Exaggerating the true fact to mean the false factoid is SOP (standard operating procedure) in information warfare. It’s to be expected from President Donald Trump (lead image, right) and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (left) and their intelligence chiefs (centre), military officers, and media supporters.
The truest of the facts in the war so far are arithmetic: (1) that the clock is showing five days and nights long; (2) that there is no lessening in the tempo of the Iranian barrages against Israel; (3) that the Israeli counts of interceptions and target strikes represent less than 5% of US and Israeli estimates of Iran’s drone and missile stocks before the war.
There is more arithmetic. If Russia, China, and North Korea aim to re-supply Iran, there is no sign yet of increased shipborne deliveries from Astrakhan, Mahachkala and Olya, the Russian ports on the Caspian Sea, or from Turkmenbashi, the main port of Turkmenistan on the Caspian. If President Vladimir Putin, President Xi jinping, and Kim Jong Un have agreed in secret to assist the Iranian side, then their deliveries are likely to travel by air and rail into Turkmenistan first, and then by road across the border at Sarakhs into Iran. For the time being, the reports at Sarakhs say “light traffic” and “currently no alerts”.
Conclusion from these facts: Israel’s first shock-and-awe strikes have failed to produce a significant loss of Iran’s military capacities and political will to continue the war until Israel loses its capacities and will. Consequence of conclusion: if shock-and-awe fails, then schlock-and-flaw follows. Schlock is New York Yiddish for badly made merchandise, cheap junk.
This was demonstrated by Trump’s airplane remarks as he headed into Washington the night before his June 18 Situation Room session. Asked what end of war terms he is planning for Iran, he said: “An end. A real end, not a ceasefire. An end…[Question: So something that would be permanent?] Yeah, or — or, uh, giving up entirely…Certainly possible that they would give up. That’s possible.”
This is the schlock. For analysis of the flaw in the US-Israel war plan, click to listen to the new podcast with Nima Alkhorshid and Ray McGovern.
The plan to attack Iran, force regime change in Teheran, decapitate and disarm Iranian forces, and partition the country into ethnic autonomies is nothing new.
In August 1941 British and empire forces (Indian, Australian) acted in coordination with Soviet forces to occupy the country, ostensibly to prevent the Shah of Iran from allowing German forces to seize Iranian oilfields and attack the land corridor from the Persian Gulf northwards across the country and into the Soviet Union through which US Lend-Lease aid for the war effort was being transported. At the time, with British air superiority in the south and Soviet air superiority in the north, the regime in Teheran had no choice but to capitulate.
By November 1943, when Joseph Stalin, Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill met together in Teheran (lead image, left), Stalin already knew the British were aiming to monopolize Iranian oil supplies for themselves, and with the Americans were “creat[ing] a real threat to the interests of our country if we do not take timely countermeasures.” – Page 71. Stalin’s reaction was first to test Iran’s parliamentary leadership for signing an oil concession agreement. When the Iranians rejected that, Stalin ordered a Red Army-backed secession movement for an independent Azeri statelet based in Tabriz. He abandoned this scheme at the end of March 1946.
A recent anti-Soviet history of the episode claims Stalin retreated because he was afraid of direct conflict with the US, which was then planning atom bomb attacks on the Soviet Union. Also, Stalin “underestimated his Iranian opponents who ultimately left him out in the cold”.
Between 1982 and 1988 the collective Soviet leadership faced a similar problem from the hostile regime in Teheran led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini; he called the Kremlin the “lesser Satan” after the “Great Satan” (US) and “Little Satan” (Israel). Khomeini implemented his hyperbole by threatening the Soviet Islamic republics, as well as the Red Army in Afghanistan. The Politburo retaliated by arming Iraq’s President Saddam Hussein sufficiently well to preserve his regime from being toppled by Khomeini’s counter-invasion; this followed after the failure of Soviet efforts to dissuade Hussein from starting his war against Iran, and then to maintain neutrality between the two sides.
This week the evidence is mounting of a US plan to attack Iran, using Israeli forces in the air and on the ground, plus German, British, and other NATO logistic assets. The public cause of war has been repeated by President Donald Trump (lead image, right centre) – to destroy Iran’s nuclear enrichment, weaponization, and ballistic missile capabilities. “Look, Iran should have signed sign the deal,” Trump said on Monday at the G7 summit conference in Canada. ”Something’s going to happen…[Question: President, do you want to see regime change in Iran?] I want to see no nuclear weapon in Iran and we’re well on our way to making sure that happens….”
Operationally, however, repeated missions by the Israeli Air Force (IAF) since last Friday (June 13) have failed to do this. US and Russian sources have been reporting that only US B-2 and B-52 bombers, currently based in Qatar and Diego Garcia and armed with GBU-57A/B MOP (Massive Ordnance Penetrator) bombs can achieve this result.
Such an operation, in combination with other IAF raids on Iranian defences, missile stocks and firing platforms, requires intensive and coordinated US, Israeli and allied intelligence, plus a large fleet of aerial refuelling tankers based in Cyprus and other close-in staging points.
This operation, US and Russian sources believe, is the reason Trump abruptly cancelled his G7 meetings and returned to the White House Situation Room. “As soon as I leave here, we’re going to be doing something. But I have to leave here.”
Censorship, deception operations, and propaganda screens make it difficult to judge how much time, weapons stocks, and effective air defences the Israeli and Iranian forces have on the fourth day of the war. In this US-produced video summary, the conclusion is that the IAF has failed to achieve air superiority over Iran, except for the west border regions; and that therefore the risk to a US bombing operation over central Iran continues to be much higher than has been revealed in public.
The film also claims that if Iran can protract its drone and missile barrages for several more days, accelerating the tempo and adding new types of weapons, it will exhaust Israel’s air defence missile stocks and its inventory of air and ground attack weapons. “It seems that Iran can sustain the missile salvos for a longer period than Israel can maintain operational and non-depleted missile defence systems…time appears to be on the Iranian side despite the constant strikes deep inside the country conducted by in-situ covert sabotage drones and missiles.” Min 12:45
If this is accurate, Trump is under pressure from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (lead image, right) to hurry up; and Russian President Vladimir Putin (lead image, right) knows it.
“The United States still needs some time”, Boris Rozhin reports for the Russian military blog Colonel Cassad in Moscow, “to gather in the theatre all the required ships, tankers and bombers…And so there has been talk of ‘another chance’, ‘send Witkoff’, etc. But then Iran will again be offered to abandon its nuclear program and missiles which Iran cannot accept. At the same time, if it was only about nuclear weapons, Iran was always ready to refuse them in exchange for the lifting of sanctions. But this isn’t about nuclear weapons – it is the desire to change the regime in Teheran.” — June 17, 06:41.
“If Israel could have handled Iran itself, the launch of this scenario would not be required. But it is required primarily for Israel, because it was not possible to crush Iran quickly. Iran began to recover from the strikes and reorganize under a long-term war, which is like death for Israel… There is every reason to believe that in a fairly short time Israel will face a shortage of high-precision weapons. The forecast – they will be able to maintain the pace of blows for several tens of days, but not more than a hundred. Further, everything will depend on the political will of the Iranian leadership and the degree of its control over the population. At the cost of supertension and disproportionately high losses, Iran can still win. But it will be very difficult.” — June 17, 12:21.
That’s an expression which originated in the fly-blown goldrush mines of Australia in 1840 and then moved with the flies to the goldrush mines of California a few years later. Literally, it means a man who is too quick for a fly to settle on him. Metaphorically, it means a man who is much too clever to be fooled by a fraudster or deceived by an enemy.
Putin is much too quick not to recognize that President Donald Trump is both a fraudster and an enemy. Putin doesn’t have to be told by the General Staff that Trump’s war plans are an existential threat to Russia’s security on the western front (Ukraine, Romania, Poland); northern front (Norway, Sweden, Finland), eastern front (Japan, South Korea); and southern front (Iran).
Last Thursday night, as the US and Israel began their war against Russia’s strategic ally Iran, starting with decapitation strikes against the Islamic Republic’s leadership, the Russian General Staff didn’t have to send Putin their “we told you so” message. But the Kremlin’s communication system broke down, nonetheless.
Officially, the war didn’t begin for the Russians until they detected US and Israeli fuelling, arming, and deception preparations on Thursday ahead of the first Israeli weapons launches after midnight into Friday. Earlier in the day, Putin had been telling his arms chiefs “we know the enemy’s modus operandi. However, I do not think we are falling behind in any way.” The combination of drone and missile attack tactics of the enemy requires, he said, “the new state armament programme [to] ensure creation of a universal air defence system capable of operating under any conditions and effectively hitting air assault weapons regardless of their type.”
What about defence against ultra close range, ultra low-altitude drone attacks of the kind which the US, the UK and Ukraine had successfully executed, evading detection and interception, on June 1 against Russia’s nuclear bomber bases across the country? Putin’s scripted phrase “air assault weapons” left that unmentioned in the Kremlin communiqué, but not in the closed-door session after Putin announced: “Let’s get to work”.*
What then was the similar coordination by the US and Israel of long-range air assault operations with ground-level attacks targeted fatally on five, possibly eight Iranian generals and five Iranian nuclear scientists. The US and Israeli media reports have termed these decapitation strikes acts of war, not acts of terrorism. The Russian media reports have followed suit.
The state media platform RIA Novosti editorialized on June 14 that the Israeli operations are a rehearsal for what the US and its allies are planning to do to Russia, and that this is well understood in Moscow. “Many respected analysts of different calibres believe that the purpose of the attack on Iran is to eliminate the country’s nuclear program (necessarily) and regime change (extremely desirable). In fact, the main goal of the operation is to work out a mass preventive disarming strike against the enemy with serious military capabilities – that enemy is called not Iran, but Russia.”
This strategic plan, writes Boris Rozhin, a leading military blogger reflecting the views of senior Russian military officers, is President Donald Trump’s first of all, and aimed at Russia next. “Current events in the Middle East region demonstrate a dramatic change in the geopolitical situation. The Western powers, throwing away their purported enmity, have united in a general offensive against an independent Iran, a key ally of Russia…The previous ‘disagreements’ have turned out to be only a spectacle for the public. Iran’s defeat will be a strategic catastrophe for Russia, surpassing even the loss of Syria. Iran plays a key role in maintaining a balance of power in the Middle East and is Russia’s most important ally in confronting Western domination…The war against Iran, initiated by the Western world, could have disastrous consequences for the entire world order. This is not a local conflict, but an attempt to finally break the last pockets of resistance to the unipolar world…For Russia, this means the need to make drastic decisions to protect its strategic interests and allies.” — June 14, 21:19
“In summing up this story,” Rozhin wrote yesterday, — June 14, 14:31, “we can conclude – if there is anyone who has not yet understood – that the ‘Trump peace attempts’ are worthless and will lead to nothing – neither in the Middle East nor in Ukraine. Therefore, agreements with Trump are not worth it. It is necessary to strengthen the army and the military-industrial complex and achieve the goals of the SVO [Special Military Operation] by military means. In order not to say again, ‘we wanted peace, and the Americans deceived us again’, as the Iranians do now.”
In the policy discussion currently under way, a Moscow source reports the intelligence assessment that Iran’s military capabilities are not as effective as they have been publicly portrayed or as the generals have threatened; that the clerical leadership under Ayatollah Ali Khamenei knows this; and that he and his clerical allies believe their best chance of survival in power is to limit the counterattack on Israel, ask for a ceasefire, bargain with their threat to close the Hormuz Strait, and abandon their negotiating positions on nuclear enrichment and missile development.
“If the nuclear bomb was a bluff, and we believe it was,” the source says, “then they should have learned the lessons of Saddam [Hussein]. They should have expected Netanyahu and Trump to call their bluff. Now that’s happened, Iran’s internal weakness is also stark. I believe SVR [foreign intelligence], GRU [military intelligence] and MiD [foreign ministry] have concluded the conflict is the Iranians to lose – and this is what is happening. What can Putin do if the clerics have no nerve to fight?”
Follow the sequence of events as these messages went to the Kremlin for decision.
The Oreshnik Moment was first coined on June 1 here and then discussed in the Reason2Resist podcast on June 3. It’s a period of time – it’s not a prediction of the counter-attack which the Russian General Staff will launch against the June 1 drone attack on the bomber element of the triad of Russia’s nuclear deterrence forces.
The certainty of the counter-attack is given by the December 2024 nuclear deterrence doctrine, enacted by President Vladimir Putin, in order to preserve escalation control in the current war on the Ukrainian battlefield, and to deter escalation by the US and NATO adversaries on Russia’s southern, western, northern and eastern fronts. Putin described the revisions of the doctrine in 2024 as “factor[ing] in the emergence of new sources of military threats and risks for Russia and our allies”, particularly in “regard [to] an aggression against Russia from any non-nuclear state but involving or supported by any nuclear state as their joint attack against the Russian Federation.” That’s the Ukraine now; it’s also Romania, Poland, Finland and Germany as the US places (and plans to deploy) nuclear weapons in these states, aimed at Russian targets.
“Our nuclear triad remains the most important security guarantee for our state and citizens, an instrument for maintaining strategic parity and balance of forces in the world, ” Putin had said last year. Ten days after the June 1 triad attack, Putin has now repeated his announcement. “Special attention must be paid to the nuclear triad,”, he said on June 11, “which has been and remains the guarantor of Russia’s sovereignty, playing a key role in maintaining the global balance of power.”
US analysts have been downplaying the seriousness of this strategic moment; they claim the moment is already passing for a strategic counter-attack, the launch of Oreshnik missiles at the Ukrainian, American and British command centres which directed the June 1 operation.
Russian sources emphasize they are in no hurry to act – focus instead, they warn, on the moment, not on the means.
Currently, the sources point out that there are two levels of direct Russia-US negotiations which were agreed during the telephone call between Putin and Trump on February 12. At the first level, the talks to achieve an end-of-war settlement for the Ukraine battlefield have reached highly precise term sheets – 22 terms for the Ukraine, 33 terms for Russia. The next session of the talks is anticipated in Istanbul at the end of June.
The second level of talks is between the Russian Foreign Ministry and US State Department on improving the diplomatic channels between the governments. Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov described these as talks on the “irritants”. “As a third round of bilateral talks on irritants approaches, it is too early to disclose the date, but, hopefully, the [next] round will be held very soon,” the senior Russian diplomat told reporters.[The talks will raise] an entire range of issues, more or less complicated, even as there are basically no less complicated issues when it comes to the United States.” Russia’s new ambassador to the US, Alexander Darchiev, said there have been few concrete agreements so far after two rounds on the “irritants”. One of the gains, he said, was to hold the talks in the capitals, Moscow and Washington. No date for the next round, to be held in Moscow, has been fixed.
The “irritants” on the agenda of these negotiations include the US seizure of Russian consular property in Seattle, problems of access to the Russian dacha in Virginia, visa problems for UN meetings, the embassy staffing problems, access to bank accounts, and resumption of direct flights.
Ryabkov and Darchiev call these “irritants” with irony. They mean to make public their concern that after two sessions – February 27 and April 10 — there has been little agreement from the US side after the two sides have exchanged their Notes.
Moscow sources say they believe the head of the US negotiating team, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Sonata Coulter, has been ordered to keep talking but agree to nothing. One reason for this, the Russian side believes, is that Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the White House office in charge of personnel appointments have been slow to vet and approve appointments to the senior State Department bureaux. Rubio, for example, has yet to confirm his former assistant, Brendan Hanrahan, to become Coulter’s superior and head of the EUR bureau at State.
The decision to extend the Oreshnik moment does not reflect trust in Trump or his officials to agree on the Russian terms in these negotiations. It reflects patience, and the Kremlin’s calculation that there is nothing to lose in giving Trump more time to prove himself. Click for the discussion with Dimitri Lascaris explaining the reasons, and also the limits to this patience.
Today is the Russian national holiday which President Boris Yeltsin first introduced to celebrate himself and whitewash the crimes he committed against the country.
For reminder today, a kindly reader has found a series of interviews on Yeltsin and his crimes, which I first recorded in my study on Kolobovsky pereulok, Moscow (lead image), in May 1995 with the Dutch RTL 4 television company. The interview films had been stripped from this website by a hacker who did not agree with the hostile account I gave of Yeltsin’s first term.
In The Netherlands, the RTL 4 management also did not agree, so my views were not allowed to be broadcast.
The restored video film runs in seven parts for a total of 63 minutes. It can be viewed here.
Behind me, hanging on the study wall, is the saddest painting I own. It is of an unnamed Red Army officer looking into the dark; it was painted by an artist who didn’t sign his name or the date, probably in 1920 or 1921. In the lower right corner, the canvas has been holed by the damp and rot of time.
I would see that Red Army man every time I sat down at my desk. Over my shoulder, he kept reminding me of what Yeltsin and his gang were doing to betray and destroy Russia more thoroughly than the Civil War and then the Germans had done. I don’t know whether he survived to speak. I have, though.
President Donald Trump believes – because his opinion pollsters tell him – that pre-emptive attack wins the battleground. That’s to say, the battleground states in US elections.
Federalizing California state firefighting troops and ordering them with US Marines – 5,000 of them so far — into action in Los Angeles is the latest example of Trump’s calculation that voter support for his war against immigrants will rally national support against his negative approval poll, and win him elections next year and in 2028.
President Vladimir Putin’s calculation is that delay is the best strategy for the moment. This is in order to preserve Russian voter approval and give Trump time to deliver an armistice for the Ukrainian battlefield on the Russian terms which were delivered at Istanbul on June 2.
Moscow sources in a position to know have been reporting that the drone attack on the nuclear-triad bombers at their bases on June 1 required delay in the military response. Publicly, officials have camouflaged the delaying tactic by describing the attack as a terrorist action by a terrorist organisation without Trump knowing in advance and approving. Moscow sources acknowledge this is smokescreen.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov publicly conceded as much on Monday: “Obviously, Ukraine is responsible for all that but it would be helpless without the support of the Anglo-Saxons. We can omit the Saxons now and just say — without the support of the English. It is possible that, by inertia, US intelligence services are still involved, but the British are involved 100 percent.”
Lavrov went on: “I sincerely hope constitutional norms will prevail in America – that President Donald Trump will not be constrained in exercising his constitutional authority, that he will not face obstruction, and that he will receive full access to information.”
Lavrov said this on Monday afternoon (June 9), Moscow time. By then he knew – and Putin was briefed — that two days before (June 7), from inside tightly secured Camp David, Trump had invoked his constitutional powers and ordered troops into action against “protests or acts of violence [which] directly inhibit the execution of the laws [and] constitute a form of rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States.”
Lavrov was trying to give Trump more time. “I am not aware of how thoroughly the US President is briefed regarding operations the Ukrainian regime conducts against our country. That numerous American advisors remain embedded within Ukraine’s security services is an established fact – they have not been withdrawn. That military instructors from other nations supplying weapons to the Ukrainian regime operate there is equally factual. That they advise Ukrainian armed forces on strategic operations, facility placement, and camouflage – this too we know. As I have mentioned, many modern weapons systems cannot be operated without the direct involvement of military personnel from the supplying nations.”
On Monday the Russians have read the court papers filed by California Governor Gavin Newsom declaring Trump’s military operation in Los Angeles illegal under Section 12406 of the Militia Act of 1903, the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, the Insurrection Act of 1807, and the US Constitution. The governor asked for an urgent court injunction to stop Trump’s escalation. Click to read.
On Tuesday, Justice Department lawyers filed a one-paragraph answer calling California’s challenge “legally meritless”. Trump was playing for time — the judge agreed to the delaying tactic. He said he would not open a hearing until Thursday. By then, Trump has already signalled his preemptive attack will have succeeded. “Well, if we didn’t do it,” Trump said in a speech at Fort Bragg, “there wouldn’t be a Los Angeles. It would be burning today, just like their houses were burning a number of months ago.” Fort Bragg is the headquarters of the US Army’s airborne and special forces commands.
When it comes to California politics, Russian oligarchs and their lobbyists at the Kremlin have long claimed to know much more than the Russian intelligence agencies. Not this week.
Moscow sources have been saying privately, military bloggers publicly, that there would be a special Security Council meeting this week to end the delay on Russia’s strategic response to the June 1 attack. This meeting, the sources add, would address the lingering argument over how to anticipate Trump’s actions towards Russia’s end-of-war terms.
The Security Council meeting took place, according to the Kremlin website, on Tuesday afternoon. The agenda, Putin said in his public opening, “focuses on improving the state policy of protecting traditional Russian spiritual and moral values…Let us discuss how the Plan of Measures for the implementation of the Fundamentals of State Policy for the Preservation and Strengthening of Traditional Values is being carried out overall, which tasks have been accomplished, and which issues remain unresolved.”
No military officers were present but for the first time at the Council this year, Defense Minister Andrei Belusov appeared wearing a military uniform. What was he signalling?
“The consensus on our goals in Ukraine is unambiguous,” an informed Moscow source says. “It is up to the General Staff to achieve it with minimal losses without a timetable. A political timetable will not be forced on the generals. But we see Trump takes no responsibility to end this but accuses only Biden. Never mind that is false.”
Click to listen to today’s discussion with Nima Alkhorshid and Ray McGovern.
The game of tell-and-consequences begins with a prompt.
In response each player must then write down a word or phrase without knowing what word or phrase has been written by the previous players. When the sequence and accumulation of words and phrases from all the players around the table is complete, the composite result is unrolled and read out.
The game was an American invention in 1958. The juxtaposition of meanings was intended to be funny. It was also a best-seller and made the inventors a lot of money.
In the games which President Donald Trump plays, making money is always the objective.
In the game which Trump and President Vladimir Putin are playing over the negotiations to end the war in the Ukraine, the sequence and accumulation of words have begun to lose their meaning. This isn’t funny.
With the Oreshnik Moment on pause, who will say what is to be gained, what risked, what lost when President Vladimir Putin decides to play Molotov (lead image, lower right) to these two Ribbentrops (lead image, top left and right)?
“We have so much in common”, President Donald Trump was told yesterday by Friedrich Merz, Chancellor of Germany with a 25.5% vote. “With your German provenance, I think this is a very good basis for close cooperation.”
Trump replied apologetically: “I’m the one that ended Nord Stream 2, uhh, going to a place called Germany, come to think of it. I’m sorry I did that, uhhh [smiling at Merz]. But I ended Nord Stream 2. Nobody else did”.
Reminding Trump that the next day, June 6, is the 80th anniversary of the landings in Normandy to open the western front against German forces, Merz said: “This is the D-Day anniversary when the Americans once ended the war in Europe.”
The Chancellor was repeating Adolf Hitler’s version of the war. Trump agreed. “That was not a pleasant day for you? Turning to the cameras, he repeated: “this was not a great day.” Merz replied: “Well, in the long run, Mr. President, this was the liberation of my country from Nazi dictatorship. We know that we owe you. But this is the reason why I’m saying that America is again in a very strong position to do something on this war and ending this war. So, let’s talk about what we can do jointly.”
Their joint plan, Merz and Trump agreed, means rearming Germany again, with US troops to remain where they are in Europe. This is war against Russia again.
Asked by a German reporter “if Germany is doing enough on defence”, Trump replied: “Well, I don’t know, I haven’t discussed it very much. I know that you are spending more money on defence now, and errr, quite a bit more money, and that’s a positive thing… I’m not sure General MacArthur [from 1945 to 1951 Supreme Allied Commander] would have said it’s positive. You know, he wouldn’t like it, but I sort of think it’s good. You [turning to Merz smiling] understand what I mean by that. He made a statement, ‘Never let Germany rearm’. And I always think about that… at least up to a certain point. There will be a point when I’ll say, please don’t arm any more if you don’t mind — [patting Merz on the leg] – we’ll be watching them.” – Min 9:26.
Twenty hours after Trump’s Oval Office press session with Merz, Rollcall.com has not yet published the full video record and verbatim transcript. This is an exceptional delay. As a result, the excerpts of the Trump-Merz session now in print come for the most part from the media supporting both Trump and Merz against Russia. Read these excerpts as I have transcribed them.
Lenin hasn’t been a favourite of President Vladimir Putin’s. He’s derided him: “Ukraine appeared in 1922…Now the grateful descendants are smashing monuments to Lenin, the founder of Ukraine.”
The second last time he mentioned Lenin, in February 2024, Putin blamed him. “For some unknown reasons, he transferred to that newly established Soviet Republic of Ukraine some of the lands together with people living there, even though those lands had never been called Ukraine; and yet they were made part of that Soviet Republic of Ukraine. Those lands included the Black Sea region, which was received under Catherine the Great and which had no historical connection with Ukraine whatsoever.”
The last time Putin spoke of Lenin he said he was in favour of burying him, but not of going against public opinion on preserving him in Red Square. Last December he said “The same goes for the burial of Lenin’s body. Someday, society will probably come to this. But today, especially today, we must not take a single step that would split the society in Russia. That’s how I see it.”
Putin has had less to say about Lenin’s method for deciding what to do at crisis moments for the survival of the country and himself. When Lenin asked in his 1902 book, What is to be Done? he described the choice to be faced this way. “We are marching in a compact group along a precipitous and difficult path, firmly holding each other by the hand. We are surrounded on all sides by enemies, and we have to advance almost constantly under their fire. We have combined, by a freely adopted decision, for the purpose of fighting the enemy, and not of retreating into the neighbouring marsh, the inhabitants of which, from the very outset, have reproached us with having separated ourselves into an exclusive group and with having chosen the path of struggle instead of the path of conciliation. And now some among us begin to cry out: Let us go into the marsh! And when we begin to shame them, they retort: What backward people you are! Are you not ashamed to deny us the liberty to invite you to take a better road! Oh, yes, gentlemen! You are free not only to invite us, but to go yourselves wherever you will, even into the marsh. In fact, we think that the marsh is your proper place, and we are prepared to render you every assistance to get there. Only let go of our hands, don’t clutch at us and don’t besmirch the grand word freedom, for we too are “free” to go where we please, free to fight not only against the marsh, but also against those who are turning towards the marsh!” .
Now that Putin agrees that in the present war Russia is surrounded by enemies on all sides, and he must make the choice between the “path of struggle” – since Sunday, June 1, this is now war at the point of nuclear arms — and the “path of conciliation” – that’s President Donald Trump’s peace terms – what will Putin decide to do?
Moskovsky Komsomolets, a mass circulation newspaper and tribune of popular opinion, has called for the same “determination and harshness” against Ukraine as Israel has shown against Hamas. Boris Rozhin, speaking for the Russian military opinion and editor-in-chief of the widely read military blog, Colonel Cassad, said: “I hope that the military-political leadership will find a way to adequately respond. The blow should be painful… As long as we are waging a limited war, the enemy is waging a total war, the purpose of which is the destruction of our country and people. And no peace talks will change this. The longer it is in coming, the more unpleasant surprises.”
The circle of advisors around Putin urge him to downplay the attack as “terrorism” and ignore the “terrorists” as European, not American proxies in the attack. Vzglyad, a Kremlin platform for strategy, has editorialized that “all this is being done with the connivance of Ukraine’s European partners. But such actions are not capable of intimidating Moscow. Now the initiative in the conflict belongs to Russia.” Vzglyadadded: “Maybe our new successes will still be able to bring Ukraine to reason. We openly demonstrate the ability to show mercy, which says a lot about the sincerity of the Russian authorities in their aspirations for peace.”
A well-informed Russian military source says Putin has decided not to retaliate for the moment. The launch of the Oreshnik is unlikely now, the source believes; perhaps later “only if there is certainty that Trump will not deliver. But [now] maybe a measured one [strike] to help him focus.”
The source explains Putin’s decision-making. “The political functionaries [Kremlin, Foreign Ministry] have their focus on the Memorandum and expect it will be signed. Now we wait for Trump to deliver. Rubio sent [Senator Lindsey] Graham to [Vladimir] Zelensky to accept it. He talks best with Zelensky. Our side has some more patience before replying to the ‘terror attacks’ [sarcastic laughter]. This is because all the assurance we have from the Americans is that the outcome of discussions will be positive. A Russian military response of large proportions can wait. We have patience. It will happen if [emphasis] Trump will not deliver Ukraine on Memorandum-1.” How long will the Kremlin give Trump? the source was asked. “Several weeks, not months.”
Several hours after the source said this, Putin confirmed this at a meeting on Wednesday afternoon with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and other officials. Putin did so by ignoring the Ukrainian attacks on the five nuclear bomber airfields. Focusing only on the bridge and railway attacks in Kursk and Bryansk, he called them “a targeted strike against civilians, and for all international standards such actions are called terrorism. All crimes that were committed in relation to civilians, including women and children, on the eve of the next round the proposed peace talks in Istanbul were certainly aimed at disrupting the negotiation process. [This was a] strike on the civilian population intentionally. This only confirms our fears that the illegitimate regime in Kiev, which once it had seized power, has gradually degenerated into a terrorist organization, and its sponsors become Accomplices of terrorists.”
Lavrov responded at the meeting, also by avoiding explicit mention of the airfield strikes: “Despite all this, Vladimir Vladimirovich, and despite the new major criminal provocations in the last few days, I would consider it important not to succumb to these provocative actions, clearly aimed at disrupting negotiations and continuing to receive weapons from European countries.”
Russian retaliation, it has been decided and now announced publicly, waits on the Trump Administration to respond to the Russian terms which have been tabled in Istanbul. Read Sections I, II, and III of the Russian Memorandum here.
Over the 72 hours since the Kiev regime claimed credit for planning and executing the successful attack on Russia’s nuclear bomber fleet, Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Secretary of Defense Peter Hegseth have kept silent. Asked for Trump’s reaction, the White House press spokesman was evasive, saying instead: “Well, look, the reaction is this war needs to come to an end. And this war has been, uh, brutal from both sides. Too many people have died and the president wants this war to end at the negotiating table. And he’s made that very clear to both leaders, both publicly and privately.”
That the June 1 attack may have removed the point for Putin to continue at the negotiating table is not accepted at the White House because the Kremlin has denied it. Putin’s message for Trump was conveyed Lavrov in a telephone call to Rubio eight hours after the attacks. Rubio’s “read-out” on the conversation was the shortest in the State Department history of crisis communications with the Russians.
The White House negotiator for peace terms, General Keith Kellogg, is, until now, the only senior US official to acknowledge that the Ukrainian strike was strategic warfare. “The risk levels are going up”, Kellogg told Fox News late on June 3. “Any time you attack the [nuclear] triad, it’s not so much the damage you do to the triad, it’s not so much the damage you do to the triad itself, the delivery vehicles, the bombers, it’s the psychological impact you have… it shows Ukraine is not lying down on this. We can play this game too.”
Kellogg added an apparent qualifier to his admission the Kiev regime has not been engaging in terrorism. “We [the Ukrainians] can raise the risk levels that are, to me, basically unacceptable”.
Listen to the discussion with Nima Alkhorshid and Ray McGovern.
In the analysis of Oleg Tsarev, the leading Ukrainian opposition leader now in Crimea, the end-of-war terms presented by the Russian side at Istanbul on Monday afternoon are “’not an ultimatum at all,’ [Russian delegation head Vladimir] Medinsky has stressed. Of course, Medinsky (lead image, left) is right. This proposal is not an ultimatum, but only a requirement for the complete and unconditional surrender of Zelensky.”
On the other hand, there is the force.
Moscow military blogger reports and the Defense Ministry bulletin on the battlefield operations of Monday indicate little change in the volume of Russian drone attacks, the Ukrainian casualties, and territorial gains around the May average. In fact, Monday’s casualty rate was fractionally below Sunday’s. While the Russian Army continues its westward advance along each of the five army group directions, there has been no resumption of the Russian electric war campaign. There has also been no reply to the Ukrainian operation of June 1 striking the strategic bomber airfields at Murmansk, Irkutsk, Amur, Ryazan and Ivanovo, and the bridge and railway attacks at Kursk and Bryansk. “I hope”, commented Boris Rozhin, author of the influential Colonel Cassadmilitary blog, “that the military-political leadership will find a way to adequately respond. The blow should be painful… As long as we are waging a limited war, the enemy is waging a total war, the purpose of which is the destruction of our country and people. And no peace talks will change this. The longer it is in coming, the more unpleasant surprises.”
On the one hand, at the Çırağan Palace on June 1, there was the meeting of 12 Russian negotiators (unchanged from the first meeting) with 14 Ukrainian negotiators (minor changes ) for just over one hour. The Russian delegation leader, Vladimir Medinsky, then briefed the press for nine minutes. He followed the press briefing by Rustem Umerov (lead image, right) for the Ukrainian side, also reading from a notepaper like Medinsky. Umerov, the Ukrainian Defense Minister, was the nominal delegation leader but outranked by Andrei Yermak, the chief policymaker for Vladimir Zelensky in the presidential office. Yermak told the press: “The Russians are doing everything not to cease fire and continue the war. New sanctions are very important now. Rationality is not about Russia.”
On the other hand, before the three o’clock session Medinsky met in private with the nominal head of the Ukrainian delegation, Defense Minister Rustem Umerov, for two and a half hours. There has been no disclosure of who also attended on each side and what was said, except that, according to Tass, “this predetermined the effective course of further negotiations.”
This fatuity cannot conceal that real negotiations had taken place. But the realities on the ground had already overtaken the agenda, as leading Moscow security analyst Yevgeny Krutikov points out. Because the Russian side had already received the Ukrainian term sheet on May 28, and the Russian term sheet was drafted before the Sunday rail, bridge and airfield attacks, “those two memorandums…no longer correspond to the changed realities, but they will have to be discussed, because this was announced in advance, this agenda cannot be abandoned… so the main task of the Russian delegation is to translate the negotiations into a constructive course, if there is any possibility.”
On the one hand, in Moscow on Monday President Vladimir Putin had just one official meeting in the morning; this was with Maria Lvova-Belova to discuss Children’s Day and the welfare of orphans across the country.
On the other hand, in Washington President Donald Trump’s schedule for the day was empty except for lunch, which he ate at one o’clock. He has issued no tweet or press statement on Russia and President Putin since May 27 when Trump announced: “What Vladimir Putin doesn’t realize is that if it weren’t for me, lots of really bad things would have already happened to Russia, and I mean REALLY BAD. He’s playing with fire!”
Interpreted in the warfighting context, as it must be, Trump was saying that the US, including its European allies and the Kiev regime, is holding escalation dominance and intends to keep it. This means the firepower to decide what happens to Russia next without being deterred by anything Russia says or does. The “fire”, Trump meant, he intends to keep for the US and its allies in the European war. The “fire” doesn’t and won’t belong to Russia – Trump means to deter Putin from “playing” with it.
Calling the five airfield strikes terrorism rather than acts of war; dating the operational plan to the Biden Administration, not to Trump; minimizing the physical damage, cost, and number of Tupolev bombers hit; unravelling the logistical details from source of explosives to drone launch; and faulting Russian internal security and airbase defence – these details, comments a well-informed Moscow source, are “beside the point. The reality of this is on Putin. So what did he tell Lavrov to tell Trump through Rubio on Sunday night? What did he tell Medinsky to tell Umerov and Yermak for Zelensky on Monday afternoon? This is now simple strategic either/or and yes or no – no more operational tit for tat. Either Putin told Trump to order de-escalation, or Russia will escalate and destroy the enemy’s capabilities to fight on. This is the Oreshnik moment.”
A western military source responds: “I’ve read the [Russian] terms from beginning to end but I can’t find a correlation between them and what we’re seeing, full spectrum, on the battlefield. Either Putin releases the General Staff to assert escalation dominance now, or there is no point in continuing negotiations on the memorandums and term sheets, no point in ceasefires, no point at all in meeting Trump or letting him grandstand for peace. The discipline, if I can call it that, of the Russian warfighters is unrealistic.”
