by John Helmer, Moscow
@bears_with
In ancient rhetoric classes, and ever since, it has been taught that combining two negatives in a sentence produces a positive, albeit a version of the truth which has been made ambiguous enough to allow its opposite, a lie.
So when President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman issues two negatives on two succeeding days in answer to a question about Donald Trump’s plan for ending the war in the Ukraine, the positive truth is the one which the Russian oligarchs, the Central Bank, state officials with family links to the US, and leftovers of the Yeltsin administration are pressing Putin to accept. He is telling them he may do what they ask.
Against them stand the General Staff. Also, Russian public opinion. Putin is telling them he may do what they ask.
This is what forked tongues are for saying.
On July 2, Tass, the state media organ, reported Dmitry Peskov (lead image) as replying to reporters on the question of candidate Trump’s statements during the June 27 debate that he would end the Ukraine war immediately after election day on November 5, if he wins. “Not knowing the essence, what this is about, we cannot comment on this…this is not Trump’s first statement on this matter and earlier he also said something along these lines.” What is untrue about “not knowing” is that the Trump plan was spelled out in “essence” and in detail on April 11 in a paper by former Trump National Security Council staffers, retired three-star Army general Keith Kellogg and retired CIA official Frederick Fleitz.
Left to right: President Putin, Dmitry Peskov, Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg (US Army retired); and Frederick Fleitz, a 19-year CIA official and race war fighter.
What is also untrue is that “we” – Peskov for Putin – “cannot comment”. The truth is they won’t for now but will in due course, after the back-channel negotiations have continued for another four months, and after the election day outcome is known.
Read exactly what the Kellogg-Fleitz-Trump plan said. What Trump managed to remember during the debate, repeat, and garble can be read here. The analysis of what this means to Russians whose job it is to follow these things closely can be read here.
Peskov was asked the same question about the Trump plan a day later, on July 3. Tass reported his five-word answer: “Replying to a request to comment on reports by Western media outlets that Trump is purportedly communicating with the Russian leader on the terms of achieving peace in Ukraine, the Kremlin official said: ‘No, this is not true.’”
The double negative means that while there is no direct communication between Putin and Trump, there is indirect communication through intermediaries.
The sequence of Kremlin statements on the Kellogg-Fleitz paper started on June 25, just before the CNN debate, when Peskov told Reuters: “The value of any plan lies in the nuances and in taking into account the real state of affairs on the ground.” Then he added for Tass that he had “no information on ‘what kind of plan we are talking about, or what is set out in it.’” The last sentence was true only of the receptionist in Peskov’s front office.
This week’s two double negatives repeated on two successive days means Peskov and the president are encouraging the oligarchs to tell their American lobbyists that Putin is ready to end the war on Trump’s terms – if the terms can be adjusted a little. That’s an invitation to the oligarchs to pay the money required to the people who are necessary. For that outlay, the Kellogg-Fleitz-Trump plan is offering as quid pro quo “some limited sanctions relief”.
There’s one other thing those speaking for Trump are telling those speaking for Putin, and this is a repeat of Ronald Reagan’s “October Surprise” of 1980 – the proposal to Iran’s revolutionary Islamic leaders not to make a US hostage release deal with the Carter Administration in return for a better deal if and after Reagan won the election. Trump’s go-betweens are telling Putin’s go-betweens to slow down the General Staff’s plan for a multi-front offensive to force the Kiev regime to capitulate by November 5.
The Russian go-betweens are the same people who bribed Hillary Clinton: she took the money but reneged and cheated on the deal. Read what happened in the book, Chapter 6.
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