On March 18th, Trump and Putin agreed on a deal in which Ukraine and Russia will have a 30-day ceasefire on attacks against each other’s energy infrastructure. The following superb discussion about it by three objective experts on geostrategy — Ray McGovern and Larry Johnson, retired from the CIA, and Glenn Diesen, of the University of South-Eastern Norway — follows here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuPBW641P4U
Much of the opening part deals with Russian troops having surrounded the around ten thousand troops of Ukraine and its mercenaries, in a “cauldron” inside Russia’s province of Kursk, and Trump urging Putin not to simply eliminate (kill) them all and end the Ukrainian invasion and occupation of the Kursk region of Russia — for Putin to instead allow them to live.
At 10:31, the interviewer, Danny Haiphong, asked Diesen,
10:31
Glenn, I want to bring you in here, because, uh, what do you think of
10:38
what Ray [McGovern] said, I mean Kursk, uh, it’s an [military] occupation, it’s an invasion from Ukraine,
10:45
and Russia is on the precipice of completely retaking it, so what do you make of the calculations here and
10:51
perhaps the bigger geopolitical context from which this dire plea from Trump
10:57
falls? DIESEN: Well I I think, on one hand, they do realize that the negotiations that,
11:04
well, that Trump, uh, being more understanding of Russia’s situation, that this is something they’ve [Russia has] never seen before [from American Presidents after FDR],
11:10
or at least in for decades, uh, from any Western leaders, that is, recognizing that
11:16
NATO expansion was a concern, was a threat [to Russia] and this is why Russia responded,
11:22
and even pointing out that this is what triggered the war. So, they [Russia] don’t want to waste this, either. And, indeed, my
11:27
impression is that the that Putin and well the Russians, over all, they want this war to get over over
11:34
with, but of course any temporary ceasefire won’t do. This is seen as being simply another Minsk agreement — that is,
11:41
some time to rearm Ukraine, and then uh and then start everything over again. So
11:48
they weren’t going to do this, but uh but it all happens as you said in the context of of uh what is playing out
11:55
in Kursk, and uh it’s it’s worth noting that this limited how much they can bend towards Trump as well. Keep in mind as
12:04
Ray pointed out very correctly, this is was an occupation of of Russia.
12:09
There was a lot of war crimes committed [by Ukrainian troops and mercenaries], this has been going on for many months now.
12:15
The Russians lost a lot of soldiers to liberate its cities. So, again, it’s always
12:20
worthwhile putting yourself in the shoes of the other side, and obviously there’s a lot of resentment
12:27
going on, and uh it’s not as-if this was only a Ukrainian mission. It’s very hard
12:32
to imagine that the Western countries did not know about this [invasion of Russia by Ukraine] in advance. Indeed, I find it very difficult to
12:38
believe that many of NATO countries didn’t support this actively. Indeed, we’ve
12:44
had intelligence chiefs from, yeah, Britain the U.S, they they met, it was back in
12:50
September, when they were celebrating what a great move this was, because they changed the narrative, we had political
12:56
leaders I pointed out before, the most tasteless one is perhaps the Germans, they had I think two generals by now who said
13:03
how wonderful this is, this is a good way of humiliating Putin, this is where the
13:09
Germans last time [in WW2] also had an important battle against the Russians. [revenge now for having lost WW2?] I mean, this
13:14
is really nasty stuff, we’ve been seeing playing out in the media. So, again, put
13:19
yourself in the shoes of of the Russians, uh they see this occupation with war
13:25
crimes which has been done with Western support, so what what what can Putin do which is
13:33
reasonable at this point, and obviously they don’t want to blow-off Trump, again given that they have now, they see
13:41
possibly or finally a partner which they can possibly I guess negotiate the new
13:47
European security architecture and address the underlying issues of this war. But the whole point of a ceasefire
13:54
it’s um it’s it’s something they [Russia] couldn’t do. Keep in mind Putin is also a,
14:00
um uh you know, he’s, despite what we’re saying he’s not a dictator, he he has to,
14:05
he has a political class, he has a a public, you you can’t just suddenly
14:12
accept a ceasefire in which there’s no possible political solution, and um
14:18
something has to come from this, and also even if he was a dictator what sense does this make? You really need to first
14:24
uh address key issues uh for example if you’re going to announce the ceasefire tomorrow, exactly who’s going to observe
14:30
this, uh at some point someone’s going to fire missiles or artillery grenades at
14:35
each other or there’s going to be some shooting, uh there can’t be possibly any scenario where the Europeans for example
14:42
would say yes the Ukrainian began this [these violations]. I mean, whatever happens the Russians can
14:49
you know, we can have the dam blow up you can have nordstream blow up, you can have um drones hitting the Kremlin, but every time
14:56
the the Europeans keep saying well it’s just the Russians attacking themselves because this is in the Russian Playbook.
15:01
So, so, even if there would be a ceasefire, it would most likely be broken, the
15:06
Russians would get to blame for it, and there would be pressure on the on the Trump Administration to push through so
15:12
and then to, well, put more pressure on Russia. So, I think this is the main thought they had, we have to deal with
15:17
things like who’s going to observe this, what’s going to be done during this month, is it just going to be a month without a political settlement at the
15:24
end, is it just going to be to rearm Ukraine as they’re being chased out of Kursk?
15:30
There has to be some kind of a thought behind this, and uh they hadn’t seen it but again I think the wise thing to do
15:36
was to acknowledge that this ceasefire is, it was also a way to get the Ukrainians toward closer, towards the
15:43
negotiation table, because as you saw in the Oval Office, Zalensky was quite reluctant, even Yermak — on this very same
15:50
day he met the Americans, he had a long list of uh demands in order to accept a
15:56
ceasefire, they all disappeared. So, something’s been done, they have been brought closer,
16:01
so if you see this as part of a process that is uh obviously wasn’t going to end
16:07
with a take it or leave it, uh then I think uh you know this could be seen as something positive. But I think the
16:14
Europeans were hoping that this would be take it or leave it, because if you looked in the European media, there was a lot of excitement now, yes uh now Putin
16:22
either accept this which they know he can’t, otherwise it’s time for Trump to sanction the hell out of Russia and
16:29
come over to our side, the you know with the more warmongers who want to continue the Biden policies of a forever war with
16:36
the Russians. So, I think uh, it was a it was a good way to handle it, but I don’t
16:42
see how it could have played out much much different than what it
16:48
did.
Diesen very correctly points out that this is a trap set for Putin by Trump, and which will be cooperated-in by the leaders in Europe, but he concludes it with “this could be seen as something positive” and “I think uh, it was a it was a good way to handle it” and “I don’t see how it could have played out much much different than what it did” (i.e., by Putin’s falling into that trap). Diesen says that Putin so much wants what Trump can provide, so that Putin had to cave and accept this ‘ceasefire’. However, as Diesen himself has already pointed out, this ‘ceasefire’ is unlikely to work, and Putin will almost certainly get the blame; and, thus, “otherwise [i.e., if the ceasefire fails (or if Putin were to have rejected it)] it’s time for Trump to sanction the hell out of Russia.” In other words: Trump and his European stooges will then slap on even more sanctions against Russia and send Zelensky even more support. Of course, inside the U.S., this would mean that the Republicans and Democrats will be even more unified against Russia than they were under Biden, and that the ‘Defense’ Department will get even bigger budgetary increases than had previously been expected under Trump.
Perhaps Diesen and Putin expect Trump suddenly to have some decency. I can’t see any reason for such an expectation. I therefore don’t agree with Diesen’s conclusions about this matter, nor with Putin’s having gone along with this ‘ceasefire’. I instead view this ‘ceasefire’ as being likeliest to be a boon ONLY to the owners of Lockheed and other such corporations.
However, on March 18th, after the Trump-Putin phone call, Alexander Mercouris, the indispensable public analyst of international relations, provided an entirely different analysis, and that is to be seen here:
https://theduran.com/trump-putin-call-us-russia-on-track-towards-deal-live/
“Trump-Putin call; US-Russia on track towards deal (Live)”
His major point is that Russia’s bombings of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure occur only once every 30 days, and the latest one just finished; and, so, Putin’s having accepted this ‘ceasefire’ constitutes no real concession at all. His other biggest point, made during a Q&A at 49:00, is that “This has been the single most important conversation that’s happened between American and Russian presidents for many many years now. We are now definitely on the route towards a Russian American rapprochement. The previous call [between Trump and Putin] was important because it broke through the log jam, but this [one] is giving us now an actual way forward — the setting up of expert groups, the agreement that this conflict must be settled and that it must be settled through bilateral discussions between the Russia and the United States.” I am disinclined to agree with his argument in this case, because Trump’s attitude favoring what Israel is now clearly doing to the Palestinians, not only in Gaza but increasingly also in the West Bank, is psychopathic, as also are his stated threats against Panama, Canada, Greenland and Denmark if they refuse to sell their lands to the U.S. Government. (Not to mention his slashing America’s own Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, while boosting spending on U.S. armaments.) If Trump is aiming to achieve peace with Russia at the expense of China, or of Iran, that will likelier mean an American war against all three of those nations. So, I do not share Mercouris’s view that Trump is sincerely well-intentioned. In this matter, I believe that both Diesen and Mercouris are counter-factually optimistic about Trump.
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