By John Helmer, Moscow
@bears_with
Last week it was President Donald Trump telling reporters he didn’t know what response President Vladimir Putin had made to the term-sheet for ending the Ukraine war which he sent to the Kremlin on December 2 with Steven Witkoff and Jared Kushner.
“I don’t know what the Kremlin is doing,” Trump said on December 3. “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.”
This week, on December 7, Trump claimed it is Vladimir Zelensky who doesn’t know. “So we’ve been speaking to President Putin and we’ve been speaking to Ukrainian leaders, including Zelenskyy, President Zelensky. And I have to say that I’m a little bit disappointed that President Zelenskyy hasn’t yet read the proposal. That was as of a few hours ago. His people love it, but he hasn’t. Russia’s fine with it. Russia’s, you know, Russia, Russia, I guess, would rather have the whole country, wouldn’t you think a bit? But, uh, Russia is, I believe, fine with it, but I’m not sure that Zelenskyy’s fine with it. His people love it, but he hasn’t read it.”
Although Witkoff had telephoned Zelensky the day before, telling him the new deadline for an agreement on the term sheet is “by Christmas”, Trump repeated the know-nothing claim in an interview on December 8. “Well, he’s gotta read the proposal. He hadn’t re … really, he hasn’t read it yet. [Question: The most recent draft?] That’s as of yesterday. Maybe he’s read it over the night. It would be nice if he would read it. You know, a lot of people are dying. So it would be really good if he’d read it. His people loved the proposal. They really liked it. His lieutenants, his top people, they liked it, but they said he hasn’t read it yet. I think he should find time to read it.”
As this negotiation spills into public view, there is no Russian, American, European, or Ukrainian record that Kushner has said anything.
However, since he returned from the Kremlin talks to the US, Kushner and his father-in-law, the President, have been busy in a multi-billion dollar bidding takeover of a Hollywood film production company, Warner Brothers Discovery (WBD). When WBD rejected the Kushner alliance bid of $41 billion in equity, $54 billion in bank loans, for a lowball offer of $83 billion from Netflix, Trump announced he might veto the deal on monopoly grounds. “That’s got to go through a process and we’ll see what happens,” Trump announced. “Uh, Netflix is a great company… But it’s a, it’s a lot of market share so we’ll have to see what happens.”
The next day, Kushner, with the Trump campaign financiers the Ellison family, and the Saudi, Abu Dhabi and Qatari state investment funds proposed a hostile takeover bid of $108 billion for WBD, all cash, no debt, to defeat Netflix. Trump, the US government and the press have been more transparent on the term sheets for ending the war for WBD than they have for the Ukraine war.
Outwitting Trump was the objective of the summit meeting in Delhi of President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Narendra Modi on December 4-5. But because the Trump White House and their media camp followers have been preoccupied with their money shot at Hollywood, the reality has been accelerating in an altogether different direction.
Here is the story in the new Dialogue Works podcast with Nima Alkhorshid.
Modi welcomed Putin on his arrival at Delhi airport, and then took him in the Prime Minister’s car to his residence in the garden quarter of the city where they spent two and a half hours talking over dinner. Indian sources say just one interpreter was present.
Putin told Modi, according to Russian sources, that the talks with Trump and his emissaries are not going anywhere but that it’s a good sign that the talks continue. He assured Modi he was committed to a negotiated peacemaking on condition that the Americans agree – and compel the agreement of the NATO allies and the regime in Kiev – to the long-term security conditions which have been tabled for months.
Putin had told two Indian press interviewers in the Kremlin, ahead of his arrival: “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…We went through each point again, let me reiterate this. Sometimes we said, “yes, we can discuss this, but with that one we cannot agree.” That was how the work proceeded. To say now what exactly doesn’t suit us or where we could possibly agree seems premature, since it might disrupt the very mode of operation that President Trump is trying to establish… They’re discussing – that’s what they’re discussing right now. They simply broke down those 28 points, then 27, into four packages and proposed discussing these four packages.” The packaging was the novelty, Putin clarified, but not the American terms. “Eessentially, it’s still just the same old 27 points.”
Source: http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/78649
“Our special military operation isn’t the start of a war, but rather an attempt to end one that the West ignited using Ukrainian nationalists. That’s what is really happening now. That’s the crux of the problem. We will finish it when we achieve the goals set at the beginning of the special military operation – when we free these territories. That’s all… Now they have pretty much fought themselves into a corner, all this boils down to one thing: either we take back these territories by force, or eventually Ukrainian troops withdraw and stop killing people there.”
There has been no official read-out, no leaks from Modi’s dinner conversation with Putin. The Prime Minister presented the President with a chess set from Agra in marble and semi-precious stones, although Putin has admitted he doesn’t play the game. Modi added a new Russian translation of the Bhagavad Gita, the sacred Hindu text on self and spiritual duty set on the battlefield, before combat.
What then was the strategy they discussed? Click to view the hour-long podcast.
Click to view: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE-OpiY2CQg
The Chinese government delayed publishing its response to the Delhi meetings until this week when an Indian reporter asked the Foreign Ministry spokesman in Beijing this question: “Russian President Vladimir Putin has made an eventful visit to India last week and held fruitful talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Both leaders described the relationship as ‘a Special and Privileged Strategic Partnership.’ Besides signing a host of agreements, both sides worked out an Economic Cooperation Program with the aim of diversifying trade and investment ties by 2030. Separately the Defense Ministers of both countries also met and discussed measures to enhance military-to-military ties. Ahead of his visit, President Putin said India and China are our closest friends and we treasure that relationship deeply. He also expressed confidence that India and China are committed to finding solution to their issues and Russia has no right to interfere in their bilateral affairs. How does Beijing view Mr. Putin’s visit to India and his comments on India-China relations?”
Source: https://www.mfa.gov.cn/eng/xw/fyrbt/lxjzh/202512/t20251208_11768841.html
Guo Jiakun replied: “China, Russia and India are emerging economies and important members of the Global South. The three countries maintaining sound relations is not only in line with their own interests but also conducive to regional and global peace, security, stability and prosperity. China stands ready to work with Russia and India to continue advancing the bilateral relations. On China-India ties, China stands ready to work with India to view and handle the bilateral relationship from a strategic height and long-term perspective, promote the sustained, sound and steady development of China-India ties, so as to better benefit the two countries and the two peoples and make due contributions to peace and prosperity in Asia and beyond.
For the time being, there has been no explicit response by the three Powers to the White House publication of the new “National Security Strategy”. From a “strategic height and long-term perspective”, however, it is clear what this declaration means: “The United States cannot allow any nation to become so dominant that it could threaten our interests. We will work with allies and partners to maintain global and regional balances of power to prevent the emergence of dominant adversaries. As the United States rejects the ill-fated concept of global domination for itself, we must prevent the global, and in some cases even regional, domination of others. This does not mean wasting blood and treasure to curtail the influence of all the world’s great and middle powers. The outsized influence of larger, richer, and stronger nations is a timeless truth of international relations. This reality sometimes entails working with partners to thwart ambitions that threaten our joint interests.”
To Russia, “working with partners to thwart ambitions” means the Ukraine battlefield, then Germany, Poland, the Baltic Sea states, and Finland, even Greenland. To India, it means the revival of the US warfighting platform in Pakistan, as well as subversion in Bangladesh and Nepal. To China, it means Taiwan and the South China Sea.
Source: https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/2025-National-Security-Strategy.pdf
The strategic priorities in the document are measurable. Europe leads with 49 mentions; China follows with 21 mentions; the Western Hemisphere at 13; Russia, 10; Israel, 6; Japan, 5; India, 4; Australia, 3; Canada, 1.
Despite the losses in the Ukraine and the failure of the sanctions war, the American document claims the European allies enjoy a significant hard power advantage over Russia by almost every measure, save nuclear weapons. As a result of Russia’s war in Ukraine, European relations with Russia are now deeply attenuated, and many Europeans regard Russia as an existential threat. Managing European relations with Russia will require significant U.S. diplomatic engagement, both to reestablish conditions of strategic stability across the Eurasian landmass, and to mitigate the risk of conflict between Russia and European states. It is a core interest of the United States to negotiate an expeditious cessation of hostilities in Ukraine, in order to stabilize European economies, prevent unintended escalation or expansion of the war, and reestablish strategic stability with Russia, as well as to enable the post-hostilities reconstruction of Ukraine to enable its survival as a viable state”.
Reversing the recent history of US, German, and Polish collaboration in the destruction of the Nord Stream gas pipelines, the document claims: “The Ukraine War has had the perverse effect of increasing Europe’s, especially Germany’s, external dependencies. Today, German chemical companies are building some of the world’s largest processing plants in China, using Russian gas that they cannot obtain at home. The Trump Administration finds itself at odds with European officials who hold unrealistic expectations for the war perched in unstable minority governments, many of which trample on basic principles of democracy to suppress opposition… Our broad policy for Europe should prioritize: reestablishing conditions of stability within Europe and strategic stability with Russia; building up the healthy nations of Central, Eastern, and Southern Europe through commercial ties, weapons sales, political collaboration, and cultural and educational exchanges; ending the perception, and preventing the reality, of NATO as a perpetually expanding alliance.”
The drafters of the US strategy appear to be as deluded as Trump himself on the outcome of the May war between India and Pakistan and the readiness of the Modi government to join their military encirclement and economic war against China. “We must continue to improve commercial (and other) relations with India to encourage New Delhi to contribute to Indo-Pacific security, including through continued quadrilateral cooperation with Australia, Japan, and the United States (“the Quad”). Moreover, we will also work to align the actions of our allies and partners with our joint interest in preventing domination by any single competitor nation.”
The new strategy-making by Russia and India begins by putting Trump’s personal antics aside.
“[India Today] How would you characterise Mr Donald Trump, the President of the United States of America? Vladimir Putin: You know, I never give character assessments about my colleagues – neither those I’ve worked with in the past nor current leaders of individual states. These assessments should be made by citizens who vote for their leader during elections.” Left, Boris Yeltsin dancing in June 1996; right, Donald Trump dancing November 2025.
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