By John Helmer, Moscow
@bears_with
Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot (1953, lead image) was a serious comedy. It ends without the outcome the characters had been waiting for so they decide to hang themselves, but they can’t find enough rope. “Well, shall we go? Estragon says to Vladimir in the concluding dialogue of the play. “Yes, let’s go”, Vladimir replies. “They do not move” is the last line in the script. Vladimir was either French or Irish and is not related to any Russian you know.
Waiting for Trumpo (2025) is a farce in which the principal character lacks the power for the ending he says he is waiting for. He has plenty of rope, though, using it to hang everyone else and leave him the last man standing. He too doesn’t move.
President Vladimir Putin told President Donald Trump on June 4 that he is waiting for him to show he is moving the Kiev regime to sign the terms of the Russian Memorandum — publicly released in Istanbul on June 2 — starting with the cessation of fresh US and NATO military deliveries to Kiev and the provision of the intelligence on which the next round of Ukrainian attacks depends.
Sources in Moscow confirm that the drone attack of June 1 on the Russian nuclear bomber fleet has shortened the waiting time Putin has agreed with the General Staff, the intelligence agencies, and Foreign Ministry to give Trump. In return for shortening this interval, the Defense Ministry has announced it is restricting its retaliatory strikes in the meantime to the tactical level. “Last night,” the Ministry reported on June 10, “the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation launched a massive strike with high-precision long-range air-launched weapons at one of the airfields of the AFU [Armed Forces of Ukraine] tactical aviation aircraft in the Dubno area of the Rivne region. This is one of the retaliatory strikes against the terrorist attacks on Russian military airfields committed by the Kiev regime.”
The Defense Ministry waited nine days before saying this much.
On June 6, in summary of battlefield operations for the preceding week, the Ministry had reported: “Last night [June 5], in response to the terrorist acts of the Kiev regime, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation launched a massive strike with high-precision long-range air, sea and land-based weapons, as well as unmanned aerial vehicles, at design bureaus, enterprises for the production and repair of weapons and military equipment of Ukraine, workshops for the assembly of unmanned aerial vehicles, flight personnel training centres, and as well as warehouses of weapons and military equipment of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The objective of the strike has been achieved. All designated targets have been hit.”
Two days before, in their telephone conversation of June 4, Putin had agreed with Trump to overlook US involvement in the attack on the nuclear triad and avoid triggering Section 19( c) of Russia’s nuclear deterrence strategy which provides for Russian nuclear response to “actions by an adversary affecting elements of critically important state or military infrastructure of the Russian Federation, the disablement of which would disrupt response actions by nuclear forces”.
Renaming the Kiev regime a terrorist organisation and the attacks on strategic Russian targets as terrorist actions is another Russian waiting move. Delay of strategic retaliation – tactical nuclear targeting, Oreshnik launch with non-nuclear warheads – is another waiting move.
Trump replied on June 6. Asked if as a result of the attack on the bomber airfields, he is “worried that there might be a nuclear breakout with Russia, Ukraine? “ Trump replied: “I don’t. I hope not. I hope not. I think it’s a war that would’ve never happened. If I were president, that wouldn’t have happened. I certainly hope not.” He also implied he had accepted that Putin’s retaliation would be limited. The Ukrainians “gave, they gave, uh, Putin a reason to go in and bomb the hell out of ’em last night. That’s the thing I didn’t like about it. When I saw it, I said, “Here we go. Now it’s gonna be a strike.’”
According to the interpretation in Moscow, Trump was also allowing the Ukrainians, their NATO allies, and their US advisors to continue their strategy of escalation in order to resist the Russian end-of-war terms.
Since then Trump has declared war on California Governor Gavin Newsom, the front-running presidential candidate for the Democratic Party. Over the weekend at Camp David, Trump said “we have meetings with various people about very major subjects. Now we thought we’d do it at Camp David. There’s probably better security there than anyplace. We’ll be meeting with a lot of people, including generals, as you know, and admirals.” He took Secretary of State and National Security Adviser Marco Rubio with him to Camp David.
Russian sources say they are expecting to be told what these meetings decided on the Russian Memorandum. They are also expecting Putin will call a meeting this week to decide the consensus of officials, commanders, and advisors on what will happen next. “We have to wait,” one source said privately, “and see what pressure the Security Council wants to apply before the next [Istanbul] meeting.”
Leading Moscow military blogger Boris Rozhin reports the retaliatory strikes so far are “not yet a response. Soon there will be a meeting of the Security Council where the ongoing response will be discussed…If the pace [of retaliatory strikes] continues, we can expect strikes on the critical nodes…of the central and eastern [electrical] power systems of Ukraine.”
“There is time,” the confidential Moscow source says, “for Trump to deliver the Ukrainian signature on the Memorandum in Istanbul by the end of the month. If he fails and Zelensky does not sign it, then I think we will see a massive escalation. In the meantime, pay less attention to the daily news from the front – at least until one or two fronts collapse and there is [Russian] breakthrough in substantial numbers.”
The Russian Security Council routinely meets at the end of each week unless the President is travelling. The last recorded Security Council meeting was on May 30; there was no meeting last week. Instead, there was the June 4 session with government officials at which Vladimir Medinsky reported on the Istanbul talks and discussion followed on the options for responding to the “terrorist” attacks.
The meeting decided, as Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov recommended: “despite the serious criminal provocations that have taken place in recent days, I believe it is important not to fall into the trap of these provocations, which are clearly designed to derail the talks and continue arms deliveries from European nations.”
At the June 4 meeting, President Putin listens while Vladimir Medinsky reports (centre of screen); below him on right is Foreign Minister Lavrov. Source: http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/77099
Following immediately after that meeting and decision, Putin and Trump spoke by telephone; for analysis of what they said, read this.
For reminder, here are Sections I, II and III of the Russian Memorandum presented in Istanbul on June 2; altogether, there are 31 terms.
Source: https://www.interfax.ru/russia/1029172
Returning from Camp David on Sunday, Trump told reporters his priority now is his war in California on Governor Newsom: “I would do it [arrest Newsom] if I were Tom [Homan, White House Executive Associate Director of Enforcement and Removal Operations]. I think he’s [Homan] great. Gavin [Newsom] likes the publicity, but I think it [arrest] would be a great thing… The people that are causing the problem are professional agitators. They’re insurrectionists. They’re bad people. They should be in jail.”
As he spoke, Trump had already ordered units of US Marines to leave Camp Pendleton and begin to deploy in Los Angeles.
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