In a conversation lasting one hour and forty minutes according to the Chinese stopwatch– “a long meeting” on President Donald Trump’s clock — President Xi Jinping first knocked the stuffing out of Trump’s warmaking threats, then forced him to beat a retreat behind a 12-month ceasefire with the man the Pentagon has designated its principal enemy but whom Trump praised effusively as “a great leader, great leader of a very powerful, very strong country…a tremendous leader of a very powerful country and I give great respect to him.”
“Uh,” Trump told reporters on board his aircraft as it rocked in crosswinds flying eastward, “a lot of things we discussed in great detail. A lot of things we brought to finalization. A lot of finalization.” This was false.
Worse for the Trump warfighting strategy, the Chinese have retained escalation dominance by making Trump’s concessions their pre-condition for China’s temporary suspension of their sanctions on rare earths exports and imports of US computer chips. For this, Xi offered to buy US soybeans slowly for $34.2 billion over four years – roughly half in tonnage, half in price over twice the interval that China had agreed to in the past.
In General Sun Tzu’s ancient manual for warfighting, “the supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting”. The old man also confessed his limitation: “there is an intelligent way to eat a live frog – I just don’t know what it is.” Xi just demonstrated the way to do it. Trump went down smiling.
Xi has not yet telephoned President Vladimir Putin to brief him on what happened. After Putin’s meeting with Trump in Alaska on August 6, Putin telephoned Xi on August 8. “So far,” said Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov, ”there is no such conversation in the schedule, but it can be quickly agreed upon if necessary,”
The Russian state media have interpreted the outcome of the talks to be a “temporary ceasefire” achieved by not discussing the key economic and territorial war issues at all. “There have been no joint statements yet,” Tass noted, “and some of the most important issues of bilateral relations, such as Nvidia chips and advanced products, have remained unresolved.” Nothing was achieved, the official Moscow commentators think, in the US attempt to split Xi from Putin, and secure Chinese pressure on Russia to end the Ukraine war on US and NATO terms. “Ukraine came up, uh, very strongly,” Trump told reporters as he flew back to Washington. “We talked about it for a long time and we’re both gonna work together to see if we can get something done. Uh, we agreed the, the sides there, you know, locked in, fighting, and sometimes you have to let him fight, I guess. Crazy. But he’s gonna help us and we’re gonna work together on Ukraine.”
The Russian state media have yet to notice that Trump is abandoning his attempt, through the Rosneft and LUKOil oil trade sanctions of October 25, to stop China buying Russian oil. “There’s not a lot more we can do,” Trump replied to a reporter who asked if he and Xi had discussed his threat to sanction Chinese companies for buying Russian crude oil and petroleum products. “Uh, you know, he’s been buying oil from Russia for a long time. It takes care of a, a big part of China. And, you know, I, I can say India’s been very good, good on that, uh, front. Uh, but, uh, we, we didn’t really discuss the oil. We discussed working together to see if we could get that war finished. You know, it doesn’t affect China.”
The four-term (2013-2027) Governor of the Central Bank of Russia (CBR), Elvira Nabiullina, has assured the State Duma this week that the biggest enemy Russia faces is not the combined military and economic forces of the US and NATO, but over-heating in the domestic economy as it mobilizes to defend itself.
That, Nabiullina said, is not the impact of drone, missile, and bomb attacks on Russian targets inside the country, at sea, and along Russia’s international oil and gas pipelines; nor of the sanctions aimed at destroying Russian exports of energy, Russian tankers, and the fleet’s access to world markets through the Danish Straits, the Suez Canal, and the Bosphorus.
In Nabiullina’s report of her strategy for 2026-2028, drafted last month and released on October 27, the words “war” and “defence” are not mentioned. The only “geopolitical conditions” the CBR report acknowledges are “deglobalisation processes” and “new sanctions and second-round effects of enacted sanctions”. About them, Nabiullina and her advisors have concluded that the Trump Administration’s “tighter sanctions will lead to an increase in the discount for Russian exports as well as a moderate decline in oil production and exports. Oil prices will notably drop in 2026 and will not bounce back to the level of the baseline scenario even by the end of the forecast horizon.”
The forecast of the CBR, the report says, is that “if the world economy faces a financial crisis in 2026 and sanction pressure increases, the Russian economy’s potential and its growth rates will both decline. GDP will be contracting during two years. A significant decline in supply will be fuelling inflation. Fiscal policy is assumed to prop up the economy owing to a structural primary deficit. To offset a reduction in oil and gas revenues, the economy will be extensively using the resources of the National Wealth Fund, which involves the risk of depletion of its liquid part as of the end of 2026.” Nabiullina’s response, the report concludes, will be to fight the sanctions war by raising the Central Bank’s key rate from 16.5%, as it was fixed last week, to between 18% and 20%. “To prevent inflation from spiralling out of control, the Bank of Russia will be forced to pursue tighter monetary policy in 2026–2027. This will decelerate inflation to 4.0–4.5% in 2028.”
This is Nabiullina’s Trojan Horse for the Russian economy at war. The CBR projection is for two years of recession from now through 2026 and 2027; that is, close to zero growth this year to be followed by negative growth rates predicted from minus 2% to minus 3.5%.
Nabiullina admits that “considering its actual dynamics, we have lowered the GDP growth forecast for 2025 to 0.5–1.0%.” This, Russian economists point out, is within the standard margin for statistical error from zero.
Nabiullina doesn’t admit that the recession forecast in the Bank’s risk scenario for 2026-2027 is the consequence of the CBR’s key rate policy. But she does blame other government policies, including military spending, the budget deficit, and increased taxes. “Significant pro-inflationary risks have materialised since the previous meeting,” Nabiullina claims. “They are primarily associated with an increase in the budget deficit in 2025 and higher fuel prices. In September, a decline in underlying inflation measures paused. The expected increase in taxes will help bring inflation down over the medium-term horizon, but will also lead to a one-off rise in prices in the short term. We have factored this into our decision, first, by reducing the pace of monetary policy easing, and, second, by revising upward the projected key rate path required to bring inflation back to 4%.”
“As these [state spend and tax] factors fade, disinflation will continue. This will be supported by tight monetary conditions. The upward deviation of the Russian economy from a balanced growth path is narrowing.” This last sentence is the CBR euphemism for squeezing the economy with a high key rate at the same time as the government increases the tax burden. For zero to negative GDP, for growth to recession, Nabiullina’s euphemisms are “slowdown” and “cooldown”. “‘All decisions on the key rate,’ she told the State Duma this week, are based on the need to end the period of high price growth as quickly as possible while preventing the economy from overcooling. A hasty reduction in the key rate would undo all the progress achieved. ‘We would have to start all over again,’ Nabiullina said.”
Nabiullina’s promotion of “necessary recession” to cure inflation has triggered widespread but silent dismay – silent because it is understood she is protected by President Vladimir Putin.
Last month, in a session with government ministers Putin repeated Nabiullina’s line. “Last year we agreed,” the President said, “there was need to take the necessary measures to curb inflation and to strengthen macroeconomic stability. We agreed that this would inevitably cool the economy and, as we said back then, ensure its soft landing. The general opinion was also that we must walk this sharp edge and not to undermine the macroeconomic policy, not to overcool the economy, and not to freeze it.”
Putin then defended the outcome. “According to the Ministry of Economic Development, in July, gross domestic product added 0.4 percent in annual terms and in the seven months of this year GDP grew by 1.1 percent. The question is whether this is enough. Is that what we wanted? Are we succeeding in achieving the goal that we set for ourselves? Or, do we need to act differently at a faster pace, naturally, while ensuring macroeconomic, inflationary stability and taking into account the balanced policy of the Central Bank. The inflation trend is quite clear: in July, consumer prices grew by 8.8 percent and in August by 8.1 percent. The inflation drop trajectory is below the forecasts provided by the Government and the Bank of Russia. In other words, the efforts to lower inflation are effective. It is very important for moderate prices to have a positive impact on business and investment activity, allowing for more dynamic and sustainable growth.”
Vocal criticism has come from economists in the opposition seats in parliament. They say Nabiullina’s policy is stimulating financial speculation on the rouble, stocks, and commodity trade futures, boosting bank profits to record highs but crushing the real economy, and increasing poverty. According to Mikhail Delyagin, a well-known critic and deputy head of the Duma Committee on Economic Policy, the Central Bank is deliberately following the policy of Russia’s enemies, starting with the US-controlled International Monetary Fund (IMF).
“The IMF continues to act as the senior management structure for the Russian Central Bank,” Delyagin reported this month. “The Central Bank regularly — and very clumsily — tries to declare that this control is purely formal. However, these attempts are refuted by the regulatory documents of the Central Bank itself (https://t.me/EvPanina/15113 )…It turns out that a high-ranking official of the globalist structure, which oversees the Central Bank of Russia, is actively lobbying for the confiscation of Russian assets. Which has been the work of the Central Bank of Russia! The [CBR reserves] have ended up exactly where they can now be removed. An amazing coincidence…Everything is going to be fine for those who serve the West against Russia.”
For every one of President Donald Trump’s eight, nine or ten peacemaking moves, as he counts them, there has been a warmaking move. The first series are turning into propaganda fakes; the second series are turning into political and military failures.
Listen to the new podcast with Nima Alkhorshid as we spell out this three-stage strategy from the coast of Venezuela to the shores of Lake Ontario, Canada, to the battlefield of the Ukraine and the battlements of the Kremlin Wall.
The first stage is the Trump threat which combines his “kill them dead” talk with attacks on key economic sectors; for enemy states these are called sanctions; tariffs for neutral and allied states. This combination is planned to trigger internal domestic surrender, led by Fifth Column politicians, business constituencies, and elements of government and the security services which have been cultivated by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the State Department, and the Pentagon for years. The Fifth Column in each target state must be mobilized first – covertly as Israel’s Mossad was planning inside Iran before the June war; publicly as the CIA has been acting inside Venezuela. The weakest states, those penetrated for the longest time – for example, The Netherlands, Australia, Britain, Germany, Greece — fall to Trump at this stage because the Fifth Column is already in power there.
The second stage is negotiations. At the targets for regime change, these are aimed by the Washington regime to split public opinion, sharpen political contradictions, and intensify fear for the future where domestic voter and military resistance to Trump’s warmaking have proved stronger than the Washington calculation. Russia, Iran, Democratic Republic of North Korea, Venezuela, India and China are examples. In each case, Trump has conducted probes for vulnerability and weakness employing back-channel bribery schemes, specially designated presidential emissaries, diplomatic table talks with agenda papers and multi-point formulae. Military displays called exercises, freedom of navigation sail pasts and port calls, and arms sale talks run in parallel.
By the third stage, Trump and his associates in Washington and their collaborators from Tel Aviv to London, Brussels, Berlin and Ottawa, have been blocked; their first and second-stage moves neutralized by countermoves; their inducements spurned; their envoys sent packing; the capitulation term sheets torn up. The Trump forces now face the prospect that in one target state after another, the methods of effective resistance may spread and escalate to the point that Trump himself faces defeat on the stage he himself has set.
At this point, Trump must either launch a display of firepower he believes his target cannot match or defend – “obliteration” he called his bombing attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities in June. Or else he must retreat, covering the rout with smokescreens he calls ceasefires, boards of peace, and bribery projects with names like the Gaza Riviera, Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP), and the Trump Turnberry British Open.
So how do third-stage Trump wars end? They don’t. They resume at the first and second stages. Acknowledging this, how do the Russian General Staff and the Kremlin agree on how the war in the Ukraine will end?
A source in a position to know says: “The rate of east-to-west Ukrainian migration will accelerate and there will be disintegration of the frontline with a breakthrough on any one of the critical axes that will undermine the entire Ukrainian defence east of the Dnieper. Ouster of [Vladimir] Zelensky and [Andrei] Yermak will follow when the Ukrainian commanders cannot order their forces to continue fighting, holding their ground. There will be Russian satisfaction with the new regional lines and the depth of the demilitarized zone westward to Kiev. Of course, Banderite terrorism will continue, but so will the electric war strikes, as well as assassinations from the Russian side in reply. The rump Ukraine will be dysfunctional to the point where day-to-day survival will trump warfighting in terms of allocation of resources.”
That’s small “t” trump meaning defeat. “There’s no need for the Russians to declare that they are done fighting – the situation speaks for itself. The declaration that matters is that the winner is confident the opponent will never get up again.”
A second Moscow source in a position to know says: “There has been no real breakdown in talks with the US. In the back channel the Americans have said ‘we are not going to win your four regions for you.’ There is general understanding, however, that the four [regions] will be won, leaving four points to be agreed: all of the Ukraine will be a DMZ; no NATO bases, advisors, troops; a ceasefire to be monitored by neutral units along the contact line; a Russia-US treaty to be negotiated by Putin and the president to be elected in 2028. For the time being, Trump is mocking Putin over his slowness to complete the takeover of the four regions. There are no missile game-changers – no Tomahawk from the American side, no Oreshnik from the Russian side. Until next spring we will be accumulating the materiel and manpower to finish off, softening them up to the point where the final blows will be decisive.”
President Donald Trump was told last week by NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte that the Russian people are losing their confidence in President Vladimir Putin and in the war in the Ukraine because they are having to wait in line at their petrol stations; because their airport flights can be delayed for hours; and because their internet and mobile telephone connections go off suddenly.
What then will the American and NATO warfighters think of this — vodka and cognac production is falling in Russia this year: in the nine months to September, production is 17% down for cognac, 6% down for vodka. By contrast, the 9-month statistics from Rosalokoltabakkontrol (RATK), reported by Tass, reveal that the production of other alcoholic beverages has increased by 9.4%. This includes wine whose output is up 11.6% — sparkling wine up 9.6% — and the data aren’t counting production of beer, cider, poiré, and mead.
The reason, according to Moscow’s experts on the alcohol market, has nothing – repeat nothing — to do with the sanctions war which has blocked imports of US, French, Italian and other alcohol, or sharply raised their price when they come into the country as parallel imports through sanctions-busting hubs like Dubai. Also, the experts say that Russian drinkers aren’t going off their favourite vodka tipple because they are depressed at the slowness of the Russian Army’s battlefield advance, by the casualties, or by the impact of enemy operations like the Kursk invasion or drone attacks on the hinterland.
Russians haven’t stopped drinking because they think they are victims of what Rutte claimed in Washington last week was the “enormous amount of people dying and getting seriously wounded. The Russian economy is in difficult situation. We know we have these long lines into gasoline stations all over Russia at the moment. We know that the French president and others in Europe stepped up when it comes to the shadow fleet. And, of course, we have seen the pressure by the American president on some European countries to stop buying oil. So all of this is having an impact, with sustained pressure, we will be able to get Putin to the table to agree with a ceasefire and then other talks coming after that.”
The real reason is deliberate state policy to reduce consumption by raising the price of alcoholic drinks through lifting the excise tax. “People are beginning to choose cheaper or lower [proof] drinks,” Andrei Moskovsky told DwB; he is president of the Alcopro Guild, a producer association. “Production always works in conjunction with sales. No one needs to release something that won’t sell out. Most enterprises are now focused on the sale of products in the nationwide retail chains. Cognac sales have been falling since March because it has risen in price – the minimum retail price has increased by 17%. As a result, cognac costs at least 651 rubles per half litre; whisky and brandy, 472 rubles; vodka, 349 rubles.”
“By the end of this year, the rate of alcohol production will increase as a new excise tax rate has been announced. But this is only temporary. Starting from January 1, 2026, the excise tax on alcohol stronger than 18 degrees will increase by 11.4% to 824 rubles per litre. By the beginning of the new year, the factories will produce more alcohol than is required by current sales. This is done so that the product can be marketed with the old excise tax – at a price of 740 rubles per litre. Sales will increase through the New Year holiday due to the seasonal demand and also by people’s desire to buy cheaper drinks to stock up for the future. Then demand will fall and so will production.”
The outcome is that in September Russia recorded the lowest per capita alcohol consumption in 26 years, RATK reported. Comparing this year’s official data with earlier years, Vadim Drobiz, the director, just retired, of the Centre for Research on Federal and Regional Alcohol Markets (TsIFRRA), says that in the first year of the Special Military Operation and the escalation of European Union sanctions, there was over-production of all types of alcoholic beverages, especially strong drinks. “Each manufacturer hoped that the imports would ‘disappear,’ and it was necessary to have time to fill the market with their products. However, already by the fourth quarter of 2022, a decrease in production could be observed in some sectors – companies were lowering their production in line with market demand.” .
According to Drobiz, in the first year of the war the production of Russian rum, whisky and gin increased due to substitution of imports, but no significant increase in their consumption was recorded. At the time Drobiz expected that in 2023 alcohol production in Russia would stabilize and import volumes would recover. In 2022, he said, “alcohol consumption demonstrated trends which are usual for times of crisis — purchases of strong alcohol grew, sales of wine products, on the contrary, decreased.”
This year this trend has reversed.
The new evidence suggests that not only are Russians drinking less alcohol but there is a class difference in the rejection of vodka – bourgeois Russians are opting instead for wine, whisky, gin and rum; working-class Russians for wine and beer. The difference between them is money, and the impact of the Kremlin’s temperance tax. Drobiz says he has retired and doesn’t want to talk about the alcohol market any longer.
With these new words(lead image), President Donald Trump has now obliterated – his word for the US attack on Iran on June 22, 2025 – whatever President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov have been calling the “understandings” they negotiated at the summit meeting in Anchorage, Alaska, on August 16.
Capitulate or obliterate. That is, and always has been, Trump’s foreign policy for all states, but especially the states capable of defending themselves by effective force – Russia, Iran, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Venezuela, Houthi Yemen, Hamas Palestine, Hezbollah Lebanon, India, China. What Trump has just said of his regime-change offensive against Venezuela applies to all. What stops such a policy is no longer words, especially not the words, “red line”. Only counterforce – and that means, to use Trump’s term, “kill them dead”.
In recent US warmaking history there is precedent. That is the body bag count which, together with the domestic inflation and unemployment rates, ended the Vietnam War – first with the words of the Paris Peace Accords of 1973 (for which Henry Kissinger received the Nobel Peace Prize), and then with the North Vietnam Army’s and Viet Cong’s force of the US rout from Saigon of 1975 (no prize for Kissinger).
For the time being, the Kremlin insists the “understandings” Putin agreed with Trump in Anchorage continue in effect. “I wish to officially confirm,” declared Foreign Minister Lavrov on Tuesday (October 21), “that Russia has not altered its positions from the understandings achieved during the extensive negotiations between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump in Alaska. These understandings are grounded in the agreements reached at the time, which President Trump succinctly summarised when he stated that what is needed is a long-term, sustainable peace – not an immediate ceasefire that would lead nowhere. We remain fully committed to this formula.”
This “formula” is also promoted by the two strongest allies of the US in the Kremlin – Kirill Dmitriev, the president’s special emissary for wealth transfer to the US; and Elvira Nabiullina, Governor of the Central Bank. In a misleading tweet, and then in anonymously leaked remarks to CNN in Miami, as he prepared to meet Steven Witkoff on October 25, Dmitriev said: “[I have] arrived in the U.S. to continue the U.S.–Russia dialogue — visit planned a while ago based on an invitation from the U.S. side. Such dialogue is vital for the world and must continue with the full understanding of Russia’s position and respect for its national interests.” He told CNN he was engaged in “official talks just days after President Donald Trump announced tough new sanctions on Russia, sources with knowledge of the visit exclusively told CNN on Friday ’to continue discussions about the US-Russia relationship,’ according to the sources.”
“I think we are reasonably close to a diplomatic solution that can be worked out,” Dmitriev added in what Tass acknowledged was his interview with CNN.
Dmitriev’s promotion of his personal role in direct negotiations with US officials has been repeatedly blocked in Riyadh and then in Anchorage by Lavrov and others.
In her policy announcement on Friday (October 24), following a 50 basis-point cut in the Central Bank’s key rate to 16.5%, Nabiullina acknowledged that her policy is to cut GDP growth in Russia to zero plus statistical error. “Considering its actual dynamics, we have lowered the GDP growth forecast for 2025 to 0.5–1.0%.” What she meant by the “actual dynamics”, Nabiullina explained are the state policies for warfighting against the US and the NATO alliance on the battlefield which she opposes by calling them “pro-inflationary” and “geopolitical” risks: “Significant pro-inflationary risks have materialised since the previous meeting [September 12]. They are primarily associated with an increase in the budget deficit in 2025 and higher fuel prices…The expected increase in taxes will help bring inflation down over the medium-term horizon, but will also lead to a one-off rise in prices in the short term.”
According to Nabiullina, to reduce Russia’s inflation rate, there should be an end to the war on US terms. “Risks to oil prices have increased. The global oil market has shifted to a surplus. This might have a significant impact on prices. For Russia, the situation will be additionally complicated by the sanctions. There is persisting uncertainty related to geopolitics. Everything will depend on how the situation develops.”
The domestic Russian opposition to this policy line is vocal but stops short of accusing Nabiullina and Dmitriev of betraying Russian interests. “Western sanctions are nothing compared to the sanctions of the Central Bank,” State Duma Deputy Mikhail Delyagin, a former Yeltsin government economist and now Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Economic Policy, said in June. Delyagin’s is the discreet manner of putting the position.
The Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, has attempted to deny that the General Staff’s policy – the successful advance of the Russian military on the Ukraine battlefield — is the reason for the high domestic approval of the Army and the President. They are not “correlated”, Peskov said in the Tass headline.
“Russians’ high trust ratings for Russian President Vladimir Putin and the country’s armed forces are separate indicators that are measured separately, Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov has told the media. ‘These are separate indicators that are measured independently. They are indeed very high right now,’ Peskov said, responding to a question about the correlation between the high trust ratings for Putin (77.8% according to VTsIOM) and the Russian Armed Forces (80%).”
Listen to the new podcast on what is about to happen led by Dimitri Lascaris on Reason2Resist, held in Athens on Saturday morning.
The daily record of Russian drone and missile strikes across the Ukraine shows not only an escalation in the scale and firepower of the electric war but also a new strategy of targeting designed by the General Staff.
The lead image shows the launch and strike points on the battlefield map which have been identified in the Ukrainian reporting over the evening of October 21-22.
“In response to Ukraine’s terrorist attacks on civilian targets in Russia,” the Defense Ministry bulletin, issued in Moscow on the afternoon of October 22, has reported, “the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation launched a massive strike tonight [October 21-22] with high-precision long-range ground- and air-based weapons, including Kinzhal hypersonic aeroballistic missiles, as well as unmanned aerial vehicles at energy infrastructure facilities which support the operation of the military-industrial complex of Ukraine. The targets of the strike have been achieved; all designated targets have been hit.”
From Kiev the impact of the strikes on the loss of electricity and the duration of power outages has been confirmed officially. The blackout in the eastern regions of the country now extends from early morning to late evening. “Ukraine was forced to introduce electricity shutdown schedules in 12 regions, Minister of Energy Svetlana Hrynchuk said on Thursday…Energy workers are forced to apply hourly shutdown schedules in 12 regions of Ukraine, the minister said. According to her, the restrictions will be from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. ‘Depending on how quickly the repair and restoration work is completed, we will adjust the schedules and hope that the burden on Ukrainians will be less,’ Hrynchuk noted. ‘Today, the enemy again attacked energy facilities purposefully, primarily in such regions as Sumy region and Chernigov region; there was also certain damage in Dnipropetrovsk region and Kharkov region,’ the minister said.”
“The General Staff goal appears to be blackout east of the Dnieper and excess or lack of power generation in the west,” comments an expert source; he is an electrical engineer and veteran of NATO electric war campaigns. “If the Ukrainians can’t make up for the generation losses in the east via transfers from the west — which they won’t be able to do as the switch stations and transmission lines are being destroyed — then it’s black-out in Dniepropetrovsk, Chernigov, Poltava, Sumy, and Kharkov. West of the Dnieper River, this could create a situation where the Kiev government will be forced to shut down reactors. The reason is that generating too much electricity can be almost as bad as not generating enough in terms of the effect on frequency. ”
“Another possibility is that the Ukrainians are being forced into desperate measures such as emergency power transfers to the east. This can be detected in jury-rigging of high voltage tie-ins; not having the protection elements properly coordinated; reliance on damaged or dodgy switchgear. Combined, these factors are causing a cascading power losses in the east and west of the country, or at least parts of it.”
Parallel analyses reported by other sources confirm that “Russia is employing a new tactic aimed at completely disabling the energy system on the left bank of the Dnipro. This is creating an imbalance in power supply between western and eastern Ukraine: a critical electricity shortage is emerging in the east due to the destruction of thermal and hydroelectric plants, while a surplus of energy is present in the west, where nuclear power plants operate. This surplus cannot be effectively transferred eastward due to limited grid capacity.”
The Russian state news agency Tass has announced the Budapest summit meeting between President Vladimir Putin and President Donald Trump is off for the time being after receiving a call to its Washington bureau from a source it identified as “a US administration official”.
“The US administration has no plans to organize President Donald Trump’s meeting with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, in the immediate future, a US administration official told TASS, adding that there are no plans for an in-person meeting between the countries’ top diplomat either. ‘[US] Secretary [of State Marco] Rubio and [Russian] Foreign Minister [Sergei] Lavrov had a productive call. Therefore, an additional in-person meeting between the Secretary and Foreign Minister is not necessary, and there are no plans for President Trump to meet with President Putin in the immediate future,’ he said.”
Tass had reported earlier in the day Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as cautioning: “We have the presidents’ understanding [that the summit will take place.] But you cannot postpone what hasn’t been announced.”
Trump is uncharacteristically silent about what had just happened – and not happened. During the day he made no mention of Russia and Putin in a Rose Garden press conference; he did not refer to the summit meeting in a tweet. This is the first time in Trump’s second term that he has cancelled one of his major peacemaking initiatives in silence.
At the end of the afternoon Trump was asked “Do you know what happened there? And does that affect your decision whether or not to send Tomahawks to –“. “No, no,” he replied. “I, I don’t want to have a wasted meeting. I don’t want to have a waste of time. So, I’ll see what happens. But we did all of these great deals, great peace deals. They were all peace deals, agreements, solid agreements, every one of them but this one. And I said go to the line, go to the line of battle, the battlefield lines and you pull back and you go home and everybody takes some time off, because you’ve got two countries that are killing each other. Two countries that are losing 5,000 to 7,000 soldiers a week. So, we’ll see what happens. We haven’t made a determination [on despatch of Tomahawks].”
Reuters reported “a senior White House official told Reuters ‘there are no plans for President Trump to meet with President Putin in the immediate future’, The US propaganda organ claimed the reason was that “Moscow’s rejection of an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine cast a cloud over attempts at negotiations.”
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte will brief Trump at the White House on Wednesday, October 22, Reuters added. “Two senior European diplomats said the postponement of the Rubio-Lavrov meeting was a sign the Americans would be reluctant to go ahead with a Trump-Putin summit unless Moscow yields its demands.”
The Financial Timesreported an unnamed White House official as telling the newspaper what had already been communicated to Tass an hour before.
A meeting of European leaders, with Vladimir Zelensky attending, will follow in London on Friday, October 24.
Kirill Dmitriev, the Kremlin negotiator for US business deals, has attempted to sound hopeful in a post on his Twitter account. “Media is twisting comment about the ‘immediate future’ to undercut the upcoming Summit. Preparations continue.”
Listen to the new podcast with Nima Alkhorshid explaining the reasons for the failure of the Trump summit initiative, accompanied by threats of military and sanctions escalation. Also revealed are the surprises for Washington from Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The trick to making Budapest goulash is in the paprika – too little, and it’s just another meat-and-veg stew; too much, and it will burn the tongue, trigger heartburn, cause flatulence.
Sources in Moscow in a position to know believe that President Vladimir Putin convinced President Donald Trump on the telephone last week of three things. The first is that they can strike terms for a settlement of the Ukraine war by the time they meet in Budapest. The second is that Budapest can be a peace agreement for which Putin will nominate Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize. The third is that if Trump won’t agree on terms and escalates with more weapons, more Americans on the ground, and more sanctions, he will lose the war, lose the lives of the Americans, and be forced into his very own Saigon 1975 and Kabul 2021 – that’s to say, MALA, Make America Lose Again.
“It’s going to happen now,” the Russian sources say. When Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov meets Secretary of State Marco Rubio in a few days’ time, the sources expect “there will be a deal from the Russian side.”
The catch, they also say, is that Putin can make his deal concessions so attractive that Trump is bound to agree, but at least three of his decision-makers may not. The Russian sources believe they are Vice President JD Vance, Central Intelligence Agency Director John Ratcliffe, and White House advisor Stephen Miller. Others include the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Daniel Caine, and the Deputy Secretary of Defense for Policy, Elbridge Colby. Together, the sources believe, they can be persuaded that the peace will in fact be a temporary pause in their all-fronts war against Russia. The sources say the temporariness of the peace and the pause in combat operations are also what the Russian General Staff will accept. No heartburn, no flatulence in the war rooms of Moscow and Washington; big relief in Russian business circles for the anticipated stop to sanctions enforcement, with snap back.
Vladimir Zelensky arrived more than thirty minutes late for lunch at the White House on Friday afternoon. The Ukrainian delegation, which included Andrei Yermak, was already too late to dissuade President Donald Trump (lead image) from backing down on his threat to send Tomahawk missiles through NATO to Ukraine for launching at Russian targets deep inside the country.
“We’ll be talking about that,” Trump replied to a Ukrainian reporter at the lunch table press conference. “That’s why we are here…Fair question, exactly as he [Zelensky] told you to say it. But we’re going to be talking about it.”
Trump then told the press he foreshadows a delay in the decision on the missiles in order for a new round of negotiations to take place. “We need Tomahawks and we need a lot of other things we’ve been sending over the last four years…Hopefully, they [Ukraine] won’t need it. Hopefully, we’ll be able to get the war over without thinking about Tomahawks.”
Trump has agreed to Putin’s negotiating offer of the day before.
He has also accepted Putin’s refusal to accept Zelensky and Trump in a troika summit meeting together. “Most likely it will be a double meeting…we’ll be involved in threes but it may be separated.”
Trump began covering his retreat on the eve of Zelensky’s arrival, when a reporter asked the President about his telephone call with Putin: “What did you tell them about the Tomahawks? Did you discuss the Tomahawk missiles?” Trump replied: “Well, we talked about it a little bit, didn’t say much, but I do say to you, you know, we need Tomahawks for the United States of America too. We have a lot of them, but we need them. I mean, we can’t deplete for our country. So, you know, they’re very vital, they’re very powerful. They’re very accurate, they’re very good, but we need them too. So, I don’t know what we can do about that.”
In Moscow Russian officials said that in the telephone conversation Putin had issued a counterattack threat, warning the Tomahawks and American crews operating them would be a target if they crossed the border. Putin also proposed to let their officials, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, negotiate next week. If they agreed, then Putin and Trump would hold a fresh summit meeting in Budapest.
Emphasizing the counterattack, according to the readout of the telephone call from Yury Ushakov, Putin’s foreign affairs assistant, Putin told Trump: “The Russian Armed Forces hold full strategic initiative along the entire line of contact.” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters: “Our military knows what to do, and they possess the strength and all the necessary resources. Everything will certainly be done to ensure, first, national security, and second, our country’s interests,”
Following public reporting of the call, a source reflecting General Staff thinking commented: “The Tomahawks will be blown up in transit, hit at their launch sites, or shot down in flight. Of course, it will be another red line crossed, but I think Putin’s pen is out of ink at this point.”
“We’re not losing people”, Trump said across the table from Zelensky. “We’re not spending money. We’re getting paid for the ammunition and missiles and everything else we are sending… That’s not what we’re in it for. We’re in it to save thousands of lives…that’s why we’re in it…I love solving wars. You wanna to know why. I like stopping people being killed. And I’ve saved millions and millions of lives. And I think we’re going to have success with this war.” Trump was conceding the risk of US casualties in the Ukraine is deterring his decision on the Tomahawks.
The day before, Trump had tried a smokescreen for what had been said in the conversation with Putin: “I did actually say, would you mind if I gave a couple of thousand Tomahawks to your opposition? I did say that to him. I said it just that way. He didn’t like the idea. He really didn’t like the idea. No, I said it that way. You have to be a little bit light-hearted sometimes, but no, he doesn’t want Tom — Tomahawk is a vicious weapon. It’s a vicious offensive of incredibly destructive weapon. Nobody wants Tomahawks shot at him.”
By the close of Thursday there was a difference of opinion between the Kremlin and the White House on what had taken place on the telephone earlier that evening between President Vladimir Putin and President Donald Trump.
More exactly, there had been argument over Trump’s threat to send long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles through NATO to the Ukraine for firing at the Russian hinterland.
In Trump’s summary, tweeted at 20:11 Moscow time, he said “great progress was made with today’s telephone conversation.” He said the main points of conversation were the Middle East peace plan; the Melania Trump initiative on the war-displaced children; “a great deal of time talking about Trade between Russia and the United States when the War with Ukraine is over”; a new meeting between foreign ministers, Marco Rubio and Sergei Lavrov; and Budapest for the meeting to follow between the presidents.
In Ushakov’s summary, posted by the Kremlin an hour later at 21:10, the call had lasted “almost two and a half hours. Clearly, it was a rather substantive and at the same time very open and frank exchange.”
The last phrase means there was serious disagreement. This was over Trump’s challenge to Putin’s military capacities as a “paper tiger” by the Tomahawk threat. According to Ushakov, “The issue of potential supplies of long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine was also raised. Vladimir Putin reiterated his position that Tomahawks would not change the situation on the battlefield but would inflict substantial damage to relations between our countries, to say nothing of the prospects for a peaceful settlement.”
Ushakov’s summary omitted to record what Trump had replied to Putin on this. Trump’s tweet didn’t mention Tomahawk at all. They did agree, Ushakov said, to transfer the argument to their subordinates for a meeting next week, and then to meet directly in a new summit in Hungary.
Ushakov’s readout of the call ended on the line: “Overall, I would say that the telephone contact between the Russian and US presidents was very useful, and the two leaders agreed to stay in touch.”
For the time being, Trump thinks his Tomahawk threat is working; Putin thinks he has delayed the move and made its cancellation the precondition for the Budapest summit.
