By John Helmer
@bears_with
In the outcome, it’s the old story come true again.
That’s the one in which Tarquin, the ancient Roman king, wanted the Cumaean Sybil to sell him the nine books of prophecies known as the Sybilline Oracles. When the king dismissed the Sybil’s price for the nine, she burned three and asked the same price for six. When the king held out again, she burned another three. In desperation, the king then paid for the three remaining at the price he had refused for the original nine.
For two thousand years this has been known as the art of the deal.
As if they didn’t know the story, on Friday the leaders of France, United Kingdom, Germany, Ukraine and Poland (FUGUP) telephoned President Donald Trump and told him to keep fighting President Vladimir Putin until he accepts their price. FUGUP told POTUS to burn Putin until Russia will have nothing left to pay with.
Two leaks from the Istanbul meetings confirm what has happened. According to Oleg Tsarev’s account from the Russian side, the Russian delegation said they would agree to a ceasefire if the Ukraine withdrew its forces completely from the four regions – Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporozhye, and Kherson. The Ukrainians refused. In reply, the Russians said that next time there will be five regions.
According to a London newspaper’s leak from the British adviser to the Ukrainians, the Russian delegation said they would agree to a ceasefire only if the Ukraine withdrew its troops from the four regions, and if Kiev refused, Russia would take two more regions – Sumy and Kharkov. The head of the Russian delegation, Vladimir Medinsky, had reportedly said that Russia “does not want war but is ready to fight for a year, two, three — no matter how long it takes. We fought with Sweden for 21 years. How long are you ready to fight? Perhaps someone sitting at this table will lose even more of their loved ones. Russia is ready to fight forever.”
Trump was sitting in his aeroplane flying north from Abu Dhabi, two hours and a thousand kilometres south of Istanbul when he got the call from FUGUP. The day before, he had told reporters ““we will be leaving tomorrow but you know, almost destination unknown because it could be here, it could be there, but probably we’re back to Washington DC tomorrow.”
An hour before he took off, he said: “You know, they all said Putin was going, Zelensky was going, and I said, if I don’t go, I guarantee Putin’s not going. And he didn’t go…We’re going to get it done.” Trump added he would meet Putin “as soon as we can set it up. I would actually leave here [Abu Dhabi] and go [to Istanbul]… in two or three weeks we have a deal.”
As Russian forces accelerate their spring offensive west, north and south, burning what Trump, Zelensky and the Europeans have to fight over, the terms of the Russian deal are now far greater than Vladimir Medinsky, the Russian lead negotiator, accepted at Istanbul-I in March 2022 but were repudiated when he returned to Moscow. Before he set out for Istanbul-II last week, the consensus in Moscow was unanimous, as Putin demonstrated at his lengthy Kremlin session in the evening of May 14 with ministers, intelligence agency chiefs, and senior military commanders from the General Staff and from the front.
“Andrei Belousov [Defence Minister] and Valery Gerasimov [chief of the General Staff] also delivered reports. All commanders of the groups of armed forces in the special military operation zone reported on the situation in their respective sectors along the line of contact. The meeting participants conducted a detailed joint discussion of all reports. Based on these briefings, the President summed up the meeting results, set tasks and charted the negotiating position of the Russian delegation in Istanbul.”
In Abu Dhabi, Trump’s staff had left a four-hour gap in the timing of his flight back to Washington in order to meet with Putin in Istanbul on condition that Trump ordered Zelensky to leave Turkey beforehand and Putin agreed to a summit announcement of an immediate ceasefire. Zelensky was removed to Albania but the Putin’s ceasefire conditions remained unchanged. Trump then abandoned his summit meeting plan; the record of his flight log was erased. He announced his personal success instead – “in two or three weeks”.
For the terms of the Russian consensus, and Putin’s agreement to meet Trump in the future, listen to the podcast with Dimitri Lascaris, recorded in Greece on Saturday, May 17.
PRESIDENT TRUMP’S FLIGHT PLAN DURING MAY 15-16
Source: https://rollcall.com/factbase/trump/calendar/
The impossibility of 30-minute “flying time” between Abu Dhabi and Mildenhall, England, concealed Trump’s hope to meet Putin in Istanbul. The decision-making for the summit meeting went down to the wire, as reported two weeks ago here.
Source: https://rollcall.com/factbase/trump/calendar/
The corrected White House calendar reflects flying time between Abu Dhabi of 7.5 hours, and Trump’s landing at Mildenhall on time, as originally scheduled. The 90-minute stopover was also planned and logged in the original version of the calendar.
THE RUSSIAN DELEGATION AT ISTANBUL ON MAY 16
Source: https://ria.ru/20250516/peregovory-2017151081.html
The Kremlin announced Putin’s order for the delegation members late in the evening of May 14 here.
THE UKRAINIAN DELEGATION AT ISTANBUL ON MAY 16
Source: https://ria.ru/20250516/peregovory-2017151081.html
The composition of this delegation was changed between May 14 and May 15 as minister-rank officials and the chiefs of the SBU and the General Staff were replaced by their deputies.
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