[1]
By John Helmer, Moscow
@bears_with [2]
In the Polymarket betting market which the Trump family plays as the house, the White House one betting $300 million on itself [3], Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) is running neck and neck with Gavin Newson as the Democratic candidate for the presidential election in two years’ time. In the opinion polls, she is running second or third when Kamal Harris is counted in the race [4].
In the new episode of Capitals Uncovered, Martin Sieff, the veteran US political reporter [5], explains that after next Tuesday, when he is expecting President Donald Trump to lose both the House of Representatives and the Senate in a nationwide sweep, the Democratic Party nomination race will quickly remove Harris, and catapult the 10-year New York Congresswoman, AOC, to the lead.
For this week, before next Tuesday, Trump is saying [6] “I don’t mind AOC that much. I don’t know why.” He means she is a weak presidential challenger whom any one of Trump’s succession candidates – Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and son Donald Trump Junior – will be able to defeat.
Sieff explains that when the mid-term results are counted, this calculation will be destroyed for both the Republicans and the Democrats, and the Polymarket odds transformed. Vance — Sieff is predicting [7] — will opt out of the 2028 race, leaving Rubio to run and end in defeat. Everyone with a Trump name, together with their friends and business partners, will be on the run from prosecution, unelectable.
AOC claims [8] to be socialist at home, anti-imperialist abroad – except that she says she will continue the war against Russian “imperialism” with the Kiev regime in the lead.
In the assessment of the Russian intelligence agencies reporting to President Vladimir Putin, if the presidential race turns into Rubio versus Ocasio-Cortez, the least threatening option in the warfighting between now and then must be Rubio.
For this reason, Putin is withholding from Cuba the diesel he has promised [9] to the US and to “the global markets at large”, because that would break the US blockade of Cuba in Rubio’s war for regime change in Havana. AOC, by contrast, is opposing the blockade and will fight Rubio on the war against Cuba [10].
Follow Putin’s record [11] on Rubio’s war against Cuba up to the end of July.
There has been no Russian delivery of petroleum products to Cuba since then. Instead, early this month, the Kremlin delivered 750 tonnes of vegetable oil. In a ceremony on October 17 [12], “Russian Ambassador Víktor Koronelli presided over the handover alongside Cuban Foreign Trade Minister Óscar Pérez-Oliva Fraga and Domestic Trade Minister Betsy Díaz. Etienne Labande, the WFP representative in Cuba, was also present. According to the Russian Embassy’s statement, the oil will be distributed to children, the elderly, and pregnant women.”
An anti-Russian think tank in Washington described [12] this Russian strategy towards Cuba as Trump-first – “selective support while trying to avoid helping Havana become another source of direct confrontation with Washington.”
Click to view or listen [13] to the podcast with Pelle Neroth Taylor and Martin Sieff, recorded in Stockholm on Monday afternoon (October 26).
For background on Matthias Warnig, one-time German friend of Putin and his family and Gazprom retainer, and the schemes he and several American speculators have been advertising for the revival of Nord Stream gas deliveries to Germany, read this [14].
Warnig’s money-making promotion was reported as breaking news in the Financial Times on October 24. However, Warnig began his story-telling with the same scheme in Die Zeit almost four years ago [15].
[16]January 29, 2023: source: https://www.zeit.de/2023/05/matthias-warnig-nord-stream-2-wladimir-putin [17]
[18]October 24, 2026: source: https://www.ft.com/content/dcb57f30-bbfe-418d-9e52-5df3074d1764?syn-25a6b1a6=1 [19]
Warnig’s business partners in the new scheme include Richard Conn. He claims to have been one of the “key” US privatization advisers to the Yeltsin administration in Moscow in the 1990s [20]. In this interview of 2023, Conn described the bribery culture of Russian business. “Coming from legalistic and formulaic traditions, such as American or British, it’s crucial to recognize that Russian culture is less focused on legalities. While having clear documents is essential, flexibility is expected, and enforcement mechanisms are not highly effective in such environments. Instead of relying solely on legal means, it’s important to understand the natural dynamics of a transaction or business deal, set up proper incentives, and prioritize the working relationship [21].”
For the archive on US banker Robert Foresman, click to read [22].
Lead image note: In this satirical engraving by Gustave Doré, Russian landlords are depicted betting their serfs as stakes at a gambling table. The image first appeared in Doré’s book, Histoire pittoresque, dramatique et caricaturale de la sainte Russie (Picturesque and Dramatic Story of Holy Russia in Caricature), published in Paris in 1854. Doré was reflecting the anti-Russian propaganda line of the French state, then at war with Russia in Crimea. He never visited Russia, relying instead on what he read in Astolphe de Custine’s earlier account, Lettres de Russie (Letters from Russia, 1839). For more on de Custine in the history of Russia since the revolution of 1991, read the archive [23].