by John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

How to make losing the war in the Ukraine look like a win – this is President Donald Trump’s purpose in presenting himself and his administration as in favour of peace and of cashback to the United States. If he succeeds, he won’t appear to be running away from the battlefield, as the Ford Administration did in Saigon in April 1975, and the Biden Administration in Kabul in August 2021. 

This is a hustle – it is an attempt by a combination of threats and rewards to convert a political and military defeat into a ready money profit;  call the process peacemaking, Trump himself the peacemaker, and the outcome peace. 

Trump believes this will be easier to negotiate with President Vladimir Putin than the military terms for an end-of-war armistice, capitulation by the Ukrainian military, and demilitarization of what remains of Ukrainian territory. About these issues, no US official has had anything certain to say yet. A money-for-peace deal is also simpler to manage than the creation of a new mutual security architecture for Russia, Europe and NATO which was first proposed by the Russian Foreign Ministry in December 2021.  

“Lemme me tell ya wha’ the set-up was,” said Howard Lutnick, one of Trump’s chief hustlers and now US Commerce Secretary. Lutnick has explained that what the plan  is, and what has been and still is expected from Vladimir Zelensky in Kiev. “The President wants peace…Like any great mediator, he’s going to beat both sides down, to get them to the table…We’ve given three hundred billion dollars to the Ukraine. Is it difficult to see what side we’re on. Gimme a break…Let’s go force Russia into a reasonable peace deal….Enough already.”

With Dimitri Lascaris we discuss each of the elements of this hustle as it is being applied to French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, and then turned into economic war against Canada.The podcast runs for an hour. We focus on Canada starting at Minute 33:50. Click to view and listen. The Youtube version is here.

For more about Melinda McCracken with whom I first began to love Canada, read this.  


Her memoir of growing up in Winnipeg before Americanization began in the 1950s can be read here.  

In describing Glenn Gould, the greatest of Canadians and defender against US political pressure campaigns in his time, I misspoke in quoting his defence of his driving. “I suppose it can be said that I’m an absent-minded driver,” he said. “It’s true that I’ve driven through a number of red lights on occasion, but on the other hand, I’ve stopped at a lot of green ones but never gotten credit for it.”

This week, on March 2, Chrystia Freeland has claimed she played a “leading role” in the operation to steal the Russian Central Bank’s reserves in February 2022, and then “a key role” in transferring $50 billion of the stolen Russian money to the Ukraine. “I led that charge politically,” she swears, hand on heart. Freeland is lying. Click to watch.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pl8o6zSb1EY 

In this new clip, Freeland is campaigning for Liberal Party member votes to succeed Justin Trudeau as party leader — acting prime minister until the election which must be held within  eight months. 

Freeland misrepresents the financial transfers to the Ukraine and her own role. She claims that $50 billion of the frozen Russian Central Bank reserves has been transferred to the Ukraine but this is false. The $50 billion has been loaned to the Ukraine — $20 billion by the US, €18.1 billion by the European Union, ¥473 billion ($3.2 billion) from Japan, £2.3 billion by the UK ($3 billion), and C$5 billion from Canada. Interest payments on the loan are being paid out of interest earned on the confiscated Russian funds by the Belgian clearing fund, Euroclear.  For the time being, the Russian money is paying loan interest only; Freeland implies that it will be Russian money to pay the $50 billion principal when the loan falls due.

For details of the scheme, read this. In its latest financial report, the Belgium-based clearing house Euroclear reveals how the scheme is making profit for itself and tax revenue for the Belgian government. 

The Euroclear report also exposes another of Freeland’s fabrications. Canada’s finance minister between 2020 and 2024, Freeland claims that very little of the Russian reserves were in Canadian dollars because “Putin knew we were not his pals even before the war.” In fact, according to Euroclear, there were more Canadian dollars in the Russian Central Bank holdings than US dollars.

Source: https://www.euroclear.com/

by Editor - Tuesday, March 4th, 2025