by John Helmer, Moscow
@bears_with
There is a good reason that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, and it has nothing to do with heredity, dendrology, or gravity. The reason is that trees understand the further away the apple is dropped, the easier it is to steal.
This is understood by the oligarchs who compose influential factions around President Donald Trump in Washington and President Vladimir Putin in Moscow. In the end-of-war negotiations Trump has tweeted to be “close to a deal” on April 23, again on April 25, then “very close to a deal” on April 26, the oligarch representative and deal negotiator for the US side is Steven Witkoff; his counterpart on the Russian side is Kirill Dmitriev.
It cannot be Trump’s ambition to emulate predecessor George Washington’s truth-telling in the story of his hatchet and the apple (cherry) tree. This is because from his boyhood Trump was encouraged by his father to lie in order to get the better of his brothers and sisters for their father’s favour.
Instead, it is Trump’s ambition — also his innovation in presidential politics — to adapt the century-old US empire’s war for hegemony in Europe against Russia by compelling both his allies in the war (Germany first of all, then France, Poland, UK), and his war targets (Russia and the Ukraine), to pay him for protection against the enemy he claims to be making peace with. A short-term armistice or truce on the Ukraine border, accompanied by a long-term war plan that preserves the US protectorate in Europe, at the Europeans’ expense, serves the president’s personal ambition, and also the strategy which has been written for him by his advisors.
“A good day in talks and meetings with Russia and Ukraine,” Trump tweeted a few hours after Witkoff had left the Kremlin on Friday afternoon. “They are very close to a deal, and the two sides should now meet, at very high levels, to ‘finish it off.’ Most of the major points are agreed to. Stop the bloodshed, NOW. We will be wherever is necessary to help facilitate the END to this cruel and senseless war!”
This was false, as the texts of the US end-of-war terms and of the Anglo-French and German term sheet, released by Reuters on April 25, reveal.
A text of the Ukrainian term sheet, published by the New York Times later the same day, adds provisions which “could be nonstarters for the Kremlin”, the newspaper reports: “there would be no restrictions on the size of the Ukrainian military, ‘a European security contingent’ backed by the United States would be deployed on Ukrainian territory to guarantee security, and frozen Russian assets would be used to repair damage in Ukraine caused during the war…Ukraine’s accession to NATO depends on consensus among the Alliance’s members….Territorial issues could be discussed after the full and unconditional cease-fire.”
Term sheets are bids, they are not deals. In making the former appear to be the latter, Trump’s appeal is to those who believe they can all shake Trump’s war-making money tree and make money for themselves in the short run. This is standard dendrology – trees usually fruit only once in a season.
The Dmitriev faction in Russia, says a Moscow source, believes Putin should give Trump a short-term armistice of forces in place in the Ukraine in exchange for the lifting of sanctions against Russian reserves, current trade and investment, and resumption of the export of oligarch capital which Putin and his former Finance Minister and candidate prime minister Alexei Kudrin, and Central Bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina have directed since Putin’s term began. “It’s a perfect three year pause in fighting,” the source commented following Witkoff’s meeting at the Kremlin on Friday with Putin, Dmitriev and Yury Ushakov, Putin’s assistant. “Come 2028, if Trump loses, the war will start all over again, but the Russians will get it right. For now it’s very obvious Trump has no one he trusts in CIA, State and Pentagon to implement his terms. So Putin will get the most he can and do the deal. He should.”
A second Russian source confirms: “I believe a bad deal is coming, but we are clear-eyed about this. There will be a ceasefire, but how long it lasts, who can tell. This isn’t a sell-out. We have no illusions about the reliability of American agreements or Trump’s stability. Putin is telling the General Staff: we’ve got to sign something — prepare for war. He’s also got to convince Russians of this for the longer term. In this future, the pre-war oligarchs haven’t the power of the new military-industrial complex. They will profit by going along. They realize that if they don’t, Putin’s successor is coming, and he won’t be as friendly to them.”
Kremlin meeting on Friday, April 25, left to right: US interpreter, Steven Witkoff, President Putin, Yury Ushakov, Russian interpreter, Kirill Dmitriev.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Defense Minister Andrei Belousov, and General Staff chief General Valery Gerasimov were not present. This means that political and military details were not negotiated. As Lavrov told a US television interviewer ahead of the meeting, “we are moving in the right direction. We are ready to negotiate a deal, but there are some points, elements of this deal which need to be fine-tuned. We are busy with this exact process. There are several signs that we are moving in the right direction; first of all, because President Trump is probably the only leader on earth who recognizes the root causes of this situation.”
Lavrov’s last remark was false, but it was a compliment the Russian side believes Trump wants to hear.
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gI--kj5B3YU “Since the President of the United States did not spell out the elements of this deal, it is not appropriate for me to do this.”
All three term papers – American, European, and Ukrainian – require Putin to agree to halt the Russian military advance westward; stop all air raids and the electric war campaign; and give up substantial parts of the regions of Kherson, Zaporozhye, and Donetsk which have been annexed legally but not yet occupied militarily. There would be no demilitarized zone to secure this territory or the Russian hinterland from resumption of Ukrainian attack; no limit on the resupply and rearmament of the Ukrainian military by the US and NATO allies; no denazification and change of Vladimir Zelensky’s regime in Kiev; and no bar to deployment of German, French and British military forces, long-range weapons and fortifications east of the Dnieper River.
Source: https://www.reuters.com/
Source: https://www.reuters.com
Source: https://www.reuters.com/
The American offer, according to the Reuters text, is that “Ukraine [is] to be fully reconstructed and compensated financially. Sanctions on Russia resulting from this conflict since 2014 will be removed. US-Russian economic cooperation [will commence] on energy and other industrial sectors.” The European offer modifies these terms by requiring the Ukraine reconstruction to be financed “through Russian sovereign assets that will remain frozen until Russia compensates damage to Ukraine. US sanctions imposed on Russia since 2014 may be subject to gradual easing after a sustainable peace is achieved and subject to resumption in the event of a breach of the peace agreement (snapback)”.
The difference between the Reuters publication of the term papers and the earlier Financial Times (FT) report headlined “Vladimir Putin offers to halt Ukraine invasion along current front line” is that Reuters reported no source to elaborate on the Russian term sheet, and found no confirmation that Putin has agreed to the US term sheet.
The FT’s sources for its claim were “three people familiar with the matter” speaking to two reporters in Berlin and Brussels, Max Seddon and Henry Foy. In the past their only Russian sources have been the oligarchs Oleg Deripaska and Alisher Usmanov, and the now dismissed Kudrin.
Witkoff has made no statement nor posted a tweet on his Kremlin meeting. However, Secretary of State Marco Rubio tweeted just before the meeting that there had been no “conversations about lifting sanctions against Russia as part of a deal with Ukraine.”
Source: https://x.com/SecRubio/status/1915237747809206618
The Kremlin communiqué which followed the Witkoff meeting on Friday afternoon said no more than that the meeting had taken place; Witkoff was alone with his translator. Lavrov has said he won’t disclose details. “Unlike some others, we never discuss publicly what the talks are about, otherwise the talks will not be serious.”
Ushakov said: “this conversation allowed Russia and the United States to further bring their positions closer together, not only on Ukraine but also on a number of other international issues. As for the Ukrainian crisis itself, the discussion focused in particular on the possibility of resuming direct negotiations between representatives of the Russian Federation and Ukraine.”
No Russian source says privately, and no Russian will argue in print that Putin is offering Trump a “sell out”, as Paul Craig Roberts, a senior US Treasury official in the Reagan Administration, has concluded. “Putin had so badly mishandled the Ukraine conflict that his only choice was surrender or military victory, a victory he has been avoiding for more than three years.” Referring to the Witkoff term sheet, Roberts adds: “This is what the Russian oligarchs and Atlanticist Integrationists, who have never supported the war, want. How the Russia’s military feels about victory being shoved aside by a negotiated settlement is unknown. But is it a settlement?…As we can see from the facts, only two of the four parties agree to the deal. Moreover, even if there is a deal, in the absence of de jure recognition of Russia’s territorial claims, the deal amounts to little more than kicking the can down the road.”
The Russian source who has long been in a position to know explains there are good reasons for Russian strategy to take a pause. “At this point in time, we have no reason to want to fight a US president who says he doesn’t want to fight Russians. We also know he can’t lift the sanctions legally without Congress. But he can use his executive orders to stop enforcement, and that’s a break we can use to our advantage, as well to the benefit of the Chinese and Indians. We understand a bigger war is coming. The military needs two to three years of preparations, improvements, reorganization. Also, Putin needs to prove he has tried peace with the Americans, and they can’t be trusted. Russians have no illusions about the stability of US politics. This is a deal that is as stable as Trump’s mind.”
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