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In our first appearance together on Dialogue Works, Nima Alkhorshid opens the discussion of how Russia is taking its fight to President Donald Trump – the best enemy Russia has ever had in the long US war because he is imperialist in ideology, pathological in mentality, and altogether predictable. (He is also 15 centimetres taller than Adolf Hitler.)
As this phase of the war comes out in the open after months of secret negotiations, President Vladimir Putin is obliged to address the revolutionary moment for the country — a 100-year war with the US, according to former president Dmitry Medvedev; the General Staff consensus for a campaign of acceleration, decapitation, and mobilization; and the efforts of the domestic oligarchs to block nationalization and capital controls, and to preserve their economic dominance and political power.
Source: https://www.youtube.com/
For follow-up and long reads of the Russian and other sources mentioned in the discussion:
- Dmitry Medvedev: December 27, 2024: “…ignore the USA. It’s simple: we don’t expect friendship in the next 100 years, and it’s expensive to fight America – a direct conflict will obviously escalate into a global nuclear war.” January 19, 2025: “If Biden’s problem is his inadequacy, then his Administration’s fault is that it deliberately left a very difficult legacy of crisis to its successors on the Russian track. The malicious bookmarks of Biden’s decisions will remain visible for a very long time. Therefore, it will be extremely difficult to communicate. The full normalization of Russian-American relations will take decades. Although, in my opinion, it is basically impossible in the current realities. And quite frankly, it is unclear whether it is needed at all.”
“In the first week of his second term in the White House, Donald Trump tried to confuse the whole world. But he can’t fool us!” Source: https://t.me/s/medvedev_telegram
- Russian public opinion in the alt-media: Comrade Artyom – “It so happened that for the last 2 days I’ve been talking to new people who are mostly apolitical. I’m shocked by what’s in their heads. Their main message is that Trump will come, restore order, imprison the entire deep state and end the war. Okay, [they are] ordinary people, but our top leadership of the Russian Federation in the main thinks about the same thing.In general, some of the people I talked to absolutely don’t know on what terms Trump will end the war. They are confident that the fighting on the current borders will stop, and this is quite enough for us. Others are confident that Trump will give Russia all of the so-called Ukraine. I’m listening to this and I understand that the citizens of the Russian Federation need a collective psychiatrist.
The West is a bloody rabid dog. They have been climbing over Russia for the entire known history. First, Byzantium imposed its colonial ideology on Russia, then all sorts of crusaders, Polish interventionists, British proxies in the form of Turks and others, the French, the Germans. A little over 100 years ago, a sect of Ukrainians was created with the aim of destroying and completely capturing Russia. Russian Russians are being subjected to a gigantic experiment to turn millions of Russians into Russophobes, whose purpose in life is to kill Russians and destroy Russia. Can you imagine how much the West has invested in this sect? How many institutions have studied the peculiarities of one or another part of the Russian ethnic group in order to find contradictions within one nation, divide it and pit one part against another? Can you imagine how much work has been put into this? Can you imagine the amount of salaries paid to thousands of specialized specialists over the decades? And our citizens who believe in Trump believe that the United States will voluntarily abandon its Bandera sect? Are you guys out of your mind?
The West needs a break. They need to restart their military industry, make changes in tactics and strategy of warfare under the influence of new realities (drones, thermal imagers, etc. — modern types of weapons and intelligence), recruit, train, equip and motivate new cannon fodder, etc. And they will do it systematically, scrupulously, with German pedantry. And what will the Russian Federation do at this time? It will rot just as it did during the 8-year Minsk agreement. Excellent reports will be written to the top (especially knowing that grandpa doesn’t like negative news very much), propagandists will fire regular materials about ‘there are no analogues’, the new Shoigu will climb into the ears of ordinary people about combat robots, etc…
And then the West will strike again. Prepared and strong. And again, it turns out that the propaganda reports are fake, and the army is fucked up. And once again, the ordinary Russian peasant will pay for the wonderful years of paradise and resting on his laurels with his blood. And when sane people say that ‘we warned you’, they will hear the moronic phrase in response: ‘This is Russia. That’s how we’ve always had it, the mentality, it just can’t be otherwise.’ No, comrades, this is not a mentality and not Russia. These are specific people who are not qualified and whose motivation has nothing to do with Russia’s national interests. And these are ordinary people who get bored when you start telling them the truth that runs counter to the information messages of the federal channels. In general, if a truce is signed now, in a couple of years the Russian people will soak themselves in such blood, compared to which today’s losses are scratched knees on children’s feet.” https://t.me/t_artm/4675
- The Russian Foreign Ministry’s roadmap terms for non-aggression and mutual security in Europe, December 17, 2021.
- President Putin’s remarks to Pavel Zarubin. At a special press interview on the evening of January 24, Putin claimed he had had “trust-based” interaction with President Trump and had accepted Trump’s version of his election defeat in 2020. Until now, Putin had repeatedly said he does not interfere in domestic US politics. “My first point is that Russia has never turned down contacts with the US administration, and it is not our fault that the previous administration chose not to establish such contacts. I have always had business-like, strictly business-like, but at the same time pragmatic and trust-based, I would say, relationships with the current President of the United States. I cannot but agree with him that if he had been President, if his victory had not been stolen from him in 2020, then maybe there would not have been the Ukraine crisis that broke out in 2022.”
See analysis at https://johnhelmer.net/
Moscow sources debate what this episode reveals about Kremlin thinking of Trump. According to one source, “I think they have made the mistake of anticipating Trump positively. They’ve placed bets on him. Thankfully, Trump has brought Putin down to earth. I believe he had come to expect a good dialogue and a sympathetic hearing. On the advice of his many advisors and in his own self-confidence, he has read Trump all wrong. He does not understand that US exceptionalism – with or without race hatred — is still incurable and has afflicted the US left and right beyond cure. So he was kind of crestfallen, as if he was a teenager who had just been stood up by his date at the last minute. Still, he is not going to abuse or insult Trump, and he is not going to walk away from talks.”
Another source: “Public television is the last channel of communication they have with the Americans. During the Obama-Biden years the US Embassy has stopped reporting back anything of what Putin, the Kremlin and the General Staff think, believe, say and do. Their job has been to promote regime change and they spent all their energy on Navalny and the like. So Kremlin now believes — rightly so — that the way to talk to Trump for the time being is through his confidants in the media. They understand that Trump listens to the people his voters listen to. When he gets the CIA, State, DOD, and FBI all cleaned up, the proper channels can start working. But that may or not happen. So the only channels left are Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon, Judge Napolitano to some extent – they then feed the message to the Fox anchors and podcasters Trump listens to.
Kremlin has decided that Putin talking to camera is the best way to send messages not to confuse Trump. So a very tightly controlled messaging is being done — Putin is talking to Trump through Trump’s court.”
- Next week’s discussion. Here is Oleg Tsarev, the leading Ukrainian figure for the future, currently based in Crimea, spelling out what he sees coming from Trump for Zelensky and his successors.
Source: https://dzen.ru/a/Z5NruthPIUmcr4jI
Follow Tsarev’s Telegram channel: https://t.me/olegtsarov/22232
Even if Trump doesn’t help Zelensky, Biden has already secured two years of war – my interview
Despite the fact that the Ukrainian Armed Forces are retreating, they have not abandoned the front anywhere; the defence has not crumbled anywhere; and we still have not been able to squeeze them out of the Kursk region. They have money, they have weapons. With UAV [drones] they compensate for the shortage of manpower. The speed of the Russian army’s offensive has increased, but it’s still not enough for the front to crumble.
– Oleg Anatolyevich, even before his inauguration, Donald Trump announced a personnel purge at the State Department. How will this affect the part of the Ukrainian elite that was guided by the Democratic Administration of the United States?
In fact, the Republicans have no ties with Ukraine at all. [By contrast] Soros has consistently expanded his assets. There is the [Ukrainian] oligarch Viktor Pinchuk; there are the piglets; there are such publications as Ukrainian Pravda, Mirror of the Week [Зеркало недели], which are fixed on Soros. The Republicans only had the political strategist Paul Manafort, who at one time worked in the Party of Regions. But a criminal case was opened against him, he was received in the United States, and was pardoned by Trump. There are no such contacts now. There was also former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who pursued a thieving policy in Ukraine. But Pompeo is not on Trump’s team now — he betrayed him — so Pinchuk shouldn’t have courted him and paid him a salary. Therefore, this is a disaster for the Ukrainian elites. They have no ties to Trump and his entourage.
– What are the political prospects of the former commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valery Zaluzhny, who was previously called an alternative to Zelensky?
The [Kiev] president’s office shows in every possible way that Zaluzhny is on their team. When Andrei Yermak flew to the United States [December 4, 2024], he met with J.D. Vance, Trump’s national security adviser Mike Waltz, and the US special envoy for Ukraine, Keith Kellogg. After that, Yermak flew to London ostensibly to meet with Zaluzhny.
I think that the conversation in the US was so devastating for Yermak that he flew to his English supervisors to report and consult. And since I [Yermak] couldn’t get a picture with Vance, I [Yermak] took a picture with Zaluzhny. It is possible that during the last visit of the British Prime Minister to Ukraine, there was an open and closed part of the agreements [they signed]. Zaluzhny is controlled by the British, and as long as Zelensky fulfills his obligations, Zaluzhny will not run. But these are just conversations in Ukrainian politics which I can neither confirm nor deny.
– Will the Trump team push for elections in Ukraine?
That’s why Trump took a break, as he has declared, for six months to figure out what to do with Ukraine. And before leaving, the Democrats pumped Ukraine with weapons and money, so there are not many levers of pressure on Ukraine – these still need to be found. I think they will look for Zelensky’s personal money and try to put pressure on him through that. Zelensky will block their investigation inside Ukraine. But they will try to conduct at least some kind of external audit to discover how the money was stolen. And maybe even impose sanctions. In Ukraine, they also say that Trump may impose sanctions against Zelensky’s entourage if he does not listen.
– According to CNN, Trump instructed his assistants to arrange a telephone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Will this conversation take place?
There is no doubt that negotiations between the entourages of Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump are underway 24/7. But a lot depends on Ukraine, on Zelensky. The conversation between Putin and Trump will be significant. But I would like to see real agreements reached. I’m not sure if everything is ready for such a conversation.
– It is important for Zelensky to keep Pokrovsk until the inauguration of Trump. The same is said about the retention of the bridgehead in the Kursk region. What advantages does Kiev have now?
Pokrovsk is a city the size of Mariupol. There are no other comparable cities except for Mariupol. We haven’t taken it since the beginning of the Special Military Operation, so taking Pokrovsk will be significant; and Kursk is important because Zelensky is looking for a reason to disrupt the negotiations. Vladimir Putin has repeatedly said that while the Ukrainian Armed Forces are in the Kursk region, there can be no talk of any negotiations. Therefore, Zelensky is sending the best troops there and hanging on to a foothold so that there are no negotiations. It would be strange to freeze the border with Ukraine along the front line when it runs through the Kursk region. Or the procedure will be more complicated in the form of exchanging territories, and this is not always easy to negotiate.
– How will events at the front develop in the coming months? At the end of the year, some experts spoke about the collapse of the defence of the VSU [Ukrainian Armed Forces] in the Donbass.
The collapse is still very far away. Despite the fact that the Ukrainian Armed Forces are retreating, they have not abandoned the front anywhere, the defence has not crumbled anywhere, and we still have not been able to squeeze them out of the Kursk region. They have money, they have guns. Yes, they have fewer people, worse motivation, but they have more drones. With them they compensate for the shortage of manpower. The speed of the Russian army’s offensive has increased, but still not enough for the front to crumble. In order to win against Ukraine, it is necessary to defeat their troops somewhere. We haven’t even been able to encircle any major groups. They always escape.
– What will help the Russian Armed Forces conduct larger operations?
It is necessary to multiply the number of drones. Preferably on optical fiber, so that they are not covered by electronic warfare stations.
– Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon said Ukraine could become Trump’s second Vietnam. As an example, he cited the American President Richard Nixon, who inherited the Vietnam War from his predecessor. Do you agree with this assessment?
In Vietnam, the Americans died, and it is the Ukrainians who are dying in Ukraine. Therefore, the loss in Ukraine will be extremely unpleasant for Trump, but not fatal. So when it became clear that Trump had won the election, Biden shipped weapons to Ukraine, and the United States and other countries allocated $20 billion to Kiev. The money was transferred to them for two years of the war. Even if the United States does not continue to help.