This 9-minute interview has been extracted from the 4pm (Indian time) news wrap-up. I think several of my answers left the presenter speechless, but that seems to be fine for their producers and I trust the Community will also be pleased by my truculent frankness about what has caused the energy crisis Europe is now experiencing and why there is no solution short of the Parliament’s removing Ursula von der Leyen and her utterly incompetent and ideologically driven team from power.
I am pleased to inform the Community that my efforts to bring advice on changing direction in the Ukraine war to the attention of President Putin have just received an unexpected and quite remarkable boost from Russia’s court philosopher, Alexander Dugin.
On his own dzen.ru page (Russian equivalent of Google), Dugin has just published an article entitled «Любопытный аналитик и интересные наблюдения» (A curious analyst and interesting observations).
The article summarizes my thinking and makes specific reference to what I said last week during interviews with ‘Judging Freedom’ and the Glenn Diesen youtube channel. As I have noted in passing, both of these interviews were reposted on the rutube.ru in Russian voice over within hours of their being posted in the English original on youtube.com. The Diesen interview in particular has done very well in Russia where its 8,000 plus views as of this morning is equal to this little channel’s number of subcribers.
Among other points, Dugin restates my points about how the US attack on Iran has shocked Russia’s foreign policy establishment, how there is no longer any faith in negotiating with Trump, how Putin should change course on the war in Ukraine from ‘gently, gently’ to bombing the Kiev regime to ashes. Dugin has rounded the corners a bit to avoid giving offense to Vladimir Vladimirovich but the salient and, shall we say ‘positive’ recommendations in my interviews are accurately reproduced.
Let us just remember that Alexander Dugin is the father of the pro-Russia, anti-Kiev journalist Darya Dugina who was assassinated in August 2022 by Ukrainian special forces in a bomb attack on her car that more likely was intended to kill her father. She and he have been lionized by the patriotic Russian press and Dugin is therefore untouchable for Putin and his minions. We can be sure that his article on my interviews has reached into the Kremlin and, who knows, may help build pressure for a change of course in Russian conduct of the war which is absolutely essential if Russia is to avoid the fate of Iran.
I am fully aware of the skepticism some of my colleagues have regarding the value of public sources and in particular over what is shown on Russian state television to understand and pronounce upon where Russian politics are headed. Nonetheless, I insist that public sources have with good reason been the stock in trade of American and other foreign intelligence on Russia going back to the origins of the Cold War. Today, when Russian state and private electronic media have become highly diverse and often quite free to pick up and transmit views from the talking classes, they are essential if we are to go beyond the use of unnamed, supposedly well informed Russian insiders that colleagues often allude to and instead have something clearly identified and debatable to talk about among ourselves.
And so, dear reader, I once again make reference to the Evening with Vladimir Solovyov talk show of yesterday in telling you that Putin’s handling of the war is coming under very great pressure from the Moscow elites who pull it to pieces before the audience without naming the Unspeakable One in the Kremlin but leaving no doubt whatsoever whom they are criticizing.
The U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran, the decapitation strike on the Ayatollah and on other top leaders in what Russians call the ‘decision-making centers’ of Iran, makes them all ask what the hell Mr. Putin is now waiting for to do the very same in Ukraine and to put an instant end to the long dragged-out war that is killing and maiming Russian service men every day and putting in question Russia’s deterrence, leading to ever more brazen provocations from the NATO Member States.
These same expert panelists last night asked how it can be that during the negotiations with Witkoff, the Kremlin has allowed the USA to conduct daily spy flights just outside all of its borders from the Far North in the Barents Sea to the Black Sea in the South. The purpose of these flights is perfectly well known: to prepare for a ‘preemptive strike’ on Russia similar to what was done to Iran and possibly using nuclear arms. ‘We should just shoot down these American spy planes’ they said last night with one voice.
The point of these panelists is that the U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran violates all the basic rules of international conduct from the founding documents of the United Nations. There are now no rules and Russia must adapt to this situation and defend itself arms in hand.
Is Mr. Putin deaf? The whole of Russia is hearing these lightly veiled denunciations of his management of defense and so far he has not responded to the American attack on Iran with more than telephone calls to the Gulf States sheikhs, which are given full coverage in the first 15 minutes of Russian state television news, no doubt to the great irritation of viewers.
I use this opportunity to call attention to a remarkable document that the economist and former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Paul Craig Roberts yesterday posted on his website:
Let us recall that Alexander Dugin has long been cited by Western commentators as a close adviser to President Putin. I have cast some doubt in the past on their alleged closeness, but I freely acknowledge that Dugin has been an influential thinker within the Kremlin elites. Here again we see a lightly veiled harsh attack on everything that Putin is doing on defense.
In closing, I have a bit of advice to offer to Russia’s Supreme Military Commander. Sir, your popularity with broad swathes of the Russian public is partly due to your use of pithy and often off-color folk sayings that resonate with simple folk. I return the favor by offering a rude American folk expression: if you cannot take a crap, get off the toilet seat! The moment of truth has arrived.
Zelensky calls for European troops to positioned near the front lines, ready for introduction of a cease fire. This is precisely what former British PM Boris Johnson told reporters in an interview yesterday, and it is the worst possible advice.
The leader of the Russian team, Vladimir Medinsky, said in an interview a day ago that whereas the Russian team has one person to report to, Putin, the Ukrainian team has three people to address, one of whom represents the European Union Member State that wants the war to continue indefinitely.
My best advice to Zelensky is to get out while he can. A power struggle is ongoing among his colleagues, Zaluzhny and Budanov. His future does not look good if he clings to power.
Are Ukrainians looking for regime change? Probably not: they have been brainwashed for the past 12 years. What is needed is a time out, likely a period of military rule, when the population can learn the real state of their armed forces and real state of their economy.
My advice to Chancellor Merz at the close of this interview is that he should tune in to Russian television and he would find that the Russians are ready to wipe Germany off the face of the earth if this hostility continues. It might sober him up.
I enter this news wrap-up at minute 12 with a discussion of Ukraine’s latest announcement on exports of its military supplies, in particular in the Middle East. We move on to an item in the EU’s planned 20th package of sanctions against Russia: interception of Russian tankers at sea. The EU legal team is hard at work trying to justify what is in effect piracy as something acceptable under international law. As I say in this interview, von der Leyen and her minions are doing their best to bring Europe into open war with Russia at a time when the outcome is clear – turning Western Europe into a Gaza-like wasteland.
This morning I wrote about this interview on my Subdtack platform and now it is my pleasure to offer the link to the podcast here on Word Press. I do not mince words in the interview: Ursula von der Leyen and Kaja Kalas are leading the European Union to collapse at best and to destruction under Russian bombs at worst.
To what I say on this interview I can add a piquant further detail: this intended damage to the Hungarian economy is precisely introduced to cause economic harm before the coming general elections in Hungary later this spring. While the Financial Times told us two days ago that the Commission has decided not to say or do anything that would appear to influence the elections against Orban, the cut-off of Druzhba is precisely that.
This is a focused 2 minute discussion of the impact of Ukraine’s cutting delivery of Russian oil to Slovakia and Hungary via the Druzhba pipeline. A work-around is being put together with Croatia, so that the consequences may be less consequential than Kiev may have hoped.
My apologies for the poor sound quality on this podcast.
This early morning interview starting on minute 4.30 focuses on British and American approaches to the Ukraine negotiations, the split in the Ukrainian negotiating delegation over conceding the Donbas to Russia, the British and American positions on Iran, the meaning of joint Russian and Iranian naval exercises going on in the Arabian Gulf and Indian Ocean, and the relative weighting of Russian and Chinese assistance to Tehran.
This afternoon interview begins at minute 3.30 and deals with an evaluation of the results of trilateral Russian-Ukrainian-US negotiations yesterday and today in Geneva, the likelihood of a power struggle now going on in Kiev over abandonment of the Donbas, the ongoing meeting of Cuban Foreign Minister in Moscow and the prospects for Russian assistance to Cuba.
Gilbert Doctorow 