By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

President Vladimir Putin has given instructions to accept the Trump Administration’s demand that in exchange for lifting sanctions against Russia, US capital must return to Russia on preferential terms as soon as possible.

For the new round of negotiations in Geneva later this week, Putin has replaced Admiral Igor Kostyukov, the military intelligence chief, as head of the Russian negotiating team with Vladimir Medinsky, a lower ranking Kremlin official.  Medinsky’s instructions are that the military terms of settlement on the Ukraine battlefield, insisted on by Kostyukov at the Abu Dhabi talks, be subordinated to the terms negotiated by Kirill Dmitriev, Putin’s principal negotiator with the White House.

The change in the Kremlin line is reported in the Russian media as the “Anchorage formula” and the “Dmitriev plan”.

This has been publicly criticized by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in  coded attacks in media interviews and a speech last week to the State Duma, declaring “the reality is quite the opposite.”   Lavrov – Moscow sources say – was reflecting the consensus of the General Staff, the Foreign and Defense Ministries.   

Putin reacted through spokesman Dmitry Peskov in defence of the Anchorage formula. “The spirit of Anchorage” – Peskov told Tass – “reflects a set of mutual understandings between Russia and the United States that are capable of bringing about a breakthrough, including in the settlement between Moscow and Kiev…[and] are fundamental.”  

Faction-fighting around the Kremlin over what this means has triggered dismay among those Russian businessmen who have acquired their new economic power with takeovers of foreign assets released by the exit of US and European corporations since 2022. These Russian sources report resentment at the backing which Putin has given to Russian Central Bank (CBR) Governor Elvira Nabiullina’s continuing high-interest rate policy for Russian borrowers in parallel with Dmitriev’s plan for low-interest rate US investors to re-enter Russia, recover their former market share, and generate the appearance of an investment stimulus in the run-up to the the State Duma elections on September 20.

Nabiullina and Dmitriev have combined to persuade Putin to allow them to make these Anchorage formula concessions to US negotiators Steven Witkoff, Jared Kushner, and Joshua Gruenbaum. Their last session in Miami on January 31 also included US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.   

What makes these concessions a “fundamental breakthrough”, as Peskov calls them, has been revealed in a memorandum of conversation published on February 12 by Bloomberg. This reports a “high-level memo which was drafted this year…which was circulated among senior Russian officials”. No author, date, subject line, distribution list, or any other detail of the document has been reported by Bloomberg to authenticate it, or to indicate whether it was leaked by the Witkoff side or the Dmitriev side after the Miami talks.   

The published summary has seven points, listed without quote marks. They indicate “US participation in Russian manufacturing” in the Russian aviation sector; “allow American firms to recover past losses” in the Russian oil and gas sector, “including offshore and hard-to-recover reserves”; “preferential conditions for US companies to return to the Russian consumer market”; “cooperation on nuclear energy, including for AI ventures”; “Russia’s return to the dollar settlement system, including possibly for Russian energy transactions”; “cooperation on raw materials such as lithium, copper, nickel and platinum”; and “working together to push fossil fuels as an alternative to climate-friendly ideology and low-emission solutions that favour China and Europe”.

There was no mention of Dmitriev in the Bloomberg report.

The next day Putin’s spokesman was asked to respond. He then identified Dmitriev by name. “A group on economic issues is working. On our side, it is headed by my colleague [Kirill] Dmitriev,” Peskov said. “Indeed, issues of trade and economic cooperation – both potential and proposed – are on the agenda, and they are being discussed. We hope these discussions will continue. At the moment, the de facto situation is such that, in practice, until, let’s say, a Ukrainian settlement is reached, it is hardly possible to talk about anything concrete, and for now this is limited to discussions.”  

Peskov acknowledged to Tass that he was “comment[ing] on a Bloomberg report about a ‘Kirill Dmitriev plan’ that envisions the possibility of establishing joint ventures with the US and settlements in dollars.”  

Peskov did not deny the plan’s points which had been reported. He also explicitly endorsed one of the points. “Russia has never abandoned the dollar; the US restricted its use for transactions, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said at a briefing. ‘After all, no one abandoned the use of dollars. It was the issuing country, the United States, that restricted a number of countries’ right to use the dollar. And these countries, naturally, are using alternative payment methods, alternative forms. If the dollar is attractive, then, of course, everyone will return to using it, including alongside other currencies.’”  

Explaining Peskov’s endorsement of the Dmitriev plan, sources in Moscow believe Putin has been persuaded by Nabiullina of the CBR and other economic advisors that unless he agrees to the Dmitriev plan very soon, the Russian economy faces recession conditions before the September 20 national parliamentary elections.  Nabiullina’s refusal to lower the CBR’s key rate more than 50 basis points to 15.5%, announced on February 13, came with several warnings that Russia’s GDP is slipping below the 1% growth rate officially reported, and thus into recession. “We have revised our 2026 investment forecast slightly downwards,” Nabiullina said, “the gradual slowdown in economic activity is accompanied by labour market easing…The situation for Russian exporters is complicated by sanctions. In view of the global market trends, we have reduced our forecast of oil prices for the next three years. Accordingly, we have also adjusted the forecast of the value of Russian exports.”  

The CBR’s “baseline scenario” forecast is for GDP growth this year of between plus 1% and plus 2%. The “risk scenario” forecast is for GDP decline of between minus 6% and minus 7%. The deciding factor between the two outcomes in Nabiullina’s calculation is Trump strategy: “The risk scenario assumes escalation of international trade tensions, intensification of deglobalisation processes, import tariff increases worldwide above the levels predicted in the baseline scenario, and a sharp decline in the growth rates of the largest economies.”  

In advance of the Bloomberg disclosure of the Dmitriev plan, there has been sharp reaction to Putin’s concessions to the US from Russia’s strategic allies – China, India, and Iran.  The first signal of disagreement with Putin came from President Xi Jinping following their video conference on February 4. According to the readout from Putin’s national security adviser Yury Ushakov, “Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping also exchanged views on their countries’ relations with the United States. Their approaches almost fully coincide.”   This is diplo-speak for its opposite: it means Xi and Putin are unhappy with each other’s separate  deal with Trump.

A well-informed source in Delhi said in anonymity: “So while [Indian] nationalists are calling out the Modi government out for betrayal of multipolarity by agreeing to Trump’s demand not to buy oil from Russia or from the pirate fleet,  Putin has quietly surrendered to the Americans himself.”

A Dubai source engaged in trade payment arbitrage adds: “Even after the [Russian] Central Bank made the renminbi a reserve currency, the trade in renminbi has carried heavy costs for Russians, and many Chinese exporters simply refuse to do settlements in RMB.  With India, the Central Bank never looked at Indian rupees as a reserve currency and has been very lukewarm. Russian Big Business more so. Their only interest with India has been in making large profits in trade and nothing else. No investment, no joint production. So Putin’s backing for Nabiullina and Dmitriev means fixation on the US dollar and submission to US hegemony. By the way, this is egg on the face of every podcaster talking of BRICS currency and Russia’s Eastern Pivot as gamechangers in multipolarity.”

A Moscow source adds that the Dmitriev plan reported by Bloomberg leaves out a major Putin concession allowing the privatization of the $300 billion in CBR reserves in a US-Russian “development fund” to be directed by family members of Trump and Witkoff, alongside Dmitriev. For more details, click to read.  

“There is a crisis of decision-making around Putin now,” claims a Moscow source in a position to know. “If Putin breaks all his undertakings with the BRICS allies, especially China and India, and subordinates the military conditions for the Ukraine battlefield to ingratiating with Trump’s capital, then what is silent now will grow very loud and very soon.”

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by Editor - Sunday, February 15th, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

1. Jeffrey Epstein’s failure to develop any business or political connection to the Kremlin or Russian oligarchs.
2. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s open break with Kirill Dmitriev’s negotiating strategy with the US; indirect criticism of President Vladimir Putin.
3.Escalation of the US war at sea against Russian oil trade, sea lanes, and tankers, and the continuing delay in Putin’s orders to the Russian Navy.
4.The disagreement between Putin and President Xi Jinping.
5.The precarious balance of force deterring US and Israel from attacking Iran, and Russian assessments of the survivability of the Iranian government.

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by Editor - Friday, February 13th, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

Made public for all to see, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has just declared that escalation of the US war at sea against Russia’s trade routes and shipping fleets is the “opposite” of the Anchorage formula which President Vladimir Putin and his spokesman insist is still “fundamental [to] move the settlement process forward and allow for a breakthrough.”

The Russian Navy is on Lavrov’s side. Kirill Dmitriev and the Russian oligarchs are with Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov.

According to Admiral Alexander Moiseyev – submariner, former commander of the Black Sea and Northern Fleets, now chief of the Russian Navy – the Navy’s role must now be to “ensure maritime economic security, freedom and safety of navigation, protect economic interests, and prevent the loss of civilian vessels and growing threats to the Russian Federation.”

Equally public, if also discreet, the Kremlin national security adviser Yury Ushakov has declared that in this month’s direct talks between the Russian and Chinese security council chiefs and then between President Putin and President Xi Jinping there is a serious point of disagreement. “Their approaches almost fully coincide,” Ushakov has announced. He is pointing at the black hole where “their approaches” do not “coincide”.

In the new Dialogue Works podcast with Nima Alkhorshid, the discussion focuses on this escalation of war, and the impact it is having on all of Russia’s allies, including India and Iran, as Trump Administration strategy attempts to split and scatter them all.

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by Editor - Tuesday, February 10th, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

When you are the fastest growing tree on the street, every dog in the neighbourhood will try to lift his leg on you.

When the tree is Indian, the American dogs express their resentment. They are Steven Witkoff, Jared Kushner, Howard Lutnick, Marco Rubio, Scott Bessent, and Stephen Miller. They also tell each other privately they can’t understand the accent Indian officials use when speaking English. They don’t have the same disability when listening to Hebrew-accented Israelis.  

Lutnick has just been appointed by a decree President Donald Trump signed at the White House on Friday (February 6) as the American watchdog to control Indian import and export trade with countries Lutnick considers enemies – Russia, Iran, China, Venezuela. The decree says: “The Secretary of Commerce [Lutnick], in coordination with the Secretary of State [Rubio], the Secretary of the Treasury [Bessent], and any other senior official the Secretary of Commerce deems appropriate [Witkoff, Kushner, Miller], shall monitor whether India resumes directly or indirectly importing Russian Federation oil, as defined in section 7 of Executive Order 14329.”  

This is the sharp end of President Donald Trump’s exchange of tweets with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on February 2, announcing – Trump’s words – that “he is one of my greatest friends” and that together “our amazing relationship with India will be even stronger going forward, Prime Minister Modi and I are two people that GET THINGS DONE, something that cannot be said for most.”  

The watchdog  is one of the weapons US officials aim to wield against the Indians as the negotiations on terms for a US-Indian trade agreement – first begun in February 2025, halted by Trump seven months later, in August — have now “reached a framework for an Interim Agreement regarding reciprocal and mutually beneficial trade (Interim Agreement).”  That is the lead line in the “United States-India Joint Statement” which the White House released on February 6 following negotiations Rubio and Bessent held two days before with Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar.

In his 9-line communiqué, Rubio identified no point of agreement with Jaishankar on “critical minerals exploration, mining and processing… shared energy security goals [and] expanding bilateral and multilateral cooperation through the Quad.”   The first of Rubio’s points is the so-called Pax Silica, launched by the US with its allies against trade with China. The second of Rubio’s points means the prevention of India’s oil and other trade with Russia; the third means the militarization of the Quad states – US, Japan, Australia and India – against China and Russia in the Indian and Pacific Oceans, and the Straits of Malacca connecting them.  

Bessent’s Treasury office released no record or readout of his talks with Jaishankar on February 4. Instead, Bessent tweeted that they had “addressed the importance of securing supply chains, as well as other national and economic security issues of mutual interest.”  The Indian ministry released a single line and a hand-shake picture.  

Supply chain security was low on the priority list issued by the White House — 10^th of 12 points.  What it means is the scheme the Trump Administration started in December calling it Pax Silica: this is a plan for the US and its allies to combat Chinese and Russian systems of fabricating critical minerals into semiconductor chips and other components of advanced computers and artificial intelligence systems with dual, civilian and military, applications. The allies who have signed on so far are Australia, Greece, Israel, Japan, Qatar, South Korea, Singapore, United Arab Emirates (UAE), and UK.  Another NATO ally on the list is The Netherlands.  The domestic pressure on the Modi government to join up is coming from US-backed opposition politicians like Rahul Gandhi.  

Trump’s subordinates – Witkoff, Kushner, Lutnick, Bessent, Rubio, and Miller — remain uncertain of India and uncomfortable with Modi. The emergence last month of India as the new strategic protector of the UAE in combination with Russia has caught the Americans by surprise.  

Russian sources confirm that Witkoff’s and Kushner’s value in negotiations on the Ukraine war has dwindled. “They have been telling us Trump’s aim is to project American power to keep peace in Europe. We’ve been telling them we keep peace on our terms. Now, finally, they’ve got the message. They agree – Russia has won in Ukraine. Also, they have been bought out,” one source says in Moscow, referring to the dealmaking for US companies and bribery for the Trump family which have been presented by Kirill Dmitriev, the Kremlin’s negotiator for economic cooperation.

In their place at the Abu Dhabi negotiations with the Russian military delegation on February 4-5, and then in Muscat with the Iranians on February 6, Witkoff and Kushner have been subordinated by US commanders and military intelligence officers.

Projecting their personal aggression into flashpoints at home and abroad has been the Witkoff-Kushner strategy for escalation control, for exercising dominance everywhere at once. But it’s not a tactic which they can easily adjust or sequence — one trade war, one military front at a time — when they run into more resistance than they have anticipated; their costs go out of control;  their domestic constituencies lose confidence in them.

For the time being, Miller’s miscalculation in militarizing US cities, especially the  murders in Minneapolis, and in directing the President’s racist tweets, have stopped his ambition to succeed Rubio as National Security Adviser and forced him into invisibility.  Last year Miller had been one of the lead officials pushing the anti-India line and triggering Trump’s reversal of his personal goodwill towards Modi.   

Bessent’s and Rubio’s combination of the anti-Russia,  anti-China,  anti-India lines  has also been tempered by the resistance  their tactics have faced, not only  from Russia, Iran, China,  and India, but also from the leading Arab states, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

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by Editor - Monday, February 9th, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

In Jeffrey Epstein’s decade between 2009 and 2019 he tried ever so hard to meet the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin.

That’s to say, between Epstein’s release from prison on his Florida state conviction and sentence for procuring a minor for prostitution and for soliciting a prostitute, and then his re-arrest and imprisonment in New York on federal charges of sex trafficking of minors, he asked his staff, friends, business associates, US Government retirees,  ex-government officials from Norway, Israel, UAE, and Japan,  and Russia’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Vitaly Churkin (died in February 2017), to procure an invitation for him to meet Putin.

They succeeded in getting Epstein invitations to business promotions in Sochi, Vladivostok, and St. Petersburg, at which crowd meetings with Putin were promised. But Epstein refused.  On May 13, 2013, he claimed in an email to former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak that Putin “had asked that I meet him the same time as his economic conference. I told him no. If he wants to meet he will need to set aside real time and privacy. Let’s see what happens.”

Nothing ever did.

Epstein’s scheme was simple. He targeted one connection to make another connection he believed the first already had to the Kremlin in order to then trade the appearance of the Kremlin connection for Epstein to others willing to pay Epstein introducing, consulting or finder’s fees if the appearance of Putin’s agreement could be fabricated into money.

Epstein also needed to prove that his criminal conviction and jail time counted for nothing in international politics, investment banking, high society. Like washing money, this was reputation laundering.  

“You can explain to Putin,” Epstein told Thorbjorn Jagland, a former Norwegian prime minister and Council of Europe politician, “that there should be a sopshiticated [sic] Russian version of bitcoin, It would be the most advanced financial instrument available on a global basis”.  

This was amusingly familiar to a Russian, especially one who knew enough English to appreciate the double meaning of Epstein’s misspelling; more importantly, it exposes the naïve superiority complex he was demonstrating to Russians whose experience in laundering, transferring, and crypto-hiding amounted to multiple billions to trillions of dollars more than Epstein had ever handled. As a money launderer, Russians understood Epstein was never clever enough himself and employed no organization to work for him.  

Jagland did nothing with the email. Jagland could do nothing for himself except exaggerate the group session he had at the Kremlin in December 2016 when the Kremlin published an 8-line speech Putin gave.   Two years later, in December 2018,  there were even more officials with Jagland at the table and Putin’s communiqué was three lines shorter. Jagland’s refusal to withdraw support for European sanctions of Russia on Crimea and for prejudicial judgements of the European Court of Justice against Russia left him in a tupik – that’s Russian for dead end.  That’s where Jagland’s “connection” with Putin ended too.

Its remaining value to Jagland was to trade it to Epstein in return for an evening’s accommodation and entertainment at his Paris house. “Is it same prosedure [sic] as last time that I can stay with you,” Jagland asked Epstein.  “I promise not make noice [sic] or ruin you.”

In both directions, Jagland’s and Epstein’s, this operation was a hustle. Jagland got what he didn’t pay for; Epstein got nothing.

Epstein’s trafficking of Russian women was more successful. The women proved their exceptional beauty and their relatively low cost compared to American women, and thus they proved to be the commodity that asset hustlers like Epstein always appreciate. He bought them cheap and sold dear. Also, the Russian women have kept silent.

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by Editor - Friday, February 6th, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

Three out of four Russians expect victory in the Ukraine war. Even more of them trust the Russian Army to achieve it – the sooner the better, the voters think.

Four out of ten Russians believe that the Special Military Operation will end this year; in the same proportion, they also believe there will be a domestic economic crisis this year.

One in four Russians think it is equally possible that there will be an armed clash with the United States and NATO countries;  mass clashes on the national territory or mass public protests.

This combination of growing public impatience and pessimism about the economy has been  reported from a Levada Centre nationwide poll using face-to-face interviews conducted between January 15 and 23; the results were published on  February 3.  

In a related report of the same polling results, Levada has revealed: “The majority of Russians, 61%, believe that it is necessary now to move to peace talks, but over the past month [December 2025 poll] their share has decreased by five percentage points. At the same time, the share of those who think it is necessary to continue military operations has increased to a third of respondents (31%, an increase of 6 percentage points)…The majority of respondents (59%) believe that if achieving  peace with Ukraine is not yet possible, Russia should escalate its strikes on Ukraine, including using new types of weapons.”  

That last line is the signal that Russian voters are growing impatient with President Vladimir Putin’s reluctance to fire the Oreshnik missile for decapitation of the Ukraine’s command-and-control centres, and his readiness to give in to President Donald Trump’s requests for moratoriums and ceasefires in the electric war campaign. Voter support for Putin’s performance remains highly stable at 84% approval, compared with 87% to 84% between August and November of last year; disapproval has remained between 11% and 13%.   The difference in these numbers is within the margin for  statistical error.

Unlike Putin, Russian voters want Generals Winter and Cholera to seize control of Kiev and Lvov sooner rather than later.

An analysis of a related Levada dataset by a Harvard University think tank has confirmed the conclusion that “significant parts of the Russian public could support escalation vis-à-vis Ukraine if peace remains out of reach. While a majority still favours negotiations over immediate military continuation, [there is]  growing support for more force, and a slight rise in support of the armed forces. Taken together, they indicate a possible hardening of Russians’ attitudes toward the conflict…Together, these trends point to possible further normalization of a long war and reduced public appetite for compromise in Russia.”  

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by Editor - Friday, February 6th, 2026
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The yanko and jingo-centric podcasters are being overtaken by the political realism of events. This is forcing a change of calculation in how the apparently powerless can and do defeat the apparently omnipotent without beating their chests, flogging their backs, or putting their adversaries’ heads in baskets.

Bribery of President Donald Trump, his sons and son-in-law, and their associates is also proving its value as a warfighting tactic. Those Americans will always retreat from the front to their counting houses so long as they are persuaded there will be more money to count if they go backwards rather than forwards.

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by Editor - Wednesday, February 4th, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

Nuri al-Said, the long-serving but ill-fated Iraqi prime minister of the 1940s and 1950s, once said that you can rent an Arab but you can’t buy him.

On July 15, 1958, he ended up shot by an Iraqi Army coup, buried, dug up, and his corpse mutilated as it was dragged through the streets of Baghdad. His end confirmed his truth.

President Vladimir Putin knows better than most that the Nuri Pasha maxim applies to American government officials up to and including the presidents — except that they don’t honour their promises, demand more bribes, and survive intact to die in bed (most of them).  

Still, Putin has delegated Kirill Dmitriev (lead image left), a US-educated and trained investment banker, to deliver the bribes (left, right) to President Donald Trump (extreme right) and his go-betweens,  and return with what Dmitriev claims to be their promises for terms of settlement of the Ukraine war, the lifting of sanctions, and the release of about $300 billion in Central Bank of Russia (CBR) funds frozen and part-confiscated over the past four years.

Putin has done this so that he can ask the General Staff, the intelligence services, and the Security Council what they make of the deal by a show of thumbs up, thumbs down, after Dmitriev presents the costs and benefits of his proposal and the Trump administration’s response. Dmitriev was sent back to Miami last weekend.

When he returned to report to the Kremlin, spokesman Dmitry Peskov said “there will be no details. You’ve heard the conceptual assessments from both sides, from Dmitriev and from Witkoff. In general, these were quite positive and constructive talks.”  Witkoff had tweeted the adjectives, “productive and constructive”.  

Witkoff also revealed that several Americans were with him at the meeting with Dmitriev: US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Jared Kushner and Joshua Gruenbaum.   This is the first time Putin has authorized a single representative to meet a full US delegation. On January 22, in addition to Witkoff and Dmitriev, Kushner and Gruenbaum were matched at the Kremlin by Putin himself and Yury Ushakov, the Kremlin national security advisor.  

Bessent’s attendance in Miami signals the talks with Dmitriev covered terms for ending the US sanctions on Russian trade and assets, including the secondary sanctions on Indian and Chinese purchases of Russian oil. Bessent’s press office at the US Treasury has remained silent;  so too his Twitter stream.  

At the same time, Bessent has continued to sharpen sanctions against Iran, tweeting “the regime has chosen to squander what remains of the nation’s oil revenues on nuclear weapons development, missiles, and terrorist proxies around the world. President Trump stands with the people of Iran and has ordered Treasury to sanction members of the regime.  Treasury will continue to target Iranian networks and corrupt elites that enrich themselves at the expense of the Iranian people.  This includes the regime’s attempts to exploit digital assets to evade sanctions and finance cybercriminal operations.  Like rats on a sinking ship, the regime is frantically wiring funds stolen from Iranian families to banks and financial institutions around the world.  Rest assured. Treasury will act.”  

Bessent’s public attack at supper time on January 30 on “networks and corrupt elites” was not what he said privately to Dmitriev, representing Russian business networks and elites,  when they met at breakfast the next day. The selective sanctions relief which Dmitriev has been asking for, and the bribes he has been offering, have been understood in Moscow for a year now.  But criticism of this line and of Dmitriev’s role which has been gathering force in the Russian Security Council and State Duma has so far been kept behind closed doors and off the record.

A Moscow source in a position to know says Dmitriev is now proposing to reclaim the $300 billion of CBR reserves and place them in an international fund to be jointly managed by Dmitriev, Trump’s sons and son-in-law, and Witkoff’s sons.  After some small allocations have been made to Trump’s Gaza redevelopment and to the post-armistice Ukrainian regime, most of the money would then be invested in joint US and Russian projects whose disbursement would legalize the American bribe-taking, and add Russian takers as well.

“Look,” the source says: “Trump must get the money out of the European repositories. From our point of view, the increase in value of the CBR’s gold reserves has almost overtaken the value of the frozen cash reserves.  This scheme takes the money out of the hands of [Central Bank Governor Elvira] Nabiullina: no one wants her to get her hands back on the money. So what’s wrong with investing the money better than she has done?  Everybody gets rich.”

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by Editor - Wednesday, February 4th, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

Realism in politics is M +V+ B = P.

That’s to say: Money plus Votes plus Bullets equal Power.  The equation is simple arithmetic – everyone can count.  

But almost everyone can count on missing one or more of the variables —  usually all three of them —  so power is very unequally distributed in most countries, most times, most lives. It is suffered much more than it is enjoyed: –M + –V + –B = –P.  Minus P is powerlessness. That’s the state of being a victim, vassal, slave.

This P power is not the kind you draw from a rally (podcast) when a Billy Graham-type tells you he will fill you full of the P of conviction on condition you believe in him and pay him a cash subscription. You can trust him to give you your money’s worth because, he says,  he is a veteran of the CIA or US Army (officer not rank), or a Chicago professor,  or a Pulitzer Prize winner from New York, or a high-rating ex-employee of Fox News. In the US, these Billy Graham-types make fortunes selling Minus P as PH – Payoff in Heaven.   

In politics, might not only makes right; it also makes righteousness. What can happen, therefore, as two adversaries at war with each other test when PH ≥ P— that’s when their righteousness in Heaven is greater than their power on Earth. This is the war between Supreme Leader Donald Trump and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, between the US and Iran.

According to Trump in a tweet of June 15, 2025, “we know exactly where the so-called ‘Supreme Leader’ is hiding. He is an easy target, but is safe there – We are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now.”  Twelve days later, on June 27, 2025, Trump claimed: “I knew EXACTLY where he [Khamenei] was sheltered, and would not let Israel, or the U.S. Armed Forces, by far the Greatest and Most Powerful in the World, terminate his life. I SAVED HIM FROM A VERY UGLY AND IGNOMINIOUS DEATH, and he does not have to say, ‘THANK YOU, PRESIDENT TRUMP!’”  

Khamenei tweeted in reply: “The US President threatens us. With his absurd rhetoric, he demands that the Iranian people surrender to him. They should make threats against those who are afraid of being threatened. The Iranian nation isn’t frightened by such threats.”   “Trump should know”, Khamenei said this month, after the failure of the internal riots, “that  world tyrants such as Pharaoh, Nimrod, Reza Shah and Mohammad Reza were brought down at the peak of their arrogance. He too will be brought down”.   “The US  had made extensive preparations to orchestrate this sedition. This sedition was a prelude to even bigger schemes. The Iranian nation defeated the US.”  

There is an arithmetic of force and firepower ratios on each side – the number of US missiles that can be fired before the ships must sail away for reloads; the number of Iranian drones and missiles required to overwhelm US defences or deter approaching aircraft; the survivability of the launching platforms; the number of casualties in a 2-day war, a 7-day war, a protracted war. This is the arithmetic of the B, bullets.

Then there is the arithmetic of the V, votes at the US midterm elections, and the M, money inflation at gas stations across the US. Trump is counting on his B+ adding to his V and keeping his M from rising sharply. Khamenei is counting on neutralizing Trump’s B to zero and his V and M to minus by closing the Strait of Hormuz and surviving US strikes for long enough to project and protract the war into the US itself.

Election Day in the US falls on November 3; the summer driving season starts on Memorial Day, May 25. Khamenei’s calculation is to protract the P equation for less than sixteen weeks – or convince the money, vote and bullet counters in Washington in advance that this is what he can  do.  Not even the Billy Graham-type PH zealots in the White House are confident he can be destroyed before then.

With Lieutenant General (retd) P R Shankar, view or listen to the new Gunners Shot podcast for the political realism needed for now.  

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by Editor - Sunday, February 1st, 2026
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

On January 27 President Donald Trump (lead image) announced: “In June, we obliterated Iran’s nuclear capacity in Operation Midnight Hammer. You saw that. People have been waiting for 22 years to do that, and we were right at the end. They were about a month away from having a nuclear weapon. We had to do it. And just — and by the way, there’s another beautiful armada floating beautifully toward Iran right now, so we’ll see.”

The contradiction between the “obliteration” of the Iran threat seven months ago and the resumption of Trump’s attack now has drawn no Kremlin response.

On January 13, the Foreign Ministry condemned the regime change operation by the US then under way inside Iran. “Hostile external forces,” declared Maria Zakharova, the Ministry spokesman, “are seeking to exploit the mounting public tension to destabilise and undermine the Iranian state…We unequivocally condemn the subversive external interference in Iran’s internal political processes… The threats emanating from Washington regarding further military strikes against the Islamic Republic are categorically unacceptable.”  

As the internal regime change operation was defeated, Trump has retaliated with the escalation of his military strike capacity outside Iran’s borders.

The Iranian response to this is to threaten the strategy long understood in Washington to be the killer of US presidents at election time – blood and oil.  That is the combination of sharply rising US battle casualties and spikes in the price of crude oil and retail gasoline at the pump ahead of mid-term and presidential elections.

“A limited [US] strike is an illusion”, announced Ali Shamkani, representative of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on Iran’s equivalent of the US National Security Council or the Russian Security Council.   “Any military action by America, of any kind and at any level,” Shamkani has said, “will be considered the start of a war, and the response will be immediate, comprehensive, and unprecedented, directed at the aggressor, at the heart of Tel Aviv, and at all who support the aggressor.”  Shamkani posted this on the evening of Wednesday, January 28.  

Two days later, Friday January 30, Ali Larijani, went to Moscow and presented the full Iranian war plan to President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin. Larijani, a brigadier general in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), is the current Secretary of the Iranian Security Council.

This was the Kremlin sequence: Putin’s telephone calls to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu  and then Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on January 16; a summit meeting at the Kremlin with the UAE ruler, Mohammed bin Zayed al Nahyan (MBZ),  on January 29;  and then the  January 30 meeting with Larijani.  The Kremlin record reveals no photograph of the Larijani meeting and no communiqué of their agenda or the participation in the talks of military officers from the Russian and Iranian sides.   

Putin had been recorded as telling Netanyahu a fortnight ago that he was “making mediation efforts and promoting a constructive dialogue involving all concerned parties.” .  Two hours later, the communiqué reported Putin telling Pezeshkian: “Russia and Iran unanimously and consistently support deescalating the tensions — both surrounding Iran and in the region as a whole — as soon as possible and resolving any emerging issues via exclusively political and diplomatic means. The leaders confirmed their mutual commitment to further strengthening the strategic partnership between Russia and Iran.”  

What military assistance Russia is providing, according to the Russia-Iran treaty of last year,  to counter US and Israeli attack was the key issue on the table with Larijani; it remains secret.

There have been Iranian media reports of a joint live-fire naval exercise in the Sea of Oman engaging Iranian, Russian and Chinese vessels between now and February 2. However, there has been no public confirmation from Moscow or Beijing of the participation of Russian and Chinese naval units.   

President Xi Jinping’s ongoing purge of the military has left no Chinese general or admiral with combat experience and unstable command-control relations between Xi’s politburo and the Central Military Commission. This disruption of war readiness has been confirmed indirectly in the only official reaction to Trump’s armada threat against Iran. According to Guo Jiakun, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, on January 23: “China hopes that Iran will maintain national stability and that all parties will cherish peace, exercise restraint, and resolve differences through dialogue.”  

Chinese hope has never been recorded as so wistful and wishful.  In international politics, wistful is retrospection over power which failed to strike target; wishful is the forward plan for hitting target in the untested future.  

The US Government has also been expressing wishful thinking. Two weeks ago, the US Energy Information Administration published its prediction of no disruption of the international oil market in the coming months;  no Hormuz Strait spike in the oil price now;  and falling retail gasoline prices by the time the American summer driving season begins, along with the Congressional election campaign. “We expect oil prices will decline in 2026, as global oil production exceeds global oil demand, causing oil inventories to rise. Global inventories continue increasing into 2027, albeit at a slower pace. We forecast the Brent crude oil price will average $56 per barrel (b) in 2026, 19% less than in 2025, then average $54/b in 2027…We forecast U.S. gasoline prices in 2026 will average just over $2.90 per gallon (gal), a decrease of nearly 20 cents/gal from 2025. In 2027, we forecast prices to remain mostly flat at an annual average of just over $2.90/gal.”  

The crude oil futures market is indicating a very different expectation for the Brent and West Texas Intermediate (WTI) price markers. Since January 1, Brent is up 19%; WTI up 21%.  

The Kremlin has now sponsored an unusual warning, published yesterday as an editorial in Vzglyad, the Kremlin-backed security analysis platform. This is a warning to Trump to call off his bluff and to Khamenei not to call it.  

(more…)

by Editor - Saturday, January 31st, 2026
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