Natylie Baldwin's Blog, page 23

Intellinews: Russia’s GDP contracts in 1Q25 in real terms for the first time since the war in Ukraine started

Intellinews, 5/6/25

Russia’s economy contracted by 0.3% quarter on quarter in 1Q25 in seasonally adjusted terms, marking the first quarterly decline since 2Q22, Vedomosti daily reports citing estimates by Raiffeisenbank.

As followed closely by bne IntelliNews, the signs of a slowdown in Russia are clear, with analysts guessing whether the economy overheated by the full-scale military invasion of Ukraine is headed for a “soft” or “hard” landing.

This week the Ministry of Economic Development said that Russia’s economy grew by 1.7% year-on-year in 1Q25 in unadjusted terms. But in seasonally adjusted terms the GDP growth in 1Q25 was actually negative, according to Raiffeisenbank and other analysts surveyed by Vedomosti.

Renaissance Capital also wrote in the note for clients on May 6 that “seasonally adjusted GDP growth in 1Q25 was negative relative to 4Q24”.

The Central Bank of Russia (CBR) predicted a slowdown for this year since it issued a pessimistic medium-term macroeconomic outlook at the start of August last year. In an effort to bring down sticky high inflation it introduced a series of non-monetary policy measures last year to artificially cool the economy, but it appears it may have overshot as external shocks of falling oil prices, which dropped below $60 a barrel a day earlier, and the chaos the Trump administration tariff policy have bounced back to hit the Russian economy.

A debate has been raging over the last nine months. Some economists believe that Russia will be hit by a wave of bankruptcies later this year, while others say the economy is more robust than it appears. However, the latest results suggest the centre of gravity has shifted to the negative end of the spectrum. Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov almost admitted as much earlier this week when he tripled the federal budget deficit forecast for this year and dropped the outlook for average oil prices in 2025 to a mere $56 per barrel from $62.2.

Bloomberg’s Alexander Isakov estimates the contraction at 0.6%–0.8% q/q, while T-Investments’ Sofya Donets puts the decline at up to 1.5%. The most vulnerable sectors in the ongoing slowdown are industrial production, extraction, and transportation, which all are key export-oriented industries.

Most analysts surveyed by Vedomosti expect a near-zero or slightly negative growth path to persist in 2Q25, with Russia’s economy continuing to teeter on the edge of a technical recession, with near-zero or negative q/q growth expected through mid-year.

This contrasts with the recent bullish outlook published by EconMin.

Trump DOJ Adopts Policy Permitting Journalist Arrests

By Kevin Gosztola, The Dissenter, 4/26/25

The following article was made possible by paid subscribers of The Dissenter.  Become a subscriber with this discount offer and support journalism that stands up to attacks on freedom of the press .

United States Attorney General Pam Bondi ended a Justice Department (DOJ) policy that explicitly discouraged federal prosecutors from forcing journalists to reveal their sources and other sensitive information, including information obtained from potential leaks. 

With new guidelines, members of the news media who refuse to cooperate with prosecutors could be arrested for contempt. If accused of contempt, they could be fined or jailed.

The move by Bondi comes as Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has “referred” three alleged “intelligence leakers” to the DOJ for criminal prosecution. 

According to Gabbard, one of those individuals allegedly leaked to the Washington Post. The policy change effectively gives the green light to prosecutors to subpoena Post reporters and other staff.

DONATE: Support The Dissenter’s Independent Journalism

In October 2022, Attorney General Merrick Garland adopted changes to “news media guidelines” that were celebrated by journalist associations and press freedom groups. As the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (RCFP) described, for the first time, guidelines prohibited prosecutors “from using subpoenas or other investigative tools against journalists who possess and publish classified information obtained in newsgathering, with only narrow exceptions.”

On April 25, 2025, Bondi issued a memo [PDF] that voided those changes. The memo informs all DOJ employees that members of the news media “must answer subpoenas,” and it also applied to court orders and search warrants intended to “compel the production of information and testimony.” Bondi will approve all “efforts to question or arrest members of the news media.”

The memo further suggests that Bondi will only approve subpoenas, court orders, or search warrants when the information sought is “essential to a successful prosecution” and prosecutors have “made all reasonable attempts to obtain the information from alternative sources.” Yet the DOJ has wide discretion to conduct investigations however it chooses, and the guidelines hardly mean that Bondi and the DOJ will not trample over the rights of journalists.

Bondi cast this development as a necessary part of winning an information war against President Donald Trump’s political opponents within and outside of the government. Specifically, she accused President Joe Biden’s administration of abusing “Garland’s overly broad procedural protections for media allies by engaging in selective leaks in support of failed lawfare campaigns.” 

“The leaks have not abated since President Trump’s second inauguration, including leaks of classified information,” Bondi added. “This Justice Department will not tolerate unauthorized disclosures that undermine President Trump’s policies, victimize government agencies, and cause harm to the American people.”

Subscribe To The Free Edition Of The Dissenter

Quoting a stunning executive order from Trump that singled out a former official as an “egregious leaker,” Bondi echoed the assertion that disclosures of information related to foreign policy, national security, or “government effectiveness” could be characterized as “treasonous and as possibly violating the Espionage Act.” 

Bondi stated, “The perpetrators of these leaks aid our foreign adversaries by spilling sensitive and sometimes classified information on to the Internet. The damage is significant and irreversible. Accountability, including criminal prosecutions, is necessary to set a new course.”

Garland’s protections for reporters stemmed from a backlash to news reports, which revealed that Trump’s first administration had secretly subpoenaed the communications records of reporters at the Post, CNN, and the New York Times. 

In fact, after Biden assumed office in 2021, the DOJ did not immediately stop Trump’s retaliation against the press. DOJ officials even imposed an “unprecedented” gag order against Times executives. 

DOJ officials eventually met with media representatives to tamp down outrage and agreed to limits on national security leak investigations. The overture was similar to Attorney General Eric Holder’s response to widespread media disapproval in 2013, when it became known that President Barack Obama’s administration had seized records from “more than 20 separate telephone lines assigned to [the Associated Press] and its journalists.”

President Joe Biden (Photo from the White House and in the public domain.)

Throughout the Biden administration, a coalition of groups recognized that the protections for press were subject to change under future administrations. They urged the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate to codify the changes into law by passing the PRESS Act, which would have established a federal reporter’s shield law.

The House passed the PRESS Act in January 2024, however, despite bipartisan support, the shield law languished in the Senate for months as Democrats did nothing to move the bill for a vote.

In April 2024, when White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was asked if Biden supported the PRESS Act, she uttered a platitude: “[J]ournalism is not a crime. We’ve been very clear about that.” But the White House refused to back legislation that would protect reporters from the type of attacks on their newsgathering that Bondi just authorized.  

After Vice President Kamala Harris lost the presidential election to Trump, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and other Democrats, like Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin, suddenly recognized the need to pass the PRESS Act. It was too late. Trump came out against the shield law, instructing Republicans to “kill” the bill. Republican Senator Tom Cotton obeyed Trump and blocked the bill, as he had done during a previous session of Congress. 

“Every Democrat who put the PRESS Act on the back burner when they had the opportunity to pass a bipartisan bill codifying journalist-source confidentiality should be ashamed,” Freedom of the Press Foundation advocacy director Seth Stern said, after Bondi revoked press protections. “Everyone predicted this would happen in a second Trump administration, yet politicians in a position to prevent it prioritized empty rhetoric over putting up a meaningful fight.”

“Because of them, a president who threatens journalists with prison rape for protecting their sources and says reporting critically on his administration should be illegal can and almost certainly will abuse the legal system to investigate and prosecute his critics and the journalists they talk to,” Stern added. 

Trump’s second term already presents more danger to freedom of the press than his first term, particularly because there is nothing constraining his administration. They are hellbent on weaponizing government and engaging in the kind of lawfare that they fervently believe the Biden administration waged against them. 

As The Dissenter thoroughly recounted when Biden’s term ended, his administration laid the foundation for further attacks on the press by Trump. The Biden administration continued the unprecedented Espionage Act prosecution against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, and in Florida, FBI agents raided the home newsroom of Timothy Burke in 2023. The following year, the DOJ charged Burke as an economic cybercriminal. (A jury trial is scheduled for September 8, 2025.) 

Those guilty of journalism could have had the ability to go to court and fight back against Trump’s war on the press. But now, as Trump officials spread propaganda to demonize reporters and whip up public support for violating their First Amendment rights, there is little that the news media can do to stop petty and vindictive officials eager to target them and their sources.

Gilbert Doctorow: Travel notes: installment two

By Gilbert Doctorow, Website, 5/5/25

I open this installment of my travel notes with remarks on my experience in arranging and enjoying the past three days in Moscow. What I have to say is not intended to give tips to the Community which might be useful on any future travel to and in Russia that you may be considering. All the cutting edge services I mention are accessible only if you have a Russian bank account and credit cards, from which follows the possibility to put bank Apps on your telephone and enjoy the conveniences I outline here.

My purpose is rather to share my observations on how ordinary Russians live – which, to put it succinctly, is very well indeed. For those who occupy management positions in business or even are just employees with skills in demand, their salaries support the good life I describe here. For pensioners, whose monthly allowance is very meager, there are non-monetary allotments from the government, like a couple of train trips cross country for free each year or greatly reduced airline ticket prices that make it possible to enjoy the good life even on a very small nominal budget.

I must explain here that a few very large Russian corporations see you through many different sides of consumer life. One of them now is Sber, formerly Sberbank, which has its finger in all kinds of pies and offers their Russian customers many services quite remote from banking such as shopping for and home delivery of groceries. But the single biggest helper in the travelers’ needs is Yandex, Russia’s equivalent to Google.

Yandex began life as THE search engine of Russia and then used its skills and proprietary software to take over the lives of its countrymen as a benevolent monopolist. Occasionally you encounter the downsides of its lacking competition in management failures. But nearly all the time Yandex subsidiaries do a commendable job.

Had I so desired, I could have bought our train tickets to Moscow online from Yandex Travel (Puteshestvie) but we have an old fashioned instinct and wanted to consult with a railways sales person about our choice of train and the discount that suited us best, so we made the purchase at the main railway station in Petersburg.

What it was like on the Sapsan high speed train connecting the two capitals and covering the 700 km route in exactly 4 hours I will explain below. There were several pleasant surprises for us at the level of on board service even in the Economy railway car that I will share below.

As regards reserving a hotel in Moscow, I used Yandex Travel, which served as a very efficient substitute for booking.com. I quickly waded through their list of 4 and 5 star hotels in the city center, deciding finally on a Movenpick which is managed by the French hospitality services giant Accor, and is managed very well as our stay there proved.

For those who follow the money, I inform you that since I dithered in placing our booking in what is a peak travel period, the Standard rooms were sold out and we necessarily moved up to a Superior room for the ruble equivalent of 120 euros per night without breakfast. If that sounds like a lot, bear in mind that a 22 meter very well appointed room such as we received would cost the double in any European capital and probably the triple in New York. No breakfast, but if you use your wits and order breakfast from the menu, you can nicely get by for 10 euros per person, enjoying a royal omelet and a double espresso worthy of Milano. If you are indifferent to prices, a buffet breakfast with shampanskoye is on offer for 30 euros per person. When you come after 10 am on weekends, you are treated to live piano music over breakfast. But the little secret which reception does not share with everyone, is that at level -2 the hotel has a splendid swimming pool, sauna and well-equipped workout gym available for free to guests.

Who, you may wonder, are the guests? With the exception of myself, the hotel guests this weekend were 100% Russians, nearly all couples, many with young children. I would estimate the age band of the adults as running from 25 to 35.

The Movenpick is situated 200 meters from the Taganka Theater, a landmark in Russian cultural and social history going back to the 1970s when it was directed by the free spirit Yuri Lubimov who gained special renown for staging Hamlet with the bard Vladimir Vysotsky in the title role (which I saw together with my future wife seated on stairs leading to the balcony since all seats were sold out).

In the early 1980s, Lyubimov fell afoul of the authorities due to caustic productions including Brecht’s Threepenny Opera and Good Person of Szechwan. He was compelled to emigrate, first to Israel as a refuge of convenience. He then traveled around Europe and the USA directing operas, which was an entirely new domain. Finally in the 1990s he returned home to Moscow. His theater was returned to him and he became a celebrity among Russia’s freedom fighters and a close friend of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, whose 80th birthday was feted in the theater in the presence of notables including foreign ambassadors and the mayor of Moscow, Yuri Luzhkov. I know. I was there, and strolling around this quiet corner of Moscow brought back these recollections. Moreover; Solzhenitsyn’s Museum of the Russian Emigration Abroad is just across the street from the theater, while a monument to Vladimir Vysotsky is around the corner.

It is now typical of Moscow that such small oases of culture and desirable residential buildings are to be found on one side or another of the 8 lane ‘boulevards’ like Zemlyanoi Val on which the hotel is situated that run through the center of Moscow and set this city apart from all other European capitals. Called boulevards, they are in fact highways and the only way to get across them as a pedestrian is via underground passages.

Returning to the subject of Yandex, I note that their taxis swarm the streets of Moscow and wherever in the city you may be, when you order a taxi on your telephone App, you are likely to be picked up within 5 minutes or so. The operator finds you by geolocation software and their system remembers where they delivered you recently so that when you type in the first letters of your destination they identify a driver and show you the price for various categories of car, from Economy on up.

Yandex Go, as the taxi service is called, covers the entire Russian Federation. When we arrived in Pskov on 29 April having crossed over from Estonia, my Yandex App instantly found me a driver ready to take us to our home in Petersburg 290 km to the north.

Yandex also provided us with our entertainment for Friday evening in Moscow. Their search engine listed the very few concerts being presented on this first day of a long holiday weekend when most theaters are closed. We chose the Zaryad’ya Concert Hall where Mariinsky and Bolshoi theater chief conductor Valery Gergiev was putting on Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony. Then we bought our tickets via the Yandex theater ticketing system.

Bruckner is not a favorite composer of ours, but we were keen to discover the concert hall which dates from 2018 and is where Gergiev holds his Easter Festival each year.

The concert itself was less than enjoyable. The symphony seemed disconnected and going nowhere, though there were some glorious moments of rich polyphonic sound. Saying that, I think of the comment by Hungarian conductor Ivan Fischer to those of us who came to the final rehearsal of Dvorak’s Rusalka in the Brussels opera house some years ago: ‘This opera is magnificent and if you don’t enjoy the show you have me to blame for a poor presentation of the score.’

It could well be that Gergiev gave a poor reading of the score. Boring or not, over its two hours of uninterrupted music, his rendition of the Eighth Symphony left no one snoozing. Gergiev loves FULL volume and his combined double orchestra from the two opera theaters blasted us a good deal. On the positive side, we learned that the acoustics of the Zaryad’ya concert hall are wonderful.

The Zaryad’ya seats 1,600 and it is notable for the seating configuration which wraps around the orchestra from all sides. I know of nothing similar in our part of Europe.

Another unusual aspect of the Zaryad’ya is security. When buying tickets online you are obliged to enter your passport number, issuing country, etc. And when you come to the hall, you must produce your passport together with your ticket to gain entry. I have not seen such tight control anywhere in Petersburg venues.

*****

I close these Travel Notes with some observations on the Siemens-built Sapsan trains that operate on the Moscow-St Petersburg route.

They are in perfect condition, withdrawal of the manufacturer from the Russian market notwithstanding. Punctuality is remarkable, as are cleanliness and high quality service even in Economy Class. Security is uppermost: your passport is entered into the system with your ticket; and you are allowed to board the train only after the attendant standing at the door to each wagon checks your passport against the data shown on the electronic gadget in her hands. Inside the train, it is clear that there are not only attendants to serve you but also guards to maintain order.

Our train mostly cruised at 200 km per hour. For much of the route, there was little sway or vibration, but in places there were both phenomena. The reason is that the Sapsan is running on normal Russian railway track, which is all welded to eliminate the clack-clack but is not of such precision as the French TGV rail beds, that are segregated from ordinary train tracks.

Though every seat was taken in our rail wagon, there was dead silence. Nearly all passengers were looking only at their mobile phones but no one was conversing. The reason? The train offers a broad selection of movies in all imaginable genres that you can choose to watch via their wifi channels on board. All films are Russian: there is not a single foreign film. And the majority of films are about war. There were only a couple of romances or situation comedies and a few cartoons for the kids, including the ever present Masha and the Bear. When watching, you are obliged to use earphones so that you do not disturb others.

The wifi also offers a direct connection with the bistro car so that you can order sandwiches or beverages that an attendant will bring to your seat.

As for price, in Economy it was about 50 euros per person for a round trip ticket.

Interview with Vladimir Medinsky – lead Russian negotiator to the Istanbul peace talks

YouTube link here.

5/16/25, Voice of translator.

CCI: In Memory of Edward Lozansky

Dear CCI Friends and Colleagues:

We were saddened to learn of the death of Edward Lozansky on April 30, 2025.

Edward was a physicist, a Soviet dissident, a composer, the President of the American University in Moscow (now Moscow International University), a loving husband and father, a dear friend to many and a lifelong advocate for peace.

Our sincere condolences to his wife Tatiana, his children, and his many, many friends around the world.

Remembering Edward Lozansky, Towering Prophet of Sanity, Decency and Peace – Pluralia

The Directors
Center for Citizen Initiatives

Russia Matters: Trump-Putin Calls Yields No Public Breakthrough on Ukraine With FT Pondering If U.S. Done Mediating

Russia Matters, 5/19/25

Donald Trump’s Monday call with Vladimir Putin yielded no breakthrough on Russia-Ukraine war with Putin rejecting an unconditional full ceasefire again and Trump asserting that, going forward, Moscow and Kyiv will need to negotiate conditions directly, perhaps, in the Vatican in what Financial Times reporters  interpreted  as a signal that Washington is “stepping back from a role as a mediator.” Putin was first to offer his take on the call, which lasted for more than two hours, telling Russian media that Russia has stated readiness to work with the Ukrainian side on a memorandum regarding a possible a peace treaty “with a number of positions to be defined.” These positions, according to the Kremlin’s account of Putin’s remarks to the media included “the principles for settlement, the timeframe for a possible peace deal, and… a potential temporary ceasefire, should the necessary agreements be reached.” Trump’s account of the call appeared to be more upbeat than that of the Russian counterpart. “The tone and spirit of the conversation were excellent,” U.S. leader wrote on Truth Social. He also wrote that “Russia and Ukraine will immediately start negotiations toward a Ceasefire and, more importantly, an END to the War” and that “the conditions for that will be negotiated between the two parties, as it can only be, because they know details of a negotiation that nobody else would be aware of.” Ominously, perhaps, Trump also wrote that “the Vatican, as represented by the Pope, has stated that it would be very interested in hosting the negotiations.” Trump’s remarks, in the view of Financial Times’ reporting team, indicate the Trump administration is done trying mediating between Moscow and Kyiv.1 The Monday call was preceded by the direct Russian-Ukrainian talks, which took place in Istanbul on Friday. Those talks did not significantly advance the peace negotiations either, although both sides agreed on what would become the largest prisoner-of-war exchange since the start of the war. The outcome of the Friday meeting represented a “tactical win for Mr. Putin, who managed to start the talks without first agreeing to a battlefield cease-fire that Ukraine and almost all of its Western backers had sought as a precondition for negotiations,” according to NYT.Putin may be thinking that Russia will outlast Ukraine in his war, and he has a reason to do so, according to FT’s Gideon Rachman. This columnist cites “sources” as estimating that “Ukrainian casualties are running at roughly two-thirds the level of Russia’s… while its population is roughly a quarter that of Russia’s.” “Putin [therefore] has reason to believe that he would ultimately prevail in a war of attrition,” in spite of Russia’s “staggering losses,” according to Rachman.2 Putin has also managed to consolidate the public at home as he aims to “outlast Ukraine and the U.S.,” according to Amy Knight’s commentary in Wall Street Journal.A group of CSIS military fellows have inferred  insights for future conflicts  from the Russia-Ukraine war and they include that West’s “incremental escalation—providing support and then pausing to gauge the Russian reaction before providing more advanced support—contributed to the absence of a nuclear detonation in this conflict.” Another insight is that “Despite rapid advances, the use of unmanned sea and aerial drones today is still an evolution, not a revolution, of warfare” with tanks remaining “relevant.” The Russia-Ukraine war also indicates that “Future success in contested environments will depend not only on moving supplies but on mastering data, defending networks, and leveraging innovation across all domains.”Ukraine’s defense industry keeps churning more and more lethal products with value of the latter increasing by 3400% since the beginning of the war, according to Wall Street Journal. “The value of weapons Ukraine’s defense industry can make has ballooned from $1 billion in 2022 to $35 billion over three years of war… Last year Ukraine said it produced more artillery guns than all NATO countries combined,” according to WSJ. “More than 40% of the weapons used on the front line with Russia are now made in Ukraine” and in “some areas, such as drones, unmanned ground systems, and electronic warfare, the figure is close to 100%,” WSJ reported. At the same time, Ukraine’s efforts to procure arms abroad have not been all exemplary. A Financial Times investigation “has uncovered how hundreds of millions of dollars Kyiv paid to foreign arms intermediaries to secure vital military equipment has gone to waste over the past three years of war.”Trump’s Golden Dome will press Russia into a new arms race, forcing it to devote yet more resources to its strategic forces at a time when the country can least afford it, according to James D.J. Brown of Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. So far, the significant increase in Russia’s non-strategic nuclear weapons “that the Pentagon predicted five years ago has so far not materialized,” according to Hans M. Kristensen of FAS and his colleagues’ report: “Russian Nuclear Weapons, 2025.”

Putin outlines results Moscow seeks in Ukraine

RT, 5/18/25

Russia is seeking to achieve “lasting and sustainable peace” by eliminating the root causes of the Ukraine conflict, President Vladimir Putin has said, in an extract of an interview released by Russia 1 TV on Sunday.

In a clip posted by journalist Pavel Zarubin on Telegram, Putin stated that Russia has “enough strength and resources to bring what was started in 2022 to its logical conclusion” while accomplishing Moscow’s key goals.

Russia wants to “eliminate the causes that caused this crisis, create conditions for long-term sustainable peace and ensure the security of the Russian state and the interests of our people in those territories that we always talk about,” he added.

The president was apparently referring to Crimea, the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, and the regions of Kherson and Zaporozhye, which overwhelmingly voted in favor of joining Russia in referendums in 2014 and 2022.

People in these former Ukrainian territories “consider Russian to be their native language” and see Russia as their homeland, he said.

Commenting on the ongoing diplomatic engagement with the US to settle the conflict, Putin acknowledged that “the American people, including their president [Donald Trump] have their own national interests.”

“We respect that, and expect to be treated the same way,” he added.

Putin’s remarks come on the heels of the first direct Russia-Ukraine talks since 2022. As a result of Turkish-mediated negotiations in Istanbul, both sides agreed to exchange lists of conditions for a potential ceasefire, conduct a major prisoner swap, and discuss a follow-up meeting. The Kremlin has not ruled out direct talks between Putin and Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky if the ongoing peace efforts result in progress and firm agreements.

Following the talks, US President Donald Trump announced he would hold a phone call with his Russian counterpart on Monday, which would focus on trade and resolving the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov discussed the Istanbul negotiations with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who welcomed the results of the talks.

***

By Donald Trump, Truth Social, May 17, 2025

@realDonaldTrump

I WILL BE SPEAKING, BY TELEPHONE, TO PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN OF RUSSIA ON MONDAY, AT 10:00 A.M. THE SUBJECTS OF THE CALL WILL BE, STOPPING THE “BLOODBATH” THAT IS KILLING, ON AVERAGE, MORE THAN 5000 RUSSIAN AND UKRAINIAN SOLDIERS A WEEK, AND TRADE. I WILL THEN BE SPEAKING TO PRESIDENT ZELENSKYY OF UKRAINE AND THEN, WITH PRESIDENT ZELENSKYY, VARIOUS MEMBERS OF NATO. HOPEFULLY IT WILL BE A PRODUCTIVE DAY, A CEASEFIRE WILL TAKE PLACE, AND THIS VERY VIOLENT WAR, A WAR THAT SHOULD HAVE NEVER HAPPENED, WILL END. GOD BLESS US ALL!!!

***

Kremlin Names Condition for Putin-Zelensky Meeting

, 5/17/25

MOSCOW (Sputnik) – A meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky is possible if delegations of both countries reach certain agreements, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Saturday.

“There have been a lot of questions on the topic of a possible meeting between the presidents of the two countries, Ukraine and Russia, Zelensky and Putin,” Peskov told reporters.

“Such a meeting as a result of the work of the delegations of the two sides is possible when certain agreements of these delegations are reached,” he added.

“We consider it possible. But it is precisely as a result of work and upon reaching certain results in the form of agreements between the two sides,” the Kremlin spokesman said.

Russia and Ukraine have agreed to exchange the lists of ceasefire conditions and the Russian side is working on it, he explained.

“[Russia and Ukraine] really agreed to exchange the lists of ceasefire conditions. The work is continuing, it is being carried out. The Russian side has prepared such a list and will hand it over, with exchange with the Ukrainian side,” Peskov said.

At the same time, the work on the resolution of the conflict in Ukraine has just started and it will be continued, Peskov added.

Moscow considers the candidacy of Kiev’s signatory as the main and fundamental thing when signing documents between the Russian and Ukrainian delegations during the negotiations, Peskov said.

“When signing the documents to be agreed upon by the delegations, the main and principal thing for us is who exactly will sign these documents from the Ukrainian side,” Peskov said.

A change in the composition of the Russian delegation to the negotiations with Ukraine is not being discussed, he said, adding that the talks will continue.

“At the moment, there is no discussion of this. In fact, the work has just begun and will continue,” Peskov said.

He also said that it is important to implement the agreements reached during the recent talks.

“For now, we must follow through on what the delegations agreed upon yesterday. This primarily involves fulfilling the exchange of 1,000 for 1,000 war prisoners, and exchanging the lists of the main conditions discussed yesterday, as my colleague Russian presidential aide Vladimir Medinsky said,” Peskov added.

The negotiations between Russia and Ukraine are held behind the closed doors, and this practice should continue in the future, the Kremlin spokesman said.

There have not been any contacts between Moscow and Washington after the talks between Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul, Peskov said.

“No, there have not been any contacts,” he said.

At the same time, if Putin and US President Donald Trump find it necessary to have a telephone call, the Kremlin will inform about that, Peskov added.

Following Friday’s meeting of the Russian and Ukrainian delegations in Istanbul, Russian presidential aide Vladimir Medinsky, who led the Russian delegation, said that the sides agreed to prepare detailed lists of conditions for a ceasefire.

The In Person Meeting Between Putin and Trump in Abu Dhabi Didn’t Happen

Well, John Helmer’s report of an in person meeting between Trump and Putin in Abu Dhabi on May 15th or 16th did not pan out.

I don’t know if Helmer’s sources were faulty or if it was really believed that this might happen but circumstances changed in such a way as to nix the meeting. Trump had mentioned the possibility recently of meeting Putin and then said he wasn’t going to right now. It’s possible this was a result of Trump’s impulsivity.

Interestingly, my former editor at RT told me, without elaboration, that Helmer was not a credible person and made me remove him as a source on a proposed piece I wrote back in 2021. Other people knowledgeable about Russia have said they think he is a credible journalist.

I know that he has managed to tick off both western establishment types and some in the Russian government. I typically think it bodes well for a journalist if they piss off everyone.

In any event, this purported meeting did not happen and we’re left to speculate.

Ben Aris: Sanctions have spurred innovation from Russian cheese to turbines

By Ben Aris, Intellinews, 5/1/25

The extreme sanctions imposed on Russia have hit industrial sectors the hardest, which have been almost entirely dependent on imports of high quality foreign made machinery for almost all of the last three decades since the fall of the Soviet Union.

The problem is that because of the timing of the collapse of the USSR, Russia missed out on two revolutions in precision tool making and is now hopelessly behind. Machine imports made up about half of all imports for decades.

China didn’t face this dislocation and has rapidly closed the gap with the West. China already leads in green tech development and production and recently overtook the US in EV manufacturing as well. In April it shocked the world with DeepSeek, an AI as powerful as ChatGPT, and then with the commercial production of a five-nanometre microchip that is as small as anything the US or Taiwan can produce that came entirely out of left field. And it was created entirely using Chinese machinery – a capacity that China was thought to be years away from. The chip, known as the Kirin 9000S, was developed by Huawei’s subsidiary HiSilicon, in partnership with Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC).

Russia is still far away from this level of sophistication, but sanctions have accelerated its own development with simpler, but still important, technologies. Russian President Vladimir Putin boasted recently that sanctions have strengthened, not weakened, Russia by driving Russian innovation as companies invest and adapt to find domestically sourced solutions to their problems. And his boast is not entirely idle. While Russia is still generations away from producing its own competitive microchip, difficult-to-make technologies like high-efficiency gas turbines that have long been out of reach for domestic producers are starting to catch up with their Western peers.

From cheese to turbines

The classic example of this process is cheese. When Putin imposed agri-sanctions on EU imports in retaliation for the first round of Western sanctions on Russia following the annexation of Crimea in 2014, cheese disappeared from Russian supermarket shelves.

Cheese was almost entirely imported as European-made cheese was of a higher quality and lower price than anything Russian firms could make. But cut off from supplies completely, some Russian entrepreneurs threw themselves into the business and two years later Russia had a flourishing domestic cheese production sector, albeit still not quite as fine as their European analogues, but good enough to restock the shops.

Cheese is pretty easy to make, but gas turbines are another kettle of fish. Russian power firms like Silovye Mashiny (Power Machine), owned by oligarch Alexey Mordashov, is the leading producer of equipment for power stations, but it could never match the quality of Siemens high efficiency gas turbines that are at the heart of gas-fired power stations, despite heavy investment and a joint venture with Siemens pre-war.

Siemens came to virtually monopolise the gas turbine business in Russia. According to Siemens’ annual reports and press statements, it earned €1.3bn in revenues from Russia, or about 1% of its global sales but was also a strategically important market due to the long-term energy and infrastructure maintenance contracts.

Russia’s dependence on Siemens was much more significant, as its high efficiency turbines have a notable economic impact because the fuel savings are on a scale that directly affects GDP figures. However, after the war in Ukraine began, Siemens suspended its operations in May 2022, leaving Russia without access to the German-made turbines it depends on.

That has just changed.

Specialists from the United Engine Corporation (UEC), part of the Rostec State Corporation, have completed testing of the second prototype of the new AL-41ST-25 industrial gas turbine engine. The engine was manufactured at UEC-UMPO in Ufa, Republic of Bashkortostan, that is almost as good as anything Siemens makes.

The AL-41ST-25 is a fully domestically produced industrial turbine designed to replace foreign equivalents in Russia’s fuel and energy sector. It has a capacity of 25 MW and features enhanced efficiency, reliability and environmental sustainability.

The prototype consistently met its specified performance parameters in all operating modes, according to Rostec, matching the performance of the German-made equivalents.

It will now be installed at a compressor station in the Republic of Tatarstan, where the first prototype is already in operation as part of a gas pumping unit and has shown reliable performance, the Russian company said.

According to its designers, the turbine can outperform most existing domestic models in terms of efficiency, with a current rating of 39.1% and a potential for phased improvement to 40%. The AL-41ST-25 is the first Russian development to offer this combination of technical specifications.

On a side-by-side comparison, the Russian turbine still has some work to do. The AL-41ST-25 falls into the lower end of the medium industrial turbine power segment and is smaller than both of Siemens’ equivalent SGT-700 (33-34 MW) and SGT-800 (47.5-62 MW) in terms of output.

But the key breakthrough is that AL-41ST-25 is also most as efficient as the Siemens’ two turbines: 39.1% against 40% and 41.5% respectively.

Closing the gap with the German technology clears the way to replace every German turbine in every Russian power station and begin the process of weaning Russia off its dependency on imported foreign machinery as soon as production of the turbines can be scaled up. Its new found prowess in mechanical engineering means an assault on all sorts of higher quality machinery can also be launched. This process will take years to complete, but in this sense Putin is right: sanctions have provided the spur Russian innovation needed to accelerate innovation and upgrade its outdated technology.

Andrew Korybko: Evaluating Foreign Affairs’ Warning About The Risks Of An Emboldened & Remilitarized Germany

By Andrew Korybko, Substack, 4/25/25

How likely is it that a potentially ultra-nationalist Germany “relitigates its borders or forgoes EU-style deliberation in favor of military blackmail”?

Foreign Affairs warned earlier this month that an emboldened and remilitarized Germany could pose another challenge to European stability. They’re convinced that former Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s “Zeitenwende”, or historic turning point, “is real this time” in the sense that his successor Friedrich Merz now has the parliamentary and popular support to transform their country into a Great Power. While this would allegedly benefit Europe and Ukraine, it wouldn’t be without three serious risks. [https://www.foreignaffairs.com/germany/zeitenwende-real-time]

According to the article’s two authors, these entail: Russia waging more hybrid war on Germany; Germany’s rise possibly provoking more nationalism in surrounding countries; and this potentially leading to an explosion of ultra-nationalism in Germany. The catalyst for all of this is the US’ gradual disengagement from NATO brought about by the Trump Administration’s reprioritization of the Asia-Pacific. As American influence recedes, it’ll create political and security voids that others compete to fill.

To be sure, the article itself is more about promoting the alleged advantages of Germany’s delayed implementation of Scholz’s “Zeitenwende”, which the authors praise as long-overdue and a natural response to the aforesaid catalyst seeing as how Germany is already the EU’s de facto leader. At the same time, touching upon the risks bolsters their credibility in some readers’ eyes, enables them to subtly throw shade on Trump, and presents the authors as prescient in case any of the above occurs.

Beginning with the first of the three, it’s predicable that Germany and Russia would carry out more intelligence operations against one another if the first plays the continent’s leading role in containing the second, which the latter would of course consider to be a latent threat for obvious historical reasons. The article omits any mention of the way in which his newfound German role would harm Russian interests and misportrays whatever Moscow’s response may be as unprovoked aggression.

They’re fairer with regard to the second risk of surrounding countries becoming more nationalistic as a reaction to an emboldened and remilitarized Germany but don’t elaborate. Poland is probably the most likely candidate though since such sentiments are already rising in society. This is a reaction to the ruling liberal-globalist coalition in general, its perceived subservience to Germany, and concerns that a possibly AfD-led Germany might try to reclaim what Poland considers to be its “Recovered Territories”.

The last risk builds upon that the authors expressed as the worst-case scenario of “a German military first strengthened by politically centrist, pro-European governments [falling] into the hands of leaders willing to relitigate Germany’s borders or to forgo EU-style deliberation in favor of military blackmail.” It’s this potential consequence that’s the most important to evaluate since the first two are expected to be enduring characteristics of this new geopolitical era in Europe while the final one is uncertain.

The outcome of Poland’s presidential election next month is expected to greatly determine the future dynamics of Polish-German relations. If the outgoing conservative is replaced by the liberal candidate, then Poland will probably either subordinate itself even more to Germany, rely on France to balance it and the US, or pivot towards France. A victory by the conservative or populist candidates, however, would lessen dependence on Germany by either balancing it with France or reprioritizing the US.

France is foreseen as figuring more prominently in Polish foreign policy either way due to their historical partnership since the Napoleonic era as well as their shared contemporary concerns about the threat that an emboldened and remilitarized Germany could pose to them. French in general are less worried about Germany relitigating their borders than some Poles are and are much more anxious about losing their chance to lead Europe either in whole or in part after the Ukrainian Conflict finally ends.

France, Germany, and Poland are competing with one another in this respect, with the most likely outcomes either being German hegemony via the “Zeitenwende” vision, France and Poland jointly thwarting this in Central & Eastern Europe (CEE), or a revived “Weimar Triangle” for tripartite rule over Europe. So long as the EU’s free flow of people and capital is retained, which of course can’t be taken for granted but is likely, then the odds of an AfD-led Germany relitigating its border with Poland are low.

That’s because like-minded Germans could simply buy land in Poland and move there if they wanted to, albeit while being subject to Polish laws, which aren’t different in any meaningful sense than German ones for all intents and purposes with respect to their daily lives. Additionally, while Germany does indeed plan to undergo an unprecedented military buildup, Poland is already in the midst of its own buildup and a more successful at that after having just become NATO’s third-largest military last summer.

The US is also unlikely to completely withdraw from Poland, let alone all of CEE, so its forces will probably always remain there as a mutual deterrent against Russia and Germany. Neither have any intent to invade Poland though so this presence would mostly be symbolic and for the purpose of psychologically reassuring the historically traumatized Polish population of their safety. In any case, the point is that the worst-case scenario that the authors touched upon is very unlikely to materialize.

To review, this is because: Poland will either subordinate itself to Germany after the next elections or rely more on France to balance it (if not reprioritize the US over both); the EU’s free flow of people and capital will likely remain at least for some time; and the US won’t abandon CEE. These will accordingly: appease or balance a possibly ultra-nationalist (ex: AfD-led) Germany; ditto; and deter any potential German territorial revisionism (whether via legal or military means).

Drawing to a close, it can therefore be concluded that the new order taking shape in Europe likely won’t lead to a restoration of interwar risks like Foreign Affairs warned is the worst-case scenario, but to the creation of spheres of influence without military tensions. Whether Poland stands strongly on its own, partners with France, or subordinates itself to Germany, no border changes are expected in either the western or eastern direction, with all forms of future German-Polish competition remaining manageable.