Natylie Baldwin's Blog, page 29

Eugene Doyle: Disruption: historians challenge Russophobic propaganda

By Eugene Doyle, Solidarity, 3/29/25

The Germans have a word for it – as they always do.  Putinversteher – one who “understands” Putin. It is meant as a slur and has recently gained traction in Western IR (international relations) circles but Professor Geoffrey Roberts, a British historian of Russia, embraces the term.  “I think it’s a very good term,” he told me last week. “It’s my professional responsibility to try to understand Putin.”  

He is one of a growing number of ‘free thinkers’ who are rejecting the standard Western propaganda model that frames Putin and Russia as merchants of evil, instead ascribing to them motives that are both pragmatic and commonplace.  This leaves plenty of room to criticize Putin’s regime and its hardball geopolitics.  These academics, however, have shouldered the intellectual’s role to challenge the dominant narrative and expose underlying untruths (“Russia’s totally unprovoked war”, “Russia wants to conquer all of Ukraine”, “If we don’t stop them in Ukraine, the Russians will keep going”, etc). 

“That stuff is absolute nonsense,” Roberts says. “Yeah, Putin does have ambitions; he has ambitions to change the global polity in ways that will suit Russia and Russia’s interests.”

“Putinversteher” and Putin’s vision for a post-war world

Professor Roberts has sat in rooms with Putin, heard him speak at length, and unlike 99% of people in the West has taken the time to study his words unmediated by the various arms of the Western media. He seeks to disrupt the perceptions of a world misinformed by cartoonish good guy/bad guy narratives that make resolving crises all but impossible. 

“Putin is a visionary whose overarching goal is to end American global hegemony”, Roberts says, “and usher in a new, post-Western system of international relations – a multipolar system of sovereign states based on diversity, equality and common security. It is not an empire that Putin is seeking to build, but a new world order that will safeguard the long-term security of Russia and its civilisational values.”

Back in October I wrote an article “US is spending $28 billion to colonise your brain” which outlined the staggering sums of money spent on US disinformation/perception management campaigns which involve owning journalists, editors and entire media outlets, and which seeks to dominate our mental landscape by purging alternative voices. Swimming in this ocean of Russophobic, Sinophobic propaganda makes it all but impossible to assess Russia, the Chinese or, until recently, the Palestinians, in anything approaching a balanced way. 

Former head of the CIA Russia desk George Beebe spoke eloquently recently of the duty of analysts to “empathise” with the Russians, to walk in their shoes – which, he pointed out, is different to “sympathising” with the Russians (accepting their positions). Along with former US Ambassador to Moscow Jack Matlock, Quincy Institute scholar Anatol Lieven and people like Pascal Lottaz, Professor Glenn Diesen and others, Geoffrey Roberts enriches our thinking at a time when the Western media seems incapable of nuanced dialogue. 

Fellow British historian Robert Skidelsky, a member of the House of Lords, spoke on Neutrality Studies last week about the danger of dragging out the war in Ukraine and having endless hostility with Russia.

“The whole European position is disingenuous. It’s misleading. It’s self-deluding. It’s as though people have had bits of their brains lobotomized so they can’t think about these things any longer. I find it terrifying.”

This is why, for all the madness, dangers and incoherence, the Trump Moment may at least be a circuit breaker, an opportunity for the West to rediscover the lost art of diplomacy. 

Challenging Putin Myths

Geoffrey Roberts has 50 years of scholarship on Russia and the Soviet Union behind him. The author of many books, including Stalin’s General: The Life of Georgy Zhukov (who led the Soviet victory at the Battle of Stalingrad) and The Soviet Union in World Politics: Coexistence, Revolution and Cold War, 1945-1991 (The Making of the Contemporary World), he has also penned innumerable articles trying to build understanding.

“One of the things I’ve been trying to do all my life is counter this vilification of Russia and, more recently, the demonization of Putin – the complete distortion of Putin’s views.”

Historians like Geoff Roberts prefer the long view, looking at events from a distance, which helps them to be as dispassionate, as objective as possible. But sometimes history calls historians to comment when the smell of cordite is still in the air. 

In terms of Russophobic propaganda, Roberts says, the last three years have been more toxic than anything he has seen.  It has compelled him, he says, to eschew some of his scholarly habits – being an “archive rat” – and step into the ring.

Through articles, interviews, YouTube platforms and his own email database he seeks “to provide alternative perspectives and to cut through the propaganda blizzard in respect to Ukraine. I also do it to make sense of it myself.”   

His 2022 article “Now or Never: The Immediate Origins of Putin’s Preventative War on Ukraine” appeared in various outlets, including the Journal of Military and Strategic Studies. It made a significant contribution to the discussion. In June last year Brave New Europe published his “Negotiate Now, or Capitulate Later: Ten Incentives for Ukraine to Make Peace with Russia” which spelt out in crisp and sober terms the stark realities that are increasingly obvious to everyone today: Ukraine faces a crushing defeat if they press on, the West is indifferent to the death of Ukrainians, the demographic crisis is real, and to save Odessa and access to the Black Sea, Ukraine should pursue a settlement now. 

Most Ukrainians, Roberts says, now believe that even a bad peace will be better than the continuation of a disastrous losing war. Delaying and fighting on makes no sense.  As some have argued for years: Ukraine would have a brighter future as a bridge between Russia and the rest of Europe, not as a fortified outpost for either side. 

The courage to oppose a dominant discourse comes at a price. Powerful forces are pressing in on academics and others who dare to express alternative views. Staying silent or parroting the party line is the safer option. Geoff Roberts is made of sterner stuff. 

“I had that option of keeping quiet, keeping my head down. But at a certain moment, I guess in 2014 when the crisis broke, I felt compelled to comment. It’s been easier for me to dissent because I’m retired. I’m loathe to criticise anyone in academia for not speaking out. But there are younger academics who dare to speak truth to the powerless. For me, they are the true heroes of the resistance to Russophobia.”

I admire independent thinkers like Geoffrey Roberts.  They risk vilification in order to foster truth and the understanding that Ukraine is a thorny issue with faults on all the many sides of this disaster.  Without this healthy perspectivism, making peace and moving forward is blocked. Does that make me a Putinversteher? So be it. Ich bin Putinversteher.

Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region. He hosts the public policy platform solidarity.co.nz. This article may be reproduced without permission but with suitable attribution.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy: The 2025 60 Minutes Interview transcript

CBS News 60 Minutes, 4/13/25

The Ukrainian president faces a critical moment in his alliance with the United States. In an interview this past Friday, Volodymyr Zelenskyy invited President Trump, here, to Ukraine, to see how Russia’s unprovoked invasion, three years ago, continues to threaten the peace of the Western world. Zelenskyy is navigating a sharp turnabout in Washington. The United States had been leading nato in arming Ukraine and isolating Russia. but since taking office, President Trump has praised the Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and criticized Zelenskyy. this past Friday, a Trump official met Putin in Russia about the same time we sat down with Zelenskyy in his hometown. It had been a week since Russia killed 9 children on a playground.

Scott Pelley: You seem to have a real hatred of Vladimir Putin.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy (Translated): Putin? 100% hatred. Not even 99.9%. Though this doesn’t mean we shouldn’t work to end the war as soon as possible and transition to diplomacy. But how else can you see a person who came here and murdered our people, murdered children? We’re inside a school bomb shelter right now. The bomb shelter of a school.

The bomb shelter classrooms beneath the city of Kryvyi Rih were silent. School 41 was mourning its students killed on April 4. Swing sets pierced by shrapnel stood where Zelenskyy laid his memorial to the nine children and 10 others cut down by a Russian missile. He asked us to look at their faces and told us that while the great powers endlessly debate war and peace, these children will never speak again.

Scott Pelley: Mr. President, what does an atrocity like this tell you about the progress of the war?

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy: It means that we can’t trust Russia. We can’t trust negotiations with Russia.

Russia strikes Ukrainian cities daily. 1,700 attacks on schools, 600 children dead. 780 hospitals and clinics attacked. 13,000 civilians killed. And up to 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers dead, all for Vladimir Putin’s vanity war to expand Russia to NATO’s doorstep.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy (Translated): Our people have paid the highest price possible. There is no higher price. We have given all our money–all we have in terms of finances. But most important, we gave [the lives of] our people.

Those were the points Zelenskyy struggled to make in February as President Trump opened negotiations with Russia and, initially, excluded Ukraine. Then, Trump rewrote history, saying, falsely, that Ukraine had started the war and calling the democratically elected Zelenskyy…

President Trump on February 19: A dictator without elections. Zelenskyy better move fast or he’s not going to have a country left. Gotta move, gotta move fast ’cause that war is going in the wrong direction.

Scott Pelley: When President Trump called you a dictator and said that Ukraine started this war, what did you think?

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy (Translated): I believe, sadly, Russian narratives are prevailing in the U.S. How is it possible to witness our losses and our suffering, to understand what the Russians are doing, and to still believe that they are not the aggressors, that they did not start this war? This speaks to the enormous influence of Russia’s information policy on America, on U.S. politics, and U.S. politicians.

And Zelenskyy told us he heard Russia’s narrative from Trump officials in that disastrous Oval Office meeting in February.

Trump in Oval Office meeting with Zelenskyy: You’re gambling with World War III.

Zelenskyy grew tense as President Trump said both sides were suffering, Ukraine’s people and the Russian invasion force.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy (Translated): It’s a shift in tone, a shift in reality, really yes, a shift in reality, and I don’t want to engage in the altered reality that is being presented to me. First and foremost, we did not launch an attack [to start the war]. It seems to me that the Vice President is somehow justifying Putin’s actions. I tried to explain, “You can’t look for something in the middle. There is an aggressor and there is a victim. The Russians are the aggressor, and we are the victim.”

Vice President Vance suggested that Putin could be trusted and it was Zelenskyy who was creating a false narrative.

Zelenskyy in Oval Office meeting: Have you ever been to Ukraine that you see what problems we have? Come once.

Vance in Oval Office meeting: I’ve actually, I’ve actually watched and seen the stories and I know what happens is you bring people, you bring them on a propaganda tour, Mr. President.

Scott Pelley: Would you invite President Trump to Ukraine?

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy: With pleasure. Please.

This, Zelenskyy apparently wanted President Trump to hear in English.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy: We want you to come, and I think to come and to see. You think you understand what’s going on here. Okay, we respect your position. You understand. But, please, before any kind of decisions, any kind of forms of negotiations, come to see people, civilians, warriors, hospitals, churches, children destroyed or dead. Come, look, and then let’s — let’s move with a plan how to finish the war. You will understand with whom you have a deal. You will understand what Putin did. And we will not prepare anything. It will not be theater, with preparing actors in the streets and the [city] center. We don’t do this. We don’t need it. You can go exactly where you want, in any city which been under attacks. What I said to them, just to come and to understand.

With his invitation on its way, he switched to Ukrainian.

Scott Pelley: Does the United States have your back?

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy (Translated): (PAUSE) Even in this pause of mine there’s a problem. Because I want to answer truthfully and quickly that the United States is our strategic, strong partner. But the pause is doubt. I don’t doubt that the people of America are with us. But in a long war, many details are forgotten. In Europe everyone fears that the United States may drift away from Europe.

Scott Pelley: Can you do without the United States?

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy (Translated): I think without the United States we will suffer great losses. Human and territorial. So, I wouldn’t like to consider that. But this is our destiny, our land, our life. One way or another, we will end this war.

The U.S. has donated about $175 billion in aid. Roughly 100 billion of that was military, most of which was spent in the U.S. on manufacturing American weapons.

Scott Pelley: What would you say that the American people have gotten for that money?

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy (Translated): We have always believed that this is our shared struggle, that Ukraine is defending our shared values, that we are defending Europe as a whole. I can only thank the people of the United States of America for their support, their strong support. But the people dying right now, with all due respect to the U.S. and Europe, the ones dying right now are Ukrainians. This is why I say that by giving us weapons, other countries are protecting their own people.

But in the Trump administration, U.S. aid has all but stopped. Last month the White House announced partial ceasefires, but they haven’t happened. And now, Trump says he is losing patience with Putin.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy (Translated): Putin can’t be trusted. I told that to President Trump many times. So when you ask why the ceasefire isn’t working – this is why. Putin never wanted an end to the war. Putin never wanted us to be independent. Putin wants to destroy us completely – our sovereignty and our people.

Putin’s troops occupy about 20% of Ukraine. The 600-mile front is largely frozen – World War I trench warfare plus drones. It’s estimated that as many as 200,000 Russian troops have been killed.

Scott Pelley: What does a just peace look like to you?

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy (Translated): To not lose our sovereignty or our independence. We, no matter what, will take back what is ours because we never lost it – the Russians took it from us, the temporarily occupied territories. We will not recognize [as Russia] those territories that the Russians temporarily occupy. We will bring them back. When or how, I cannot say. [But] what we can’t bring back are the human [lives]. There’s only one thing that can be done, justice. We cannot let go the issue of justice. Those who killed must pay for the murders.

Zelenskyy told us any true ceasefire must include a guarantee of Ukrainian security. He imagines an international peacekeeping force and would like the U.S. to be part of it.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy (Translated): This could mean a [force] protecting airspace and providing air defense, which may consist of airplanes rather than boots on the ground.

Trump in campaign speech: I will end the war in Ukraine immediately I will get it done while I’m president-elect.

During his presidential campaign, Trump boasted he would end the war before Inauguration Day. Instead, today, Palm Sunday, Russian missiles struck the Ukrainian city of Sumy — at least 32 civilians are dead, including another 2 children.

Scott Pelley: In your view, what is at stake in this moment?

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy (Translated): Security. The security of the world is at stake. If we do not stand firm, he will advance further. It is not just idle speculation; the threat is real. Putin’s ultimate goal is to revive the Russian Empire and reclaim territories currently under NATO protection. And the United States being part of NATO means it will be involved in any potential conflict. Considering all of this, I believe it could escalate into a world war.

Scott Pelley: A risk to the world.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy (Translated): Yes, for the world. There won’t be a safe place [not a] safe place for [anyone].

Mark Episkopos: Alexander Vindman’s new book is a folly: of history, and the truth

By Mark Episkopos, Responsible Statecraft, 3/31/25

Alexander Vindman’s recent book, “The Folly of Realism,”throws down the gauntlet, as the name suggests, at the “realists” he thinks were responsible for failing to deter Russia and seize opportunities for defense cooperation with Ukraine.

According to Vindman, the former National Security Council official who testified against President Trump during his impeachment trial in 2019, this “realist” behavior incentivized Moscow’s continued imperialist predations, culminating in the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Vindman’s proposed antidote to what he considers the lapses of the past three decades is Benjamin Tallis’ framework of “neo-idealism,” a lightly repackaged menagerie of post-Cold War transatlanticism’s greatest hits that is bizarrely presented as a novel outlook on the international system.

Fully squaring all the historical misjudgments presented in these 240 pages demands an exegesis of at least as many pages, and not just because there are so many — though one certainly doesn’t find themselves pressed for material — but because Vindman’s central arguments flow from larger, decades-long narratives about Russia and post-Cold War U.S. policy that simply do not stand up to scrutiny.

Nuclear policy emerges as one of the main causal drivers of Vindman’s story. No one can quarrel with the proposition that successive administrations took seriously the cause of nonproliferation in the post-Soviet sphere — they had every reason to — and that nuclear concerns shaped U.S. engagement with the Russian Federation to a significant even if not decisive degree.

But to suggest, as Vindman does, that the thrust of early U.S./NATO policy toward Russia boils down to nuclear concerns is to lapse into a narrowly tendentious reading of events that history doesn’t lend itself to.

Vindman, who interviewed the officials involved in negotiating the 1994 Budapest Memorandum from the U.S. side, was careful not to retread the solecisms so heartily indulged by many of his allies and fellow travelers. He concedes, and not insignificantly so considering how deeply this narrative has entrenched itself in recent years, that the signed memorandum did not contain U.S. security guarantees to Ukraine in exchange for relinquishing its supposed nuclear arsenal.

“There’s no question in my memory and in my mind that the Ukrainians understood completely the difference between security assurances and Article 5 security guarantees. And they understood they were getting security assurances,” Vindman quoted Nicholas Burns, Senior Director for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia Affairs at the National Security Council, as saying.

These assurances, as I explained with my colleague Zach Paikin, did not commit the U.S. to undertake any specific commitments beyond what it agreed to in previous treaties. Indeed, it’s precisely because the memorandum was not legally binding and contained no concrete defense commitments that it did not have to be ratified by the Senate, as all treaties must be.

But this whole “denuclearization” business calls for a greater degree of technical scrutiny than Vindman affords it. Three of the 15 states that emerged from the Soviet collapse — Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Belarus — did not in fact “inherit” thousands of nuclear weapons. These were Soviet nuclear weapons, stationed across the Soviet Union but controlled from Moscow. After the Soviet collapse, these became Soviet nuclear weapons left over on the territories of former Soviet soviet states.

It was never established that Ukraine exercised legal, political, or operational control over these weapons, nor that the nascent Ukrainian state disposed of the considerable resources required to maintain them. Ukraine did not, in this sense, possess a nuclear inheritance that could be bartered away for Western security guarantees or anything else.

What we have before us, then, is not a geostrategic question but a largely operational challenge of removing these weapons, to which Ukraine had no recognized claim, from Ukrainian territory in an orderly way. This rather unremarkable process, though unquestionably a major part of the story of 1990s U.S.-Russia relations, is lent a degree of long-term political significance by Vindman that it simply doesn’t deserve.

So, what, then, is the larger picture and how does it fit into Vindman’s argument that the West’s woes stem from a decades-long policy of, if not appeasing, then at least turning a blind eye to “Russian ambition and exceptionalism?”

One cannot help but escape the sense that Vindman’s story suffers from the plight of Alexander the Great, who wept that he had only one world to conquer. His analysis is strongly tinted by the endless, yet strategically vacuous, expressions of goodwill, optimism about Russia’s Western path, and other such millenarian effusions that characterized U.S.-Russia relations up to the mid-2000’s.

But in the most important ways, U.S. policy has been guided all along by something quite similar to Vindman’s neo-idealism. The Soviet collapse gave Western leaders a generational opportunity to go about the difficult but necessary task of building a new security architecture that includes mechanisms not just to deter Russia, but also to engage it in ways that do not lead to security spirals in Eastern Europe. U.S. policymakers, less driven by balance of power concerns than they were enchanted by the seductive vision of a Europe “whole and free,” brushed aside the concerns of George Kennan, Robert McNamara, and a great many others to greenlight the limitless expansion of NATO, an alliance explicitly arrayed against the Russian Federation’s Soviet predecessor.

It seems to be a source of consternation for Vindman that Ukraine was not invited into NATO in those early days. Vindman’s implication that Ukraine was thus abandoned to Russia’s sphere of influence incorrectly frames the problem at hand. Washington’s fervid devotion to NATO’s “open door” membership policy and dogged refusal to countenance any framework for delimiting NATO’s boundaries shows that the lack of progress in this area was purely tactical in nature and certainly not grounded in systemic realist thinking.

There is also the peccadillo of democratic values, defense of which is supposed to be NATO’s entire raison d’être. In point of fact, polling shows most Ukrainians had no desire to join the alliance until as late as the mid 2010s, when it became impossible due to outstanding territorial conflicts with Russia.

Vindman’s indictment of what he wants the reader to believe passes for “realism” — more on that shortly — hinges on viewing Russia as an innate aggrandizer emboldened by the failure of successive U.S. administrations to deter it.

It all falls apart upon the most basic attempt at a more sophisticated structural analysis — one which would find that Russia’s behavior is consistent not with a grand strategy of conquest for its own sake but with what most realists would identify as balancing behavior in response to the eastward expansion of Western military and security institutions into the post-Soviet sphere, and Russian actions intended to preemptively deny such expansion.

Trudging through this book, with its unique blend of endless encyclopedic tedium heaped on top of the analytical equivalent of a children’s pop-up story, can be best likened to navigating a swamp that’s shallow yet impossibly vast. But this rather unpleasant journey at least gives the reader ample time to meditate on the book’s central conceit.

Vindman unfortunately displays a woefully inadequate grasp of that which he tries to impugn: at no point does he demonstrate anything more than a cursory understanding of realist approaches to the issues he tries to elucidate.

One is left grasping in vain for any evidence that Vindman can pass the simple theoretical Turing Test of explaining any school of realism — let alone to distinguish between them — to the satisfaction of a realist. But Vindman’s underlying thrust is not to meaningfully engage with realist arguments on Ukraine’s post-Soviet transition, 1990’s U.S.-Russia relations, or nuclear proliferation in the former Soviet sphere.

Instead he wants to launder what has largely been an idealist, atlanticist handling of these issues since 1991 by pinning the neoconservatives’ manifold sins and lapses on a haphazard cluster of ideas and approaches clumsily christened by him as “realism.” There was no realism in the strategically shortsighted decision — condemned by many realists at the time — to enable successive waves of NATO expansion and encourage, against genuine U.S. and European security interests, the integration of post-Soviet states into the West’s collective defense umbrella.

The well-established idealist framing of American engagement with competitors as a manichean confrontation between democracy and autocracy is anathema to realism and, indeed, to a healthy understanding of U.S. national security priorities.

But it is true that actual realist ideas are rapidly making their way back into the foreign policy discourse after decades in the wilderness. As is always the case after an exiled intellectual movement rediscovers the levers of power, there will and should be a vigorous debate on what form these ideas will take when filtered through the vicissitudes of American politics and applied to the pressing challenges of our time, including the Russia-Ukraine war and the broader task of building a sustainable architecture of European security.

And whatever missteps are made along the way pale in comparison to a disastrous status quo that can be described by many names. Realism, it is not.

Kremlin reveals content of Putin’s talks with Trump envoy

RT, 4/11/25

The discussions between Russian President Vladimir Putin and White House special envoy Steve Witkoff on Friday involved “aspects of the settlement of the Ukraine conflict,” the Kremlin has announced, declining to provide further details.

Witkoff visited Russia on Friday and met with Putin in St. Petersburg. The meeting lasted over four hours and the content of the talks has been largely kept under wraps by Moscow and Washington.

However, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt addressed the issue during a press briefing earlier in the day when asked by a reporter about the purpose of Witkoff’s visit to Russia.

According to Leavitt, the visit was aimed at facilitating direct US communications with the Kremlin as part of a broader effort to negotiate a ceasefire and eventual peace agreement in the Ukraine conflict.

The Trump administration faced growing internal divisions this week after Witkoff allegedly proposed a ceasefire plan that would recognize Russian control over four eastern regions claimed by both Moscow and Kiev, Reuters reported on Friday citing anonymous sources.

During a White House meeting with President Donald Trump last week, Witkoff argued that recognizing Russian ownership of Lugansk, Donetsk, Zaporozhye, and Kherson was the swiftest path to halting the war, the outlet’s sources said. General Keith Kellogg, Trump’s Ukraine envoy, reportedly pushed back, stressing Ukraine would not accept full territorial concessions.

White House explains purpose of envoy’s Russia visitREAD MORE: White House explains purpose of envoy’s Russia visit

The meeting reportedly concluded without a decision from Trump, who has repeatedly said he wants to broker a ceasefire by May. Witkoff subsequently traveled to Russia on Friday for talks with Putin.

The episode has deepened rifts within the Trump administration, as officials debate how to resolve the Ukraine conflict, Reuters wrote. Witkoff’s approach, previously outlined in a March interview with Tucker Carlson, has reportedly alarmed both Republican lawmakers and US allies.

“They’re Russian-speaking,” Witkoff told Carlson of the eastern territories. “There have been referendums where the overwhelming majority of the people have indicated that they want to be under Russian rule.”

Several Republicans reportedly contacted National Security Adviser Mike Waltz and Secretary of State Marco Rubio to raise concerns about Witkoff’s stance, criticizing him for echoing Russian rhetoric.

A recent dinner with Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev, who until recently was under US sanctions, further stirred controversy. Originally planned at Witkoff’s home, it was moved to the White House after security concerns were raised.

Despite criticism, Witkoff retains strong backing from Trump and some administration officials. Waltz praised his efforts, citing his business background and recent diplomatic activity, including securing the release of US citizen Marc Fogel from Russia.

Brian McDonald: Trump’s decision to dismantle Voice of America and RFERL isn’t some grand Kremlin conspiracy—it’s basic housecleaning

By Brian McDonald, Twitter, 3/17/25

Trump’s decision to dismantle Voice of America and RFERL isn’t some grand Kremlin conspiracy—it’s basic housecleaning. These outlets were supposed to serve U.S. foreign policy interests, but instead, they became ideological echo chambers that alienated their target audiences and undermined Washington’s own strategic objectives..

Look at the website of their parent body, the
@USAGMgov
, and it says that these outlet’s activities must “be consistent with the broad foreign policy objectives of the United States.” But they have not been for some time now.

Once upon a time, American-funded media broadcast messages of freedom, prosperity, and shared values, convincing millions behind the Iron Curtain that the West offered a better future.That was the point—soft power at its most effective. But fast-forward to today, and what do we see?

Instead of fostering goodwill or even basic engagement, these media turned into hyper-woke culture war machines, promoting “decolonization” narratives, gender ideology, and separatist movements that have zero appeal to ordinary Russians. Instead of making a case for the West, they told Russians that their culture was inherently oppressive, that their literary greats were villains, and that their national identity needed to be dismantled.

Rather than persuading Russians that better ties with America were possible, they actively pushed Moscow and Beijing closer together. Imagine the absurdity: U.S. foreign policy has been trying to negotiate with Russia, while its own government-funded broadcasters is telling Russians that their entire history was toxic and needs to be erased. You don’t need to be a foreign policy genius to see how self-defeating that is.

Worse still, these outlets didn’t just lose the plot—they went rogue. They gave platforms to outright separatists and extremists, advocated for the breakup of Russia, and churned out narratives that had nothing to do with America’s interests and everything to do with the obsessions of an unaccountable media class.

A U.S. propaganda machine that once helped win the Cold War ended up hijacked by activists who were more interested in lecturing Russians about transgender rights than in actually advancing U.S. diplomacy.

So why were these outlets axed? Simple. They had completely abandoned their mission. The U.S. government doesn’t need to pay for expensive media networks that do nothing but inflame tensions, sabotage diplomatic efforts, and alienate the very people they were meant to reach.

Trump’s move isn’t a “gift to Putin”—it’s a much-needed correction. I If America wants to regain influence, it needs to stop funding ideological vanity projects that serve no purpose other than making their own staff feel morally superior.

Uriel Araujo: Ukraine’s military crisis: far-right whistleblower exposes leadership failures

By Uriel Araujo, InfoBrics, 4/11/25

Uriel Araujo, PhD, anthropology researcher with a focus on international and ethnic conflicts

Bohdan Krotevych, a notorious former Ukrainian commander and ex-chief of staff of the far-right Azov Brigade, has publicly called for the removal of General Oleksandr Syrskyi, Ukraine’s armed forces commander, accusing him of endangering soldiers’ lives with “borderline criminal” orders and outdated tactics, the Guardian reports.

Krotevych, who resigned in February (allegedly to speak freely), criticized Syrskyi for micromanaging the military and issuing directives that force troops to rest dangerously close to the front lines, such as 50 meters away, rather than in safer rear areas. He argues that Syrskyi’s lack of strategic innovation—relying on throwing more troops into battles or withdrawing them only when overwhelmed—has contributed to Ukraine’s losses in 2024 and 2025, including advances by Russian forces in Donbas and Kursk.

Although Krotevych is known to have in the past also reported General Yuri Sodol to the State Bureau of Investigation for “incompetent command”, the Guardian article highlights in fact a quite rare public and rather scandalous dissent from within Ukraine’s military ranks, shifting some blame for recent battlefield setbacks from external factors—like Russia’s numerical superiority—to internal leadership failures. Krotevych’s outspokenness underscores broader frustrations with Syrskyi, who has been criticized for his tactics since taking command in February 2024, despite earlier successes like the Kharkiv counteroffensive.

General Syrskyi is a four-star general and the Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces since February 8, 2024. He has played key roles in the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian conflict, commanding the Kharkiv counteroffensive in 2022 as well as the Bakhmut one in 2023. Known for his strategic acumen, he has been both praised in Ukraine for battlefield successes and criticized for high-casualty tactics, earning nicknames like “General 200.”

Bohdan Krotevych, the whistleblower, in turn is a infamous figure in Ukraine’s military landscape, recognized for his role as a former commander and chief of staff of the Azov Brigade, a unit within the National Guard of Ukraine. Krotevych joined Azov in 2014 following Crimea’s status referendum and annexation to Russia.

The Azov Brigade itself, originally formed as a volunteer battalion in 2014, has been widely controversial due to its ties to far-right and neo-Nazi elements. Founded by neo-Nazi Andriy Biletsky, a figure with a documented history in ultra-nationalist and white supremacist circles, the unit has attracted individuals with extremist views from the very start.

Western media and analysts, including pre-2022 reports from CNN, Time etc, have noted and reported Azov’s neo-Nazi affiliations, though its integration into Ukraine’s National Guard and its role in fighting Russia have apparently shifted its public image (in the West at least) toward that of just a disciplined military force. Although the frequent appearance of Nazi swastikas and other such symbols on the uniforms of Azov’s soldiers (sometimes caught on live TV) remains an embarrassment.

Krotevych’s own far-right connections have been scrutinized. Critics point to his recommendation of a memoir by Albert Kesselring, a Nazi war criminal, to Azov recruits. He also took part in the 2014 Maidan coup as a member of the Right Sector—a radical nationalist group with far-right ultra-nationalist roots.

When accused of having political ambitions, Krotevych has been explicitly distancing himself from any alignment with Ukraine’s ambassador to the UK, Valerii Zaluzhnyi. Four-star General Zaluzhnyi, by the way, is General Oleksandr Syrskyi’s predecessor, viewed as a possible future contender for the presidency of Ukraine.

Zaluzhnyi, too, has been under scrutiny for far-right connections. He was photographed in front of a portrait of Stepan Bandera, the controversial Ukrainian nationalist figure, in a post shared by Ukraine’s parliament on X in January 2023 to mark Bandera’s birthday. The image sparked significant controversy, particularly in Poland, due to Bandera’s historical ties to ultra-nationalist groups and Nazi collaboration during World War II, involving the ethnic cleansing of Poles and Jews, as documented by historians such as Timothy Snyder. This remains a major issue with Polish-Ukrainian relations, as I’ve written. All of that is business as usual in post-2014 Ukraine.

It is true Krotevych’s resignation and outspokenness could suggest personal bias or a settling of scores (or political goals). His claims however do make sense. They resonate with some soldiers and analysts who have long criticized General Syrskyi’s “Soviet-style” approach, earning him monikers like “the Butcher” among detractors for high casualty rates, notably during the battle of Bakhmut in 2023.

As a former Azov Brigade commander with frontline experience, Krotevych has firsthand knowledge of combat operations and leadership dynamics, which should lend some weight to his operational critiques. Moreover, his specific examples, like the proximity of rest zones to combat lines, are plausible given documented reports of Ukraine’s strained resources and Syrskyi’s emphasis on holding ground at all costs. It was seen in Bakhmut, where Ukraine suffered heavy losses before withdrawing.

Independent analyses, such as those from military observers in Western media, have similarly noted Syrskyi’s preference for grinding, manpower-intensive tactics over maneuver warfare, which aligns with Krotevych’s charge of strategic stagnation.

Far-right extremism and corruption aside, the fact is that, despite billions in aid, Ukraine’s armed forces grapple with deep-rooted issues, from resource strains to criticized leadership tactics. And Washington has, as I wrote, even in September 2024, largely shifted this burden to Europe, and European leaders barely seem willing to shoulder it.

At this rate, the West’s proxy war in Ukraine against Moscow risks becoming Europe’s “Vietnam”—a prolonged, costly quagmire.

Alan McLeod: The Hate Group Helping Trump Deport Israel’s Critics

By Alan McLeod, Mintpress News, 3/25/25

A far-right, pro-Israel group with a history of support for terror and genocide is working closely with the Trump administration, preparing dossiers on thousands of pro-Palestine figures it wants deported from the United States.

Betar U.S. is known to have had several meetings with senior government officials and has claimed credit for the arrest and detention of Mahmoud Khalil, a leader of the nationwide anti-genocide student demonstrations that began at Columbia University last year.

Ross Glick, the group’s executive director until last month, noted that he met with a diverse set of influential lawmakers, including Democratic Sen. John Fetterman and aides to Republican Senators Ted Cruz and James Lankford, and that all supported Betar U.S.’ campaign to rid the country of thousands of “terror supporters.”

Shortly after Glick’s trip to Washington, D.C., Trump signed an executive order titled “Additional Measures to Combat Anti-Semitism” that promises “the removal of resident aliens who violate our laws,” to “quell pro-Hamas vandalism and intimidation” and to “investigate and punish anti-Jewish racism in leftist, anti-American colleges and universities.”

Trump himself announced that Khalil’s arrest, which made worldwide headlines, was “the first of many to come.”

“We know there are more students at Columbia and other Universities across the country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity, and the Trump administration will not tolerate it,” he wrote on Truth Social.

The 45th and 47th president has also stated that he plans to deport “Communists” and “Marxists” from the United States, even those who are citizens. As such, this marks an escalation in government-backed suppression of dissent not seen since the McCarthyist era of the 1940s and 1950s.

Carrying Out Terror, Supporting Genocide

Glick in 2012. (Iryna Kremin/Flickr/CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Betar U.S. describes itself as a “loud, proud, aggressive and unapologetically Zionist” movement “dedicated to defending Israel’s legitimacy and strengthening the Jewish connection to the land of Israel.” This includes “taking action where others won’t” — a rather ominous phrase, considering the aggressive activities of the Jewish organizations it derides as “passive” and weak.

Last week, the group appeared to openly attempt to organize an assassination attempt on Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories. “Join us to give Francesca a [pager emoji] in London on Tuesday,” it posted online, an apparent reference to the September pager attack on  Lebanon carried out by the Israeli military.

The incident killed dozens of people and injured thousands more civilians, and was widely condemned — even by former C.I.A. Director Leon Panetta — as an act of international terrorism.

Last month, Betar U.S. made a similar threat against Jewish-American writer Peter Beinart. After The New York Times published his article criticizing the State of Israel, Betar put out a statement reading, “We urge all Jews on the Upper West Side to give Peter Beinart a [three pager emojis]. He is a traitor, a kapo, and we must oppose him.” Thus, Betar not only smeared him as a Nazi collaborator (Kapo) and called for his assassination but also appeared to reveal Beinart’s home location.

[Related: Abandoning the Role of Conqueror]

A similar incident involved political scientist Norman Finkelstein. In an effort to intimidate him into silence, a Betar member slipped a pager into his coat pocket, filming the incident. After Finkelstein refused to stop speaking out against injustice in the Middle East, last weekend, the group attempted to break up his public event in Washington, D.C.

Perhaps most outrageously, Betar has also publicly placed a bounty on the head of Palestinian-American activist Nerdeen Kiswani, telling her that, “You hate America, you hate Jews, and we are here and won’t be silent. $1,800 to anyone who hands that jihadi a beeper,” and later repeating the offer.

After worldwide pushback, the organization has deleted its posts calling for political killings of international officials and U.S. citizens.

In addition, Betar has regularly attempted to intimidate or shut down movements or gatherings protesting Israeli crimes. At a student event at UCLA, Betar publicly stated, “We demand police remove these thugs now and if not we will be forced to organize groups of Jews to do so.”

In January, it tried to break up a New York City vigil for Hind Rajab, a 5-year-old Palestinian girl brutally murdered by Israeli forces. Betar members filmed the event, telling attendees they were with Immigration, Customs and Enforcement (ICE) and using facial recognition technology to obtain their identities, which would subsequently be used to deport them.

In recent weeks, Betar members have also chanted hate speech outside a Bangladeshi mosque in New York City and attacked people who protested the illegal sale of Occupied West Bank land at an auction in Brooklyn.

That Betar is a hate group is barely in question. Even notoriously pro-Israel groups such as the Anti-Defamation League (an organization the F.B.I. once noted was almost certainly being bankrolled by the Israeli government) have included it in its list of extremist hate organizations.

The ADL notes that Betar uses the fascist Kahanist slogan, “For every Jew, a .22” (meaning Jews should be armed with .22 rifles) and has indicated it wishes to work with the Proud Boys, a far-right American gang.

Betar frequently revels in violence against civilian populations and calls for genocide against Palestinians.

“Fuck your ceasefire!!  Turn Gaza to rubble!!” they announced last month. “Betar firmly supports the plan to remove Palestinians from Gaza,” they added. In response to a post detailing the vast numbers of Palestinian babies killed since Oct.7, 2023, it replied, “Not enough. We demand blood in Gaza!”

A Fascist Paramilitary – But Jewish

Zeev Jabotinsky, bottom right, circa 1939, meeting with Betar leaders in Warsaw. Bottom left Menachem Begin. (Wikimedia Commons/Public domain)

Betar traces its origins back over 100 years. The group was founded by early Zionist leader Ze’ev Jabotinsky as a far-right paramilitary force, one that explicitly stood against the leftist Jewish groups who dominated at a time when “Jewish” and “socialist” were seen by many as virtually synonymous.

Jabotinsky believed that establishing a state in Palestine would require the creation of what he called a “new Jew,” one that would be willing to fight and die for Zionism. To this end, Betar was established as a fighting organization and received generous funding from conservative benefactors.

Jabotinsky instructed members to swear an oath to the unborn Israel: “I devote my life to the rebirth of the Jewish State, with a Jewish majority, on both sides of the Jordan.” The creation of such a state, therefore, would require the mass extermination or expulsion of the region’s native inhabitants.

Betar’s formal name was Brit Yosef Trumpeldor, named after a Jewish settler who was killed in 1920 in an early firefight with Palestinians over disputed land. It was exactly men like Trumpeldor who Jabotinsky believed were necessary in order to win, in contrast to the majority of European Jews, who he saw as passive and weak.

Europe in the 1920s was a time of rising anti-semitism, and despite their inherent anti-Jewish nature, many conservative Jews admired the discipline and organization of fascist paramilitaries such as Hitler’s Brownshirts. Betar was modeled on these groups, with Jabotinsky believing the Zionist project’s success was dependent on the establishment of such organizations. 

[See: ‘Brown Shirts in Zion’ by Robert Gessner from New Masses, 1935]

The Sturmabteilung, or SA unit, also known as Brown Shirts, in Nuremberg, Germany, in 1929. (Bundesarchiv/ Wikimedia Commons/ CC BY-SA 3.0 de)

Because of their anti-communist, anti-worker outlook, conservative money flooded into Betar, helping it become one of the largest and most influential Jewish organizations by the 1930s, with membership rising to around 70,000 people.

Betar leaders would go on to become key figures in Israeli politics. These included Prime Ministers Menachem Begin and Yitzchak Shamir, as well as Benzion Netanyahu, the father of current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

While this depiction of Betar as a fascist terrorist group might sound biased or one-sided, much of this information comes directly from the organization itself.

On its official website’s “Our History” section, Betar writes (emphasis added):

“Betar thus became an incubator for the development of right-wing Zionist ideas and its supporters were sometimes referred to as ‘Jewish Fascists.’ In Palestine, Betar members facilitated illegal Jewish immigration and were active instigators of disturbances and violence, frequently bombing Arab civilian areas in response to attacks and waging guerilla [sic] warfare against the British.”

Thus, the organization does not shy away from the fascism label, and it proudly notes that it “frequently” carried out terror operations against Arab civilians in Palestine. (At some point in the past week, after it began receiving increased scrutiny for its connections to the Trump administration, Betar has removed both the “fascist” moniker and the boast about bombing Arabs, but the original page can still be viewed via the Internet Archive.

Since Oct. 7, 2023, Betar has greatly upped its presence in the United States, thanks to far-right Israeli-American businessman Ronn Torossian and Executive Director Ross Glick.

In July 2024, it successfully applied for tax-exempt nonprofit status, meaning it is classified by the government as a charity.

“Since our revival in 2024, Betar has made a powerful impact across the U.S. and is just getting started. We are recruiting, developing, and empowering Jews to become unapologetic Zionist leaders — defending Israel on campuses, in communities, and across all platforms,” Betar writes. Yet an investigation by The Electronic Intifada suggests that Betar might have been illegally fundraising.

The same report notes that Glick has faced serious allegations of sex crimes. In 2019, his former girlfriend found nude images of herself posted on her company’s official Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter pages. Glick was arrested and charged with unlawful use of a computer and unlawfully posting the lewd pictures. He pleaded guilty to second-degree harassment, a violation, and paid a fine.

Commentators across the political spectrum agree that the Trump administration is pushing the United States in a rightward direction, in the process running roughshod over constitutional protections and guarantees. In doing so, they have found allies in many controversial groups. That such a small and new movement like Betar U.S. already enjoys such influence within the White House has already raised eyebrows. And given Israel’s determination to continue its genocidal campaigns against its neighbors —and Trump’s limitless support for its ally — it appears likely that Betar’s will grow under the current administration.

If this is the case, that is bad news for those who value the right to speak freely and to protest. It is therefore crucial that this group be understood and scrutinized rather than be allowed to operate in the shadows behind closed doors.

Alan MacLeod  is senior staff writer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent, as well as a number of academic articles. He has also contributed to FAIR.org, The Guardian, Salon, The Grayzone, Jacobin Magazine, and Common Dreams.

This article is from MPN.news, an award winning investigative newsroom.  Sign up for their newsletter.

Why Can’t We Talk to Each Other Anymore?

I could really relate to some points made by the author below about talking to people that we may not agree with politically and that approaching someone with curiosity and empathy goes a long way.

It’s always been odd to me that people would cancel or disown a family member or good friend because they don’t agree with some or all of their politics. One side of my family was Democrat and one side was Republican. Both of my parents were independents. I was exposed to many opinions that I didn’t agree with – sometimes quite passionately – and I wasn’t afraid to debate the merits of an issue with a friend or family member I disagreed with. That didn’t mean we walked away no longer loving each other or dismissing the relationship. In fact, I’m pretty close to this day to two relatives that I debated quite vociferously with in my younger years. We still have political disagreements.

I don’t drive and have used Uber/Lyft extensively for years, so I’ve had may interesting conversations with a cross-section of people who are Uber or Lyft drivers. It’s not unusual for politics to get brought up somehow. Sometimes I can figure at the beginning of such a conversation that I’m probably not going to agree with the person on much. In such cases, I have put on my journalist hat and approached the person with curiosity rather than judgment or a need to win some point. In those cases, I have often had very insightful conversations. I’ve found that when you approach someone you disagree with with curiosity you will often discover that the person actually has more nuanced views than you are assuming or that their reason for holding those views is not what you may think.

Similarly, I’ve taken two different approaches at jobs over the years about how much I discuss my political views or even mention my side gig as a writer since I write about a topic that is considered controversial. At some jobs I have not really talked about it. And at other jobs I decided to go ahead and be fairly open – after I’ve worked there for a little while and people have come to view me as a person rather than a political view. My experience has been that people respect and gravitate toward me more when I’m open about myself. That was an eye opener for me.

What has been your experience with friends, relatives and coworkers that you politically disagree with? Do you keep mum about it? If so, how has that worked out? – Natylie

By Dr. Jordan Grumet, Psychology Today, 3/20/25

America is more politically divided than ever. It seems like every conversation, every interaction, and every social media post is another battle in a never-ending war of ideological difference. We live in an era when political identity has become paramount, defining friendships, communities, and even family relationships. But what if I told you that the key to healing these divisions isn’t more debate, more news consumption, or more attempts at persuasion? What if the solution to our political woes is purpose?

In the past, I’ve defined the difference between big-P Purpose and little-p purpose. Big-P Purpose is goal-oriented: It’s about the large-scale ambitions we set for ourselves, the missions we dedicate our lives to. Little-p purpose, on the other hand, is process-oriented. It’s about the daily activities that light us up, that engage us so deeply that we lose track of time. It’s in these moments, when we’re truly absorbed in something we love, that we feel most alive. But purpose doesn’t just bring personal fulfillment; it connects us to others. And that connection is the key to repairing the fractures in our society.

When we engage in activities that bring us joy, we naturally seek out others who share our enthusiasm. These communities of internal purpose are different from traditional identity-based communities. They’re not based on external factors like race, geography, or political affiliation. Instead, they form around shared passions: hobbies, creative pursuits, professions, or intellectual interests. These communities become spaces where people from vastly different backgrounds and belief systems come together, united by a common love for what they do.

And when that happens, something remarkable occurs.

The Power of Connection Over Division

Let me share a personal story:

I’ve always been deeply interested in personal finance. It’s something that excites me, that makes me feel engaged and fulfilled. Because of this, I’ve joined various communities of personal-finance writers, podcasters, and bloggers. A few months ago, I attended a conference where I reconnected with many friends from these circles. One evening, I found myself sitting across from a close colleague, someone I deeply respect and admire.

As the conversation drifted, we began discussing the upcoming presidential election. It didn’t take long to realize that we held completely opposite political views.

Now, if this had been an interaction with a stranger on social media—someone whose political stance I disagreed with—I probably would have dismissed them outright. Maybe we would have argued for a few minutes before walking away, both feeling more entrenched in our own beliefs. But, because this was someone I already shared a strong bond with—someone I had worked with, laughed with, and learned from—I listened.

Instead of shutting the conversation down, I leaned in. I asked questions I might never have asked a stranger. I was genuinely curious about his perspective, about why he held the beliefs he did. And because he respected me as well, he did the same. What followed was one of the most illuminating political discussions I’ve ever had.

I walked away from that conversation with a deeper understanding of an opposing viewpoint—one I had previously dismissed. It didn’t change my mind, but I did develop a greater appreciation for the complexities of the issues at hand. More importantly, I realized how rare and valuable that experience was in today’s world.

Why We’re Failing at Political Discourse

Our political climate today isn’t just divided; it’s toxic. And one of the biggest reasons for this is that we don’t see each other as part of the same community. Instead, we see political opponents as the other.

When we encounter people who disagree with us, we don’t approach them with curiosity. We approach them with suspicion or even hostility. We assume their beliefs come from ignorance, bad intentions, or some deep moral failing. And because of that, we don’t talk with each other. We talk past each other.

The result? We retreat further into our ideological bubbles, reinforcing our own views while demonizing those on the other side. We become more convinced that we are right and they are wrong, and any hope of productive dialogue disappears.

But what if, instead of engaging with others purely on the basis of politics, we first connected through something deeper—something that excites and inspires us?

How Purpose Can Heal Political Divides

When we build relationships based on shared purpose rather than shared ideology, something powerful happens. We begin to see each other as human beings first, rather than political labels. We form bonds that make us more willing to listen, to engage in meaningful discussions, and to challenge our own assumptions.

This doesn’t just apply to personal relationships; it applies to society as a whole.

Imagine if, instead of being divided into rigid political factions, more people were deeply involved in communities centered around little-p purpose. Imagine if more of us regularly engaged in activities that brought us joy and fulfillment and, in doing so, connected with people from all walks of life. These communities would provide a space where difficult conversations could happen organically—not through forced debates or confrontational arguments but through the kind of trust and mutual respect that only comes from genuine human connection.

This is how we bridge divides. Not by arguing louder. Not by consuming more news. Not by reinforcing our own echo chambers. But by building relationships around something bigger than politics.

The Path Forward

If we truly want to fix America’s political dysfunction, we don’t need more pundits, think pieces, or televised debates. We need stronger communities. We need places where people can come together—not just to discuss political issues, but to share passions, collaborate, and create together.

The best way to get there? Pursue your own little-p purpose. Find the activities that light you up, that make you come alive. Seek out others who share those interests and build relationships within those spaces. Because when we do that, we create the conditions for the kinds of conversations that can actually change minds—not through shouting matches, but through trust, respect, and human connection.

Purpose isn’t just the key to personal fulfillment. It’s the key to healing our political divides. And in a world that feels more fractured than ever, that may be the most important thing we can do.

Russia Matters: Putin Hosts Wiktoff to Discuss Ukraine, While US, RF Make Progress on Diplomatic Missions

Russia Matters, 4/11/25

Vladimir Putin hosted Steve Witkoff to discuss Ukraine and, possibly, Iran, but so far details of the meeting, which was not announced in advance and which was not followed by any media opportunities, have been scarce in the public domain. Putin hosted Wiktoff in St. Petersburg on April 11 in what became their third meeting to explore ways Russia and the U.S. could move toward putting an end to the Russian-Ukrainian war as well as, possibly, the Iran issue, but as of 4:00 p.m. (UTC−05:00), no details were reported on either what exactly the two discussed or whether and what the outcomes of the four-hour meeting may have produced. Prior to the meeting, Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov cautioned reporters that it was unlikely to produce “decisive results.”1 At the beginning of the meeting, Peskov said “the negotiation process itself is a closed process,” making clear that the sides were not going to reveal details to the public. Indeed, after the meeting was over, neither Putin nor Wiktoff made any public comments, with Trump’s envoy leaving the venue. Commenting on the contents of the talks after the meeting was over, Peskov only said that the talks focused on “aspects of a peaceful settlement in Ukraine.” According to pro-Kremlin Russian political expert Sergei Markov, however, Putin and Wiktoff also discussed Iran’s nuclear program, which is something that Witkoff is to discuss during the next leg of his trip on April 12 in Oman. Unlike Putin’s previous two meetings with Witkoff in Moscow,2 Russian TV showed the beginning of the meeting, which took place in the Boris Yeltsin presidential library. The footage featured Putin and Wiktoff approaching each other in one of the library’s halls, smiling and shaking hands, with Wiktoff also placing his right hands on his heart. Prior to the meeting with Putin, in which Putin’s foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov and his foreign investment envoy Kiril Dmitriev also participated,3 Witkoff held a separate meeting on April 11 with Dmitriev. The two have earlier met for talks in Saudi Arabia and then in the U.S.4 After the April 4 talks in Washington, Dmitriev was asked to take a message back to Putin that the U.S. “needs to know whether you’re serious about peace,” according to Marco Rubio as Trump grew impatient with Putin over the lack of momentum on negotiations toward a ceasefire.5 In his latest comments on the need to end the war, Trump wrote on TruthSocial on April 11: “Russia has to get moving.”U.S. and Russian delegations led by Russia’s new ambassador to the United States, Alexander Darchiyev and U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Russia and Central Europe Sonata Coulter, respectively, claimed progress after meeting in Istanbul on April 10 for a second round of talks aimed at normalizing the operations of their diplomatic missions. At the meeting the U.S. delegation reiterated concerns about the current Russian policy prohibiting the U.S. Embassy in Moscow from employing local staff. In his turn, Darchiyev stated that the United States and Russia discussed and agreed to measures to facilitate the movement of diplomats and accelerate the granting of diplomatic visas, according to ISW. He also stated that the Russian delegation prioritized discussions about the return of confiscated Russian diplomatic property. While the talks were supposed to be focused on diplomatic missions only, the Russian delegation was also to ask the U.S. to lift sanctions against its flagship airline Aeroflot to resume direct flights with America, according to Reuters.Russia gained 113 square miles of Ukraine’s territory (about 1 Nantucket island) in the past month, though its overall pace of advance declined this week, according to the April 9, 2025, issue of the Russia-Ukraine War Report Card. Last week’s gain of 47 square miles (March 25–April 1) was followed April 2–8 by a gain of only 29 square miles, according to the card. This week, Ukraine again continued its fighting withdrawal from Kursk, giving up control of only a single square mile of territory there. At the same time, both Ukrainian and Russian sources confirmed that Ukrainian forces were operating in the neighboring Belgorod region of Russia this week, according to the card. The deceleration of the Russian army’s pace of weekly gains in Ukraine contrasts with Putin’s  recent claim  that the Russian armed forces are “set to finish them [Ukrainian forces] off.” Putin made this claim even though, as RM staff  estimated  in a recent news digest, it would take the Russian forces 15 years or more at their  recent rate  just to capture the entire regions of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, if the Russian forces were to focus only on these four regions. The gap between Putin’s claim and actual progress on the battlefield may have several causes. One may be that Russia was consolidating its forces in  preparation for a major renewed offensive . Another, which may have been overlooked, is Putin’s desire to repeat his success in misleading Trump6 on the situation on key parts of the Russian-Ukrainian frontline. If key members of the Trump team take Putin’s most recent claims of imminent victory as fact, that would logically change the administration’s bargaining position in ceasefire or peace negotiations, and it would represent a smart, cheap, low-risk strategy to gain more from a favorable shift in the U.S. position through disinformation than through military achievements on the battlefield.*Bridget Brink, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, is stepping down following increasing policy disagreements with Donald Trump’s administration, people familiar with her decision told FT. Her departure also comes amid a deterioration in her working relationship with Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the people said. Ukrainian officials said they saw Brink as being too critical of them, particularly of the country’s efforts to root out entrenched corruption, according to FT.The price for Brent fell to a four-year low of below $60 a barrel this week after China and the U.S. escalated their tariff war7 and the OPEC+ group pledged to boost output next month, according to  Bloomberg.  However, the plunge won’t be a game changer for Russia’s ability to finance its war machine as rising revenue from non-energy sectors and rainy-day reserves help offset losses, this news agency estimated. While Russia’s National Wealth Fund has slimmed down since the start of the invasion, it’s still sufficient to make up any shortfall in oil revenue for the next 18–24 months should Russia’s crude cost around $50 a barrel, according to estimates by Bloomberg Economics.The share price of JPMorgan’s EMEA Securities Trust, formerly JPMorgan Russian Securities, trades at five times its net asset value (NAV), having nearly tripled in the last six months, according to investment writer Max King’s estimate published by British weekly investment magazine MoneyWeek.

The Ukrainians failed to confront ultranationalists to secure peace in the Donbas

By Ian Proud, Substack, 3/19/25

In a recent interview, Boris Johnson admitted that the Minsk 2 agreement fell apart because ‘the Ukrainian nationalists couldn’t accept the compromise’ that President Zelensky wanted to agree with President Putin. It also failed because sanctions policy against Russia both disincentivized Ukrainian compliance, and actively incentivised Ukrainian non-compliance.

Claiming that Russia reneged on the Minsk Agreements has been a standard attack line from the west in the past, including from Johnson. Johnson has simply revealed what many already knew, that it was also wilfully inaccurate.

A lot of people talk about the so-called Minsk Agreements, but few understand the background. They refer collectively to three sets of peace proposals between June 2014 and February 2015, which culminated in the signature of the second Minsk agreement, commonly known as Minsk 2. They had several aims, including to end the fighting in the Donbas, the limitation on the use of heavy weapons by both sides and to seal Ukraine’s border. Critically, all three proposals sought to maintain the territorial integrity of Ukraine by offering some form of devolution or special status to the separatist oblasts of Luhansk and Donetsk.

It’s important to state up front that the basis for the Minsk agreements was initiated by the Ukrainian side. After violence in the Donbas erupted in February 2014 following the deposal of former President Yanukovych, the separatist leaders in Luhansk and Donetsk orchestrated referenda on 11 May, which ruled in favour of self-rule.

These referenda voted in favour of separation from Kyiv but were roundly criticised as illegitimate. The Ukrainian armed forces went on the offensive in a so-called Anti-Terror Operation. However, on 21 June, President Petro Poroshenko advanced a peace plan that included creation of a military buffer zone on either side of the line of contact, the restoration of public services in Donetsk and Luhansk, an amnesty for separatists who had taken up arms.

Critically, the Ukrainian government advanced the notion that the two oblasts comprising the Donbas would be offered some form of special status. In addition to some form of self-rule, special status would also have afforded protection of the use of the Russian language. Special status would have kept Donetsk and Luhansk within the Ukrainian state.

This offer was welcomed by the Russian side and every indication at that time was that Russia’s primary goal was the protection of the Russian speaking population in Ukraine, with no desire to incorporate the Donbas given the huge cost.

By the start of July, the OSCE monitoring mission was reporting on an intensified Ukrainian military operation against the separatists. 5 July is the first time the OSCE reports on the deaths of civilians caused by the military operations, including the death of a five year old girl. By 6 July, Ukrainian forces have recaptured the towns of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk. They approach Donetsk city and a fierce battle erupts around the airport which is destroyed. Fighting then breaks out on the outskirts of Luhansk city.

By mid-July heavy military equipment is being moved into the Donbas from Russia, to resupply the separatists. On 17 July amid heavy fighting, flight MH17 is downed with the deaths of all 298 persons on board.

Throughout this period, the Ukrainian military operation continues with barely any let up in intensity. Doctors in Luhansk report 250 deaths and 850 injuries, including civilians during June and July 2014. The OSCE mission moves out of Luhansk on 21 July because of heavy Ukrainian shelling of the city. Severodonetsk falls to the Ukrainian military advance on 22 July. On 29 July, Ukrainian troops at a checkpoint fire warning shots at an OSCE vehicle in Luhansk.

That day, Poroshenko announces a 20km ceasefire to allow access to the MH17 site which has been inaccessible because of ongoing military operations. In early august, Luhansk authorities report that citizens in the affected area are no longer receiving Ukrainian state salaries and pensions. Ukraine is now using military aircraft for strikes on targets in urban areas destroying electricity supply in Luhansk. On 10 August the head of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic proposes a ceasefire to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe. Shelling of urban areas continues from the Ukrainian side with reports of deaths and injuries to civilians.

On 16 August OSCE is trying to corroborate reports of Russian military convoys moving into the Donbas. Donetsk’s water supply is affected by Ukrainian shelling and further civilian casualties are reported. Towards late August, human rights abuses by ultra-nationalist Ukrainian Aidar battalion are being reported by the OSCE. Amnesty international later reports that Aidar has committed widespread abuses, including abductions, unlawful detention, ill-treatment, theft, extortion, and possible executions, some of which allegedly amount to war crimes. On 26 Augst there are reports that Ukrainian personnel are abusing members of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church under the Moscow Patriarchy.

By late August, almost daily shelling of urban areas in Luhansk and Donetsk is taking place, basic services are disrupted and access to food is restricted. On 29 August, the Ukrainian army surrounds a town of Ilovaisk, with the order – according to the BBC – to ‘wipe out’ the separatists within. However, what are believed to have been Russian army formations have encircled the Ukrainian troops encircling the town. Up to 400 Ukrainian soldiers are killed in the ensuing firefight as they struggle to escape.

Amidst signs that the Russian army is playing a more direct role in the conflict, the first Minsk agreement is signed on 5 September. It contains similar provisions to Poroshenko’s earlier peace plan, including the decentralisation of power, an amnesty for separatists and an inclusive ‘national dialogue’.

The line of contact between the Ukrainian armed forces and the separatist controlled parts of the Donbas largely stays firm over the coming months. However, there are repeated violations of the ceasefire and casualties on both sides, including civilian casualties in the separatist areas. At the start of 2015, Wagner troops from Russia assist in closing a pocket along the frontline at Debaltseve, a small transport hub, in a bloody battle that lasts for several weeks.

This prompts German Chancellor Angela Merkel and President of France, Francois Hollande to become directly involved in mediation. They meet with Presidents Poroshenko and Putin in Minsk on 14/15 February 2015, leading to the signature of the second Minsk Agreement, which people often refer to as Minsk 2. Two days later, the UN Security Council unanimously endorses the Minsk 2 agreement.

This second Minsk agreement is similar to previous agreements but, at Russian insistence, contains more extensive language on the need for devolution in the Donbass, including through the creation of a new Ukrainian constitution. Clauses 4, 8, 9, 11 and 12 all contain detailed provision about sequencing in devolution and resealing the border between Ukraine and Russia.

From British Embassy contacts with Russian officials, it is clear that there is still no desire on the Russian side to annex the Donbas, and that Minsk II is seen as resolving an essentially Ukrainian domestic problem.

Throughout the seven-year period to the start of war in Ukraine in February 2022, President Putin talks often about the need for the Ukrainian side to meets its obligations on devolution under the Minsk II agreement.

But the Ukrainian government never fulfils its obligations. A law on special status was initially passed in Ukraine on 16 September 2014 after the first Minsk agreement was signed. This passed with a narrow majority of four votes. Promised elections in the Donbas were not held and the laws faced immediate resistance including street protests involving the same nationalist groups liked Svoboda, the right sector and others.

It is quickly clear that there is little political appetite in Ukraine to tackle the increasingly powerful nationalists head on and push forward with special status in the Donbas. The reading of the special status law in the Verkhovna Rada in 2017 causes scuffles to break out and further street protests in Kyiv. When newly elected President Zelensky proposes adoption of a devolution law in 2019 he faced further public protests by nationalist elements in Kyiv and elsewhere. He quickly abandons any attempt to advance the matter. Just three weeks before war breaks out, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba says in a press interview there will never be special status for the Donbas.

However, over the same period, European Union sanctions against Russia had been linked to the complete implementation of the Minsk agreement. Russia was not a party to most of the clauses of the Minsk agreement, which depended on Ukrainian policy in the Donbas. As such, Russia was on the hook for sanctions on the basis of decisions taken in Ukraine, in circumstances that disincentivised Ukrainian action. Clear action to make good on the promise of devolution in Donetsk and Luhansk would have led to widespread domestic political resistance in Ukraine while at the same time offering Russia sanctions relief. That was neither in Poroshenko nor Zelensky’s interest. Their lack of delivery on Minsk was also underwritten by the US and UK governments in particular that stuck to the narrative that Russia bore full responsibility for implementing Minsk. Western governments stay practically silent on the issue of Ukraine’s failure to meet its obligations.

The ‘Russia reneged on Minsk’ narrative remains powerful even today in western mainstream media coverage of the Ukraine war, in the context of efforts by the US to negotiate a peace. Boris Johnson has finally revealed the line to be wilfully inaccurate.

A copy of the Minsk 2 agreement is below. It is worth a read, to understand what exactly the Ukrainian government committed itself to deliver.

A list of measures to fulfil the Minsk Agreement, 15 February 2015

1. Immediate and comprehensive ceasefire in certain areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine and its strict implementation as of 15 February 2015, 12am local time.

2. Withdrawal of all heavy weapons by both sides by equal distances in order to create a security zone of at least 50km wide from each other for the artillery systems of caliber of 100 and more, a security zone of 70km wide for MLRS and 140km wide for MLRS Tornado-S, Uragan, Smerch and Tactical Missile Systems (Tochka, Tochka U): -for the Ukrainian troops: from the de facto line of contact; -for the armed formations from certain areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine: from the line of contact according to the Minsk Memorandum of Sept. 19th, 2014; The withdrawal of the heavy weapons as specified above is to start on day 2 of the ceasefire at the latest and be completed within 14 days. The process shall be facilitated by the OSCE and supported by the Trilateral Contact Group.

3. Ensure effective monitoring and verification of the ceasefire regime and the withdrawal of heavy weapons by the OSCE from day 1 of the withdrawal, using all technical equipment necessary, including satellites, drones, radar equipment, etc.

4. Launch a dialogue, on day 1 of the withdrawal, on modalities of local elections in accordance with Ukrainian legislation and the Law of Ukraine “On interim local self-government order in certain areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions” as well as on the future regime of these areas based on this law. Adopt promptly, by no later than 30 days after the date of signing of this document a Resolution of the Parliament of Ukraine specifying the area enjoying a special regime, under the Law of Ukraine “On interim self-government order in certain areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions”, based on the line of the Minsk Memorandum of September 19, 2014.

5. Ensure pardon and amnesty by enacting the law prohibiting the prosecution and punishment of persons in connection with the events that took place in certain areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine.

6. Ensure release and exchange of all hostages and unlawfully detained persons, based on the principle “all for all”. This process is to be finished on the day 5 after the withdrawal at the latest.

7. Ensure safe access, delivery, storage, and distribution of humanitarian assistance to those in need, on the basis of an international mechanism.

8. Definition of modalities of full resumption of socio-economic ties, including social transfers such as pension payments and other payments (incomes and revenues, timely payments of all utility bills, reinstating taxation within the legal framework of Ukraine). To this end, Ukraine shall reinstate control of the segment of its banking system in the conflict-affected areas and possibly an international mechanism to facilitate such transfers shall be established.

9. Reinstatement of full control of the state border by the government of Ukraine throughout the conflict area, starting on day 1 after the local elections and ending after the comprehensive political settlement (local elections in certain areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions on the basis of the Law of Ukraine and constitutional reform) to be finalized by the end of 2015, provided that paragraph 11 has been implemented in consultation with and upon agreement by representatives of certain areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in the framework of the Trilateral Contact Group.

10. Withdrawal of all foreign armed formations, military equipment, as well as mercenaries from the territory of Ukraine under monitoring of the OSCE. Disarmament of all illegal groups.

11. Carrying out constitutional reform in Ukraine with a new constitution entering into force by the end of 2015 providing for decentralization as a key element (including a reference to the specificities of certain areas in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, agreed with the representatives of these areas), as well as adopting permanent legislation on the special status of certain areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in line with measures as set out in the footnote until the end of 2015.

12. Based on the Law of Ukraine “On interim local self-government order in certain areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions”, questions related to local elections will be discussed and agreed upon with representatives of certain areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in the framework of the Trilateral Contact Group. Elections will be held in accordance with relevant OSCE standards and monitored by OSCE/ODIHR.

13. Intensify the work of the Trilateral Contact Group including through the establishment of working groups on the implementation of relevant aspects of the Minsk agreements. They will reflect the composition of the Trilateral Contact Group.