No one in their right mind puts himself or herself in a zugzwang.
Zugzwang is the German word which has become the name in all languages for the well-known position in politics, warfare, and games of chess which is the last one before capitulation. Literally, it means “being forced to move”. Metaphorically, it refers to the situation when one adversary has placed his opponent in a position where he must make the next move, and whatever move he makes will be his defeat.
In his chess manual of 1777, François-André Philidor illustrated the position at the end of the game when White has played his king and queen into the position where Black, forced to make the next move, must separate his rook from his king and lose the game (lead image, left).
Right now, Zangezur, an Armenian word Զանգեզուր with geographical and historical meaning for a mountainous region of southeastern Armenia (lead image, right), has been Armenian, Mongol, Turkic, Ottoman, Persian, and Russian over a very long past of sheep herding and fighting. Today it refers to a lowland transportation route for road and railway moving cargoes from east to west, north and south, and vice versa — the Zangezur Corridor. Operation of this route and control of it by force of arms pit the strategic interests of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkey, Iran, Russia, China, United States, US, France, India, and others, against each other in several shifting combinations.
If the powers strategize these combinations to benefit their interests at the expense of the others, the only one in the zugzwang is Armenia and its current prime minister, Nikol Pashinyan, who has put himself there.
At dinner on July 19, President Donald Trump made a move to sweep everyone else’s pieces from the board, leaving the US with a victory in the game, and a new notch on his Nobel Peace Prize shooter. There were five, he said — and that was not counting the ceasefires Trump says he has notched publicly between Pakistan and India, Israel and Iran, and the one he’s hoping for in September in Beijing — Russia and the Ukraine.
Zangezur is now his, Trump claimed. “Armenia and Azerbaijan, we worked magic there. And, uh, it’s pretty close. If not, it’s already done.”
The third round of Russia-Ukraine negotiations in Istanbul came and went in just one hour, and the Russian plan to continue the meeting on Thursday was dropped.
A face-to-face meeting between the two delegation heads, Vladimir Medinsky for Russia, Rustem Umerov for the Ukraine, was held before the plenary session; it lasted for less than 30 minutes. They were then joined by the Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan; the three talked for 15 minutes. In Kiev it was officially denied that Umerov spoke with Medinsky before Fidan joined them. Fidan then formally opened the session of the delegations, declaring “the ultimate goal of the negotiations in Istanbul is to reach a ceasefire for which Turkey has the necessary infrastructure to track compliance.” Between 7:51 pm and 9:39 pm the proceedings were open and shut.
For the Ukrainian side, Umerov read from a brief handwritten note that “we are ready for a ceasefire right now and for the start of substantive peace negotiations. It is up to both sides to agree to this fundamental step toward peace. The ceasefire must be genuine — it must include a complete halt to attacks on civilian and critical infrastructure. Real steps are possible, and each side must demonstrate a constructive and realistic approach.”
More voluble in Kiev, Vladimir Zelensky posted a statement on Telegram reporting a fresh exchange of prisoners of war; he ignored the Istanbul outcome.
The deadlock which the Russians had proposed to break with the “new idea, new concept” which Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov discussed with Secretary of State Marco Rubio on July 10 was dismissed by the Ukrainian side. Instead, it was agreed, as Medinsky announced in his press conference, “to form three working groups that will work online”. The Ukrainians, he said, agreed only to “consider this proposal.” Umerov didn’t say so.
According to Fidan’s later statement, there was agreement to think about the working groups, but no agreement to start them. “The delegations also discussed possible steps to intensify technical discussions on the ceasefire and align their positions. They also agreed to explore the idea of establishing working groups on political, humanitarian, and military matters.”
Manouvres there were; surprises there were not.
A Russian source comments; “So next contacts are downgraded to working groups so that’s the end of talks. Now guns, drones, and missiles will do the talking.”
In Washington there was no direct reaction. The White House is concentrating on Trump’s departure on Friday to meet King Charles III and Prime Minister Keir Starmer in Scotland.
At the same time, on Trump’s order Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), launched from the White House press room a series of accusations against both President Vladimir Putin and former President Barack Obama for plotting against the US. “Putin’s principal interests”, according to Gabbard, “relating to the 2016 election were to undermine faith in the US democratic process, not showing any preference of a certain candidate. Putin chose not to leak the most damaging and compromising material on Hillary Clinton prior to the election; instead planning to release it after the election to weaken what Moscow viewed would be an inevitable Clinton presidency…The material about Hillary Clinton that Putin chose not to release before the election, included possible criminal acts.”
Obama, she accused, of a conspiracy “to subvert the will of the American people…essentially…a years-long coup against President Trump.”
In the new podcast with Nima Alkhorshid, the discussion focuses on the Russian goal to secure Trump’s agreement to a ceasefire for a single short-term objective – regime change in Kiev by nationwide elections to replace Zelensky. The silence in Kiev and also in Washington, which has followed the session in Istanbul, confirms that Zelensky knows this and is reinforcing his power at home and abroad, in order to save himself.
In following up the last report, new information has become available on the brain scanning which was conducted on Donald Trump on July 13, 2024, following an attempted assassination in Butler, Pennsylvania.
This is despite a comprehensive and long lasting blackout which began with the US Secret Service and other US government agencies then under President Joseph Biden, and also the Trump election campaign staff.
The Trump diagnosis is that the clinical symptoms of madness are accelerating. Ergo, time is short for the Kremlin to take advantage. Very short.
The Pearl Harbour problem is that the intelligence of the Japanese plan of attack on the US Navy fleet at Pearl Harbour in December 1941 was very obvious after the event – but dismissed in advance because the political pressure to interpret the intelligence and believe otherwise was too great. Ergo, the conviction President Vladimir Putin currently holds that Trump is capable of rational deal-making on terms for ending the Ukraine war if treated with courtesy and respect may be a misinterpretation. Depending on what happens next, a very large one.
The contradiction ought to be obvious between the first and the second in Russian warfighting strategy.
Equally obvious is the solution which Putin has favoured until now – delay.
The qutab is an exceptional meat pie in a world that’s full of meat pies.
That’s because it is the national meat pie of Azerbaijan, and because there is nothing quite like it outside the Azeri borders or culture.
It is baked with a thin flatbread which is stuffed with heavily seasoned mincemeat of sheep, goat or beef. You might call the combination of meats, onions, pomegranate syrup, herbs, and spices complicated if you weren’t persuaded how uniquely tasty it is.
It’s the same with the politics of Azerbaijan. They are not to be confused with the politics of Russia, Turkey, Armenia, Iran, and Georgia, Azerbaijan’s neighbours, just as there can be no mistaking the qutab for a pirog, gozleme, lahmajoun, kubdari, or لاهم بی آجین (lahm bi ajeen). Caution: if you are MAGA supporter, it would be your big mistake to call any of them a pizza.
Mistaking the superficial appearance of things for the reality is what sophomores do because they haven’t learned to know better. It’s what state propaganda organs and their spokesmen do because they are paid money and because information warfare is what politicians do to advance their interests. Repeating that the qutab or pirog is a pizza over and over will convince many taste testers, according to the Big Lie doctrine of Adolph Hitler, Winston Churchill and their student, Joseph Goebbels.
Forcing taste testers at the point of a gun or bribing them with money will also work to turn the Azeri and the Russian pies into an American pizza for a time; this is to speak literally as well as metaphorically. In Russia, that time was ten years long – the decade Boris Yeltsin was president.
Very recently, his successor President Vladimir Putin acknowledged publicly how long it has taken for him to learn. “I thought that the contradictions with the West were primarily ideological. It seemed logical at the time – Cold War inertia, different views of the world, values, the organization of society. But even when the ideology disappeared, when the Soviet Union ceased to exist, the same, almost routine deviation from Russia’s interests continued. And it was not because of ideas, but because of the pursuit of advantages – geopolitical, economic, strategic.”
Right now the reality of the conflict between Azerbaijan and Russia isn’t how the propaganda, the force of arms, and the corruption of money are explaining it. To understand, click to listen to this discussion with Nima Alkhorshid, starting at Minute 42:30:
About President Donald Trump, certifiable maniac isn’t an expletive – it’s a clinical diagnosis.
In the neurological and psychiatric evidence that has been accumulating about Trump over many years, there is the medical history of Alzheimer’s Disease which runs in his family: his father was first diagnosed at age 86 and died at 93; his older sister died of it, aged 86; and at least one cousin died of the same, aged 84. Since the President has just turned 79, there is reason to anticipate similar onset of symptoms and cause of death for him.
Trump thinks this himself, according to Mary Trump, a clinical psychologist and the President’s niece. She has published a case history of the President in 2020 which Trump’s lawyers failed to suppress in court. Last week, she published a new symptom of what she calls the acceleration in Trump’s cognitive decline: he cannot tie his own shoe laces. This claim has already been pursued by online investigators who have been reporting Trump’s lace-ups which appear from the photographs to be tied permanently and a mysterious right shoe several sizes too large.
The evidence of Trump’s incapacity to understand the Russian end-of-war terms, as he expressed himself in the July 14 press session with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, was reported here.
Listen to the new evidence that Trump has failed to register the “new idea, new concept”, presented last week by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in the new podcast with Nima Alkhorshid; click.
When Trump and Rutte accuse President Vladimir Putin of failing to negotiate seriously, the record reveals the opposite. Negotiating on the Ukraine war with Trump is proving to be impossible because Trump isn’t serious. That’s not his political decision; it’s his neuro-psychiatric handicap.
“You really gave him [Putin] a chance to be serious to get to the table to start negotiations,” Rutte said to Trump on Monday. “Steve Witkoff, Marco Rubio, we all try to help you. But you’ve now come to a point where you say, well, hey, you know, you have to — you have to get serious.” Trump agreed, replying: “We actually thought we had probably four times [agreed] the deal.” Five times over, Rutte repeated that the Russians aren’t serious. Trump repeated himself: “We’re going to go for a period of time. Maybe he’ll start negotiating. I think we felt, I felt, I don’t know about you Mark, but I felt that we had a deal about four times and here we are still talking about making a deal.”
Trump’s recall was that the terms of his deal had been accepted by Putin; he didn’t recall what Putin’s terms were. He is revealing he cannot comprehend the difference between the US and Russian negotiating positions; he hasn’t so much rejected the “new idea, new concept” from the Kremlin as not to have understood it. This isn’t Trump’s negotiating tactic – it’s cognitive incapacity camouflaged by the threat of force to compel Putin’s capitulation.
The first test of Trump’s rationality is the Mary Trump test – an Oval Office press conference in which Trump demonstrates how he ties his shoe laces.
The second test requires Russian counter force. This is the Oreshnik decision-making point for Putin, when there is no longer any point to negotiating because the US side aims at escalating its arms supplies to the Ukraine battlefield and encouraging the Germans to join in long-range missile attacks on the Russian hinterland, including Moscow and St. Petersburg.
In the Russian decision-making now under way, there is an attempt to find the rational calculations in what Trump is meaning; that is to say, what Trump’s advisors, constituents, and officials are calculating when he himself is incapacitated. The first of these, Russian sources believe, is that the Trump escalation is a pitch to prevent Trump’s domestic voter base, the MAGA enthusiasts in the battleground states which won the presidency for Trump last November, from deserting him.
The second calculation is that Russia is militarily and economically vulnerable to a combination of escalation of attacks inside Russia and sanctions on the oil trade outside. This is the strategy of the “bigger bear”, announced on CNN this week by former Trump and Biden Administration warfighter, Brett McGurk: “the Russians approach diplomacy as a bear approaches a dance. The bear knows it will determine when and how the dance ends, unless the other dance partner proves itself to be a bigger bear. Sometimes, it helps to be the bigger bear. In the context of Ukraine, like Syria, while the United States is a far more powerful country than Russia, Putin believes that he has the upper hand in such localized conflicts due to Moscow’s determination and consistency contrasted with Washington’s perceived lack of focus, stamina and shifting politics through election cycles. Correcting that perception is a first principle for effective diplomacy with Moscow, and the approach outlined by Trump yesterday offers the chance to do exactly that.”
The third rational calculation, Russian sources believe — as do some US analysts — is that by supplying the Ukraine battlefield through Germany, the UK and Norway with a combination of Patriot anti-aircraft defence batteries and long-range offence missile systems like the Typhon, the Trump Administration will escape having to face a US taxpayer revolt in Congress over the multi-billion dollar cost of direct US arms supplies to Kiev regime.
According to this scheme too, Trump would have an alibi if the Oreshnik decision is taken by Putin, and if the US weapons are defeated in the collapse of the Zelensky regime. Trump would blame the Germans, repeating his line: “don’t forget, I’ve just really been involved in this for not very long and it wasn’t initial focus. Again, this is a Biden war. This is a Democrat war, not a Republican or Trump war. This is a war that would have never happened.”
There is only one way to interpret the meaning of the carefully scripted, rehearsed, memorized , sloganized, and repeated words which President Donald Trump announced in his Monday meeting with Mark Rutte, the Dutch ex-prime minister and now Secretary-General of NATO. They mean the opposite of what he thinks he is saying; and he cannot comprehend either the difference, or that they mean nothing at all. Between meaning that is false in fact and meaning that is non-credible to a friend or foe, Trump’s brain cannot discriminate; does not comprehend.
By Russian as well as Anglo-American neurological and psychiatric standards, this man is a certifiable maniac.
The strategic problem this poses for Russia’s military and political decision-makers, according to a source in a position to know, is that Trump’s mental disability is not that he is lying – he doesn’t aim to deceive. Rather, he is clinically incapable of understanding the logic, the evidence, the weight of options, and the sequence and consequence of actions. He cannot think; ergo, he cannot negotiate in good or even bad faith. He is, according to this Russian neurological diagnosis, a mentally incapacitated brain with only one reflex – the use of force to compel capitulation or effect destruction.
Following their 60-minute meeting in Kuala Lumpur on Thursday (July 10), Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has announced the only new points he made with Secretary of State Marco Rubio are two he has made before, often. These were “the resumption of direct flights [between Russia and the US] and continued efforts to normalise the functioning of bilateral diplomatic missions.”
The third point Lavrov says he made is a new point camouflaged as an old formula. “It has been agreed to continue constructive dialogue on a growing number of issues of mutual interest based on mutual respect between the Russian and US foreign policy offices.”
What this means is that President Vladimir Putin agrees to ignore President Donald Trump’s foul mouth and his reference to Putin’s “bullshit” if Trump implements actions to halt the US arms flow to the Ukraine and other terms for ending the war in the Ukraine.
Russia will turn the other cheek when US actions speak louder than words – that, Rubio told the press later, is “a new idea, a new concept that will – I’ll take back to the President to discuss.” Eyes, closed, Rubio then added his qualifying scepticism. “Hopefully, it will lead to something positive. I can’t guarantee it. The President has been frustrated at the lack of progress. He’s made that clear publicly. But we’ll see if that changes.”
This is the official form of words in the State Department’s record. But this record has added words Rubio didn’t actually say. According to the verbatim transcript, Rubio’s doubt that Lavrov’s “new idea” will change Trump’s mind is missing: “Again, I wouldn’t characterize it as something that guarantees a peace, but it’s a concept that we’ll – I’ll take back to the President today and – here as soon as I finish with you.”
Following Rubio’s return to Washington, Trump then told NBC by telephone that he is still “disappointed in Russia” and will be making “a major statement on Russia on Monday [July 14]”. Trump added that he has just made a “deal” with NATO for US arms deliveries to the Ukraine to go through NATO “and NATO is paying for those weapons 100 percent.” These new weapons supplies will include Patriot missile systems, NBC has reported Trump as saying.
President Vladimir Putin’s speech to the BRICS summit session in Rio de Janeiro this week (July 6) was brief. Unusually so for Putin’s public speeches, but not so for his speeches to the BRICS summit in earlier years.
This time he took 810 words (Kremlin English version; 710 in the Russian). Leaving aside the 2024 summit when Putin hosted the BRICS meetings in Kazan, Putin took 635 words in 2023; 451 in 2022; and 683 in 2021.
In substance, Putin emphasized the positives on which all the attending states could agree in Rio – the four original members of 2006; the fifth in 2011; the four added in 2024; the fifth added in January 2025; and the ten partner states added in 2024 — and he avoided the negatives on which they don’t agree. The rule for the ten members for composing their final communiqué is that “the decision-making process is based on consensus.”
Accordingly, Putin emphasized how big BRICS is becoming: “not only a third of the Earth’s landmass and almost half the planet’s population, but also…40 percent of the global economy, while their combined GDP at purchasing power parity stands at $77 trillion…By the way, BRICS is substantially ahead of other groups in this parameter, including G7.”
Without naming the enemies in war of Russia, China, India, and Iran, the President emphasized the economic over the political and military, money over lethal force. “The unipolar system of international relations that once served the interests of the so-called golden billion, is losing its relevance, replaced by a more just multi-polar world…Everything indicates that the liberal globalization model is becoming obsolete while the centre of business activity is gravitating towards developing markets, launching a powerful growth wave.”
Putin was making a point which is not made in the final communiqué drafted by this year’s chairman, President Luis Lula da Silva, and his government. Titled “Rio de Janeiro Declaration — Strengthening Global South Cooperation for a More Inclusive and Sustainable Governance”, it runs in English for 31 pages. Not on a single one of these pages is there mention of the terms which Putin dismisses – unipolar, liberal, globalization.
The United Nations is mentioned 22 times in the Rio Declaration; there is no mention at all of the United States. “Hegemon”, the diplomatic euphemism for the US, is also absent.
This is the BRICS fudge – and it appears to have been largely the doing of Lula and the Brazilians.
Putin left it to Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov attending the summit in person to spell out or hint at the details of Russia’s differences with them.
If it was also understood by the Russians that Lula was attempting to pacify US President Donald Trump, Trump announced within 72 hours that Lula had failed. In a text posted by Trump, he has accused Lula of pursuing former president Jair Bolsonaro in a “witch hunt that should end IMMEDIATELY!” Trump also targeted “Brazil’s attacks on Free Elections and the fundamental Free Speech rights of Americans [social media platforms]”. Unless Lula stopped, Trump said he would impose a new Brazil-specific tariff penalty of 50%.
As Brazil’s currency dropped sharply, the Financial Times in London noted that Trump was acting on prompting from Elon Musk whose Twitter/X media platform was banned and fined in Brazil last year. “The US president’s intervention in favour of Bolsonaro will cheer Brazil’s far-right movement, which claims a judicial crackdown against digital misinformation unfairly targets conservatives,” the newspaper said.
President Donald Trump began rigging his latest attempt to win the Nobel Peace Prize in January 2024, a year before the Norwegian Prize Committee closed the 2025 prize nominations on January 31. That was also eleven months before Trump was elected president to begin the peacemaking streak which he currently lists as Pakistan and India, Iran and Israel, Congo and Rwanda, Israel and Hamas, and Kosovo and Serbia.
Trump had told Republican congresswoman Claudia Tenney to file her nomination on January 30, 2024, and so – owing Trump a great deal of election campaign endorsements and money in 2018 and again in 2024 — Tenney did exactly that on January 30, 2024.
It’s not exactly clear from the Norwegian rules whether that nomination has been held over to qualify Trump for this year. So on April 24 at the White House Trump told Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre to make sure of the rules. “I salute President Trump… on that we work together,” Støre said, adding: “on that prize, you know, there is a committee taking care of that which is completely working on its own terms and I cannot comment on that.”
Trump then told the Pakistan’s Army chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir, to arrange for Pakistan to file its prize nomination; Trump lunched with Munir at the White House on June 18; the nomination was announced in Islamabad on June 21.
Trump’s advisors thought a Muslim nomination mightn’t do the trick in Oslo so they recommended Trump ask for a Jewish one. This was produced by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at dinner with Trump on July 8.
The Prize Committee is due to announce the winner on October 10. Pope Leo XIII has agreed to come to Trump but not in time to nominate him.
The only Christian head of state to decline Trump’s invitation to a prize-winning session is President Vladimir Putin of Russia. Trump has been asking him since their telephone call on February 12. He repeated himself when they spoke on July 3. But Putin said no.
Trump has been announcing his response ever since. “I’m not happy with that”, he said after five hours.“ An hour later: “Yeah, I’m very disappointed with the conversation I had today with President Putin…And I, I’m very disappointed.” On July 6: “I was very disappointed with my call with President Putin. I was very disappointed.” On July 7, meeting with Netanyahu Trump repeated twice over: “I’m disappointed, frankly, that President Putin hasn’t stopped. I’m not happy about it.” On July 8 he told a Cabinet meeting: “We’re not happy with Putin. I’m not happy with Putin. I can tell you that much right now ‘cause he’s killing a lot of people…And I’m not happy with Putin.”
Is this a cognitive symptom Trump is revealing?
Repetitive stress injury can affect the brain, according to Russian experts. US experts call it chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) from injuries to head. Obliteration – another repeated Trump word – of brain cells is the direct cause. Visible symptoms, according to the Mayo Clinic of Cleveland, are “Trouble thinking. Memory loss. Problems with planning, organizing and carrying out tasks. Behavioral changes. Impulsive behaviour. Aggression.”
In the new podcast with Nima Alkhorshid, “Trump’s Masterplan DESTROYED by Putin in One Move!” we discuss the Russian diagnosis of Trump’s symptoms, and the new Kremlin decisions to follow.
In Moscow a very well-informed source comments: “Nobel Peace Prize was always the Olympic Gold for war criminals so he has that sealed. The Peace Prize repeat now includes Serbia and Kosovo. The slaps at Putin are explicit. Papa is disappointed that Vova is a bad boy and didn’t give him his ceasefire. We have to accept the Russian diplomacy option has failed and there is continuity in US policy. All the more reason and case for a very loud and unmistakable military victory.”
A NATO veteran comments: “He doesn’t need to be to more mentally competent than Biden. Everything is in place. From Congress, Senate, Supreme Court, law enforcement, the military, right down to the local pub; the raids, detentions, firings, threats, international aggression. It’s all baked in.”
