. “You were the first leader to call yesterday [September 11]. Thank you for that. Secondly, I believe our country is in a state of war. We’re fighting a faceless coward. It’s a new kind of war. And I believe the world needs to cooperate and I look forward to working with you, Sir. And I look forward to having the opportunity to work together in a new spirit and to show the world that freedom-loving people like you and me can unite against these cowards. The reason I am in a rush is that we believe there will be further attacks and I need to prepare the nation for that. So, if you don’t mind, I’d like to call you back at your convenience before you go to sleep tonight so that we can talk a bit more before your visit.”
Putin replied before ringing off: “I’m at your disposal. I can tell you, by the way, that I have signed a decree that at 12 noon tomorrow, Russia will be having a minute of silence for the dead to show solidarity with you. All flags will be at half-mast and all entertainment functions will be stopped.”
If, as Bush said he was anticipating, they spoke again by telephone that evening, the record remains closed.
The third release records the 75-minute meeting Putin had with Bush in Shanghai on October 21, 2001; click to read. Interpreters translated for each president.
Putin was profuse in his praise of Bush’s handling of the 9/11 attacks because, he emphasized, “no one knows better than I do what feelings you have experienced. We have had the same tragedies ourselves. We had the apartment explosions [Moscow September 1999], remember? I felt a closeness. You have found the exact words and conveyed them very well. “
Later in the conversation, Putin expressed opposition to US contacts with Chechens and for lack of the promised intelligence-sharing from the US side. He was also lecturing in tone and blunt in warning Bush: “I know the history of Chechnya. But you must understand: when the State Department meets these people it provokes a reaction. Chechnya is a 400-year-old problem. The Chechen people always had an aspiration for independence. We should respect this. The events of 1995 showed it. Today it is impossible. Russia withdrew completely in 1995, and gave it complete independence (but not formally). What were the consequences? It led to radical Islam…The Soviet Union made big mistakes in Afghanistan. They didn’t understand and tried to put a pro-Soviet, non-representative government in place, based upon minorities. The Pashtuns were excluded. They became indignant. Radical Islamic fundamentalists assimilated into the territory of Afghanistan and called it traditional Islam. We must oust the Taliban and bring in the Pashtuns. We must do the same thing in Chechnya. We have good relations with traditional Islam. Our military does sometimes commit crimes. We are taking steps. Do not interfere with this process.”
Putin offered a deal. He told Bush he would close down the Russian intelligence-gathering base in Cuba, and in exchange he asked Bush to repeal the Jackson-Vanik Amendment, to implement additional trade liberalization measures, and to agree on terms for reduction of nuclear weapons in a “Bush-Putin Treaty”.
Subsequent western press reports indicate that the Lourdes base in Cuba was closed in 2002. Bush did not repeal Jackson-Vanik.
Instead, in 2012 President Barack Obama replaced Jackson-Vanik with new sanctions on Russia in the Magnitsky Act. As Obama escalated against Putin following the putsch in Kiev in February 2014, the Lourdes base was “repurposed” with Chinese intelligence engagement also.
US satellite image of 2023: https://lansinginstitute.org/2023/06/27/china-likely-to-share-sigint-with-russians/
The October 21, 2001, meeting lasted for 75 minutes with Russian translated into English and vice versa. Putin gave Bush a theory of international capitalism with traditional Leninist-Marxist terminology and a religious twist which he has never opened to the Russian public.
“There is a contradiction between a new, young, aggressive financial Islamic capital and the old one. A moment came when the new generation began to see the old as its competitor. From the time bin Laden became your partner, he felt himself your competitor. His desire to move to Central Asia or elsewhere was his desire to muscle in and subjugate all others to his will. In reality, it is a financial issue. Religion is secondary. The real goal is to have a place in the centre of world finances, a place that is already occupied. They want to push away representatives of Jewish capital or, if not, they will try to destroy the centre and shake it up and, ultimately in that way, to take its place. The reason for the terrorism isn’t the Middle East or poverty. They use poverty and they use unresolved conflicts. They are using other problems. These problems are not the real reasons for terrorism. They are using the people of Afghanistan in the same way. I raised this not just to support you, but to say that we all have fight in the same world. We have the same problem in the Caucasus. ”
Bush was non-committal. He told Putin his problem in attempting to remove the Jackson-Vanik restrictions on Russian trade was that “Congress is afraid of the Jewish community and Jackson-Vanik is symbolic.” Putin replied that was willing to make the concessions demanded by the Jewish community: “I’ll do anything at all except one: if they need me to have a circumcision, that I can’t do!”
In the 15-minute telephone call of November 8, 2001, Bush was the ingratiating one. “The First Lady and I are looking forward to seeing you in Texas,” Bush said. “I hope it’s okay if I can take you to a small high school in my hometown in Texas. I want people to see that you are a modern thinker and I want you to see Americans…when you come to Texas, make sure you bring casual clothes. It will be very informal. And also, bring walking shoes, exercise shoes, so we can go for long walks on the ranch.”
Bush’s purpose, however, was to get Putin to agree to the US breakout of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM), which Putin had refused. Bush made it appear he was still ready to negotiate when he had already decided to withdraw from the Treaty. He also offered to compensate Putin with an offer of intelligence-sharing from missile testing although Putin had already dismissed that as an empty promise. “We have two options,” Bush told Putin. “On the one hand, you and I can agree that America can test freely and without any restrictions, and we will share information with you. And, in return for the freedom to test, we will agree to stay within the ABM Treaty with you for a period of time. If, on the other hand, it’s impossible for you, for whatever reason, to allow us to test freely, my only option will be to withdraw from the ABM Treaty at a later date, so we can begin testing after a six-month period, and we will continue to work to see if we can’t reach.an agreement. But I promise you that I will not embarrass you. I will not put you ‘in an awkward position should we not be able to reach an accord on testing. We can say in Washington and Crawford we are continuing to work to make sure that each party’s concerns are represented.”
“George, we shall see,” Putin replied. “I’ll think about it. I thought I would like to repeat that I have optimism with regard to all issues, including ABM. And maybe it may seem, at first glance, that nothing is changing in our position, but there are nuances that I would like to discuss with you personally when I come to Washington. We have several options. All of them are good.”
The next document released records an hour-long meeting at the White House on November 13, 2001. Among the Russians accompanying Putin were two who remain in official roles at present — Dmitry Medvedev, then deputy head of the presidential administration, and Yury Ushakov, then Russian Ambassador to the US.
“We need to understand yoμr plans with respect to nuclear testing?” Putin asked bluntly. “Will you resume testing or not? If so, what kind of tests, modes, and types?” Bush answered: “We have no plans to test right now…This is not to say that ten years from now, we might decide to do it…But we.will keep the testing ban in place.”
In fact, as Russian military intelligence had already reported to Putin, there was a US test on July 14, 2011, and follow-up tests were scheduled for December 3, 2001, January 11, 2002, and March 15, 2002. The budget funds were in place for the start of construction in Alaska in June 2002 of six missile interceptor silos as a test bed for the new missile defence system.
After Putin corrected Bush on the military and political situation in Afghanistan, he urged the US “to speed up the solution of the future of Afghanistan.”
To that end, Putin said he was grateful for US financing to supply Russian weapons to the Afghan forces fighting the Taliban. “We have spetsnaz troops armed with the necessary means, communications, and helicopters, who have experience in Chechnya. They are now in Dushanbe. They have trained there with your people. I won’t speak publicly about this, but we are prepared to use them in Afghanistan if necessary…I am grateful you have decided for compensating us to finance arms purchases for weapons for the Northern Alliance.”
Putin implied that Bush was duplicitous in his dealings with Pakistan’s military ruler, Pervez Musharraf. “With the Pushtun tribes perhaps we can take a stick and force Musharraf to do his job,” Putin said. “It is not enough for him to simply put down demonstrations… Pakistan is a curious ally, strange bedfellow. They help while, at the same time, they burn American flags. Others are different. Some may be better allies than your traditional allies.”
Two days later, at their joint press conference in Texas on November 15, Bush was asked about ABM. “The treaty was signed during a period of time when we really hated each other and we no longer hate each other; that I view the treaty as something we need to move beyond,” Bush answered. “We have a difference of opinion. But the great thing about our relationship is our relationship is strong enough to endure this difference of opinion. And that’s the positive development. We’ve found many areas in which we can cooperate and we’ve found some areas where we disagree.”
Putin had agreed, he said, to bury their differences on ABM in order to keep negotiating on terms for reducing strategic nuclear weapons. “The objective is to achieve security for our states, for our nations, and for the entire world. We share the concerns of the President of the United States to the fact that we must think of the future threats. And here is a common ground for our further discussions. What we differ in is that we differ in the ways and means we perceive that are suitable for reaching the same objective. And given the nature of the relationship between the United States and Russia, one can rest assured that whatever final solution is found, it will not threaten or put to threat the interests of both our countries and of the world. And we shall continue our discussions.”
The Putin-Bush press conference in Crawford, Texas, on November 15, 2001.
Bush announced US withdrawal from the ABM Treaty on December 13, 2001. The negotiations which followed in 2002 collapsed with all terms agreed between the two sides cancelled within six months.
On April 2, 2002, Putin telephoned Bush to propose an initiative for a Russia-NATO agreement which, Putin said, he had just discussed in Moscow with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. “If you could stay one more day in Europe, we could meet in Rome in order to organize the Russian-NATO summit and launch these mechanisms. And actually, it would be good for me if we resolved it before the NATO summit in Prague [scheduled for November 21-22]. This would reduce the tension and pressure in my country so it would be very good to do before the Prague summit… And, actually, my impression is that this would be good for Mr. Berlusconi because he is in a difficult political situation, under great pressure from his left, good to shift the internal political tension to other affairs and show the importance of Italy in the international arena. I don’t know, actually, it’s up to you. I would think this would be acceptable to you. In any way, you know better but such a step of launching of this at-20 mechanism would be very good, a logical result and a nice finish to your European tour, and this would be a very good stop for your European tour. Actually, what do you think of this?”
Bush was non-committal: “Let me give it some thought, Vladimir. I’m very much in favour of at-20 to satisfy some of your concerns. And I’m glad we’re making progress in this. So I’ll take a good look at it and get back with you.”
Their conversation had lasted for 16 minutes.
Putin, Berlusconi and Bush at the Russia-NATO Summit meeting in Italy on May 28, 2002. On the agreement they announced then to create the Russia-NATO Council, read this.
A month after their Rome meeting, Putin met Bush in Canada on July 15, 2002. Over forty minutes they touched briefly on cooperation to control biological warfare weapons development, and to limit terrorist operations in Georgia from crossing into Russia. “We are seeing all kinds of talk about threats to US and Russia from that area,” Bush said. “We have an obligation to help you fight them off.”
They were more voluble in their mutual hostility towards Iran. “The key is not to allow the Iranians to generate a nuclear cycle,” Putin said. “That means technology and equipment for weapons grade plutonium. I gave additional instructions to my Atomic Energy Minister. He has contacts with your specialists. There is a permanent working group with who m he will maintain contact. He is clean. He is not involved in any commercial activity… As for spent fuel, there is. some progress. [I] told Iranians we will not ship any fuel until they agree that spent fuel comes back to Russia. We have signed a protocol with them. They resist introducing amendments.”
“The President [Bush]: You understand their nature, they are worse than the Saudis. You have to watch them.”
In confidence with Bush, Putin implied his support for the Israeli military operations against the Palestinians in and around Jenin on the West Bank earlier that month; Putin was explicit in criticizing Iranian support for the Palestinians. “As for Iran, I had very tough feelings after meeting with Khatami. Aznar told me something interesting. Aznar told me about his meeting with Khamenei. He said instead of saying hello, he just looked at me, ‘we will eliminate Israel, are you one of our enemy?’ Aznar said he was astonished. [The] closer we work together the better.”
Left: Putin met Iranian President Mohammed Khatami on April 22, 2002, in Turkmenistan. The Kremlin communiqué referred to their discussion of Israeli attacks on Palestinians on the West Bank – the so-called Battle of Jenin of April 1-11, 2002; read more . “During the talks, the Presidents also discussed the situation in the Middle East. When meeting with the Iranian President, Mr Putin told him that specialists of the Russian Emergencies Ministry were going to fly to the Middle East to help rescue victims of the Israeli operation in the Palestinian territories. He said that Russia had coordinated this step with both the Israeli and Palestinian sides” -- http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/27009
Right: Putin met Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar on May 28, 2002. The Kremlin communiqué reported only that “they had an informal meeting before the Russia-European Union Summit to start its work at the Kremlin the next day.”
The last of the documents just released records a telephone call Bush made to Putin on March 18, 2003, hours before the US launched its invasion of Iraq. A fortnight earlier Putin and Bush had discussed the US attempt to secure a United Nations Security Council (UNSC) vote to authorize the invasion; the text of that conversation remains secret. Reportedly, Putin said he would veto the UNSC resolution if Bush tabled it, and as consequence it was withdrawn. Bush decided to act without it.
In this 21-minute conversation, Bush told Putin he “recognized that we will never come to the same conclusion on Saddam Hussein, but I did try very hard in the UN to achieve a consensus. For right now, the UN process is over as far as I am concerned. There is a role for the United Nations after operations if there are military operations. There will be a role for the UN in the post-Saddam Iraq after the war. I just want to assure you of that. Finally, and I say if a war comes because perhaps the initiative that you tried could come to fruition and Saddam could still leave.”
Bush was referring to Putin’s attempt in February 2003, through former prime minister Yevgeny Primakov, to offer Hussein exile in Russia which Primakov has subsequently corroborated.
Putin made clear in his reply to Bush that his priority was to preserve his relationship with Bush at the personal, political and nuclear strategy levels whatever Bush did in Iraq. He repeated an earlier invitation to visit St. Petersburg: “I would like to repeat the invitation to you to come to St. Petersburg later this year. This would be an important meeting regardless of how the situation in Iraq unfolds because it would be a rather informal event. It would be even better to get together to discuss this and other important issues as well.”
He also accepted Bush’s request to restrict the Russian Foreign Ministry’s public statements on the US invasion of Iraq so as “not [to] enflame passions.”
In Putin’s lecture for Bush, it is now revealed that Putin did not tell Bush that his war rationale, the allegation that Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction, was false and a US fabrication. Instead and in exchange, Putin sought Bush’s agreement on policy priorities, especially on nuclear arms, which Putin acknowledged to be more important than US regime change in Baghdad.
“It is true,” Putin began, “that your opinions on Iraq diverge from mine. I have carefully studied your address to the nation, and I cannot say that I agree with everything in the address, but I do believe that the fundamental significance of our state-to-state relationship is more important. Even more important to me are our personal relations, and as you can see, I am refraining from commenting on your address.”
Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/2859269.stm
“If the military operation does start, then I will have to comment,” Putin continued, “but I will not make comments in a way that will belittle our personal relationship. As far as our disagreement on the political issue is concerned, I will just say that we have discussed this more than once, and I can see some specific things that I find wrong. I believe that if we had acted jointly and consistently without the use of military force; then we could have achieved the same result. This concerns not only Iraq but also the rest of the Middle East region. We could have pressured other countries in a way that could have benefited the region as a whole.”
“The second point that I would like to draw your attention to, is that, and I believe this is significant. You said that the goal is a regime change; however, this is not something provided for in the U. N. charter or in international law. Also, it would be unfair to say that the Iraqis have done nothing. Your military preparations and diplomatic channels have pushed Iraq to do many things. The most important thing, and I have already mentioned this, is that we should not substitute the law of force for international law. I do agree that we should bring this process back to the channel of the U.N. and this should be regardless of how this situation in Iraq unfolds.”
“In this vein, I have given instructions to [Foreign Minister Igor] Ivanov to go to New York tonight. His mission is not to score propaganda points with regard to the Iraq situation and it will not be to enflame anti-American sentiment in the U.N. It will be to determine the future of inspections…In spite of the differences on Iraq, the United States and Russia should cooperate in the interests of international peace and stability. I know that the United States Senate has ratified the Treaty on the reduction of strategic potentials, and we have sent the treaty to our Duma and it is scheduled to be voted on this Friday…It will pass, and I would like to reiterate that our goal is to cooperate with the United States. It will pass. The only issue is the tactics in terms of the time frame.”
The Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT), which Putin and Bush had signed and which they were discussing for ratification, was superseded by the New START Treaty of 2011 with an expiry date of February 2026. Putin has proposed to extend this date for twelve more months to allow negotiations with Trump for new terms of arms limitation.
Trump responded on October 5, 2025, that “it sounds like a good idea to me.”
New York Times interview with President Trump, January 7, 2026. Transcript dated January 11, 2026: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/11/us/politics/trump-interview-transcript.html
On January 7, 2026, Trump was questioned in detail on his intentions for negotiating nuclear arms limits with Putin.
“Q: Putin would like to extend it, although you can’t legally do the full treaty. You’d have to negotiate. I’m told that he has said the price for extending it is more concessions on Ukraine.
President Trump: I’m not hearing that. I don’t hear that at all.
Q: So do you think it’s going to get extended?
President Trump: I’ve never heard that. What I have heard is he would love to extend it. And I actually feel strongly that if we’re going to do it, I think China should be a member of the extension. China should be a part of the agreement.
Q: And China has said they would not.
President Trump: China hasn’t really said anything about it.
Q: So you have four weeks, because —
President Trump: I spoke to President Xi about it.
Q: You did? What did he say?
President Trump: Well I have a lot of other things to do, but I think it’s very important, the subject we’re talking about. I spoke to President Xi about it previously, and I think he’d be a willing participant.
Q: Excuse me, you said three weeks on this, though. What, is it going to expire?
President Trump: If it expires, it expires. We’ll do a better agreement.
Q: Mr. President, just one more in foreign policy.
President Trump: There are a lot of weaknesses to that agreement. When they negotiated that agreement, they didn’t do a very good job.
Q: Well, there are a lot of weapons it does not cover.
President Trump: That’s right…Well there’s a lot of weapons it does cover, and they’re all covered on our side, which is not a good thing.
Q: So you’re willing to let it expire.
President Trump: I’d rather do a new agreement that’s much better.
Q: Well, you’re not going to do that in three weeks.
President Trump: So what? How do you know that? I mean, I can do fast agreements. I’ve always done fast agreements.”
Putin has not replied publicly and directly.
Instead, at a Kremlin ceremony on January 15, he said: “unilateral and dangerous actions often substitute diplomacy, efforts to come to a compromise or find solutions which would suit everyone. Instead of having states engage in dialogue with one another, there are those relying on the might-makes-right principle to assert their unilateral narratives, those who believe that they can impose their will, lecture others how they must live and issue orders.”
On the same day, Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, was asked to comment on Trump’s remarks. “The whole world would benefit from an improved New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, but laying one down is easier said than done,” he told Tass. “We believe that everybody needs a more beneficial document, a more beneficial treaty. But working toward such a treaty is a very complicated and lengthy process.”
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