By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

In the new podcast from Dialogue Works, Nima Alkhorshid asks if President Donald Trump has decided to sell Tomahawk missiles to the NATO allies for attacking the Russian hinterland,  and why the allies are so keen to continue fighting the war when it is obvious the Tomahawk cannot turn defeat on the Ukraine battlefield into victory. Listen to the hour-long discussion here.  

The third question in the discussion is — what to make of Russian policy towards Palestine after the Arabs cancelled their long-prepared summit meeting in Moscow with President Vladimir Putin, scheduled for October 15, and opted instead for a summit with Trump at Sharm el-Sheikh on October 13 – from which Putin was excluded?  Answer: Russian policy contradicts the US-Israeli plan for Gaza but they won’t say so in public nor will the Arabs countenance a confrontation with Trump right now. The podcast looks again at Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s attempt to explain the Russian reason to Arab journalists.

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/sep/09/how-keir-starmers-polling-became-one-of-the-worst-in-the-west-in-charts  In the YouGov poll taken in August,   public hostility towards several selected countries was measured. Russia led the table of hostility by a large margin (87% in the UK), followed by Iran (76%), Israel (69%), China (63%), and the US (51%). The intensity of this hostility towards Russia varies from country to country, with Denmark leading (94%) and Italy trailing (69%).

To follow the details in the discussion, here is the text of the Trump 20-point Gaza plan released on September 29.    More detailed points of agreement for the first stage of the agreement for  hostage, bodies and prisoner release can be read here.  

Promising more but committing to less, here is the text of the Arab Summit declaration signed on October 13 by Turkey, Qatar, Egypt,  and the US.

Lavrov made his presentation to the Arab media on the same day.

Source: https://mid.ru/en/foreign_policy/news/2053373/ 

According to Lavrov, “it is necessary to negotiate between the two [Israel, the Palestinians], to look for a balance of interest. The great powers, of course, are called upon to use their influence on all parties to the conflict precisely in order to encourage them to search for a balance of interest. As President of Russia Vladimir Putin said the other day: ‘We see US President Donald Trump is guided by this.’…The most important thing is that no one tries to revise the fragile wording contained in Donald Trump’s plan.”  

This is a point to which US voters are indifferent.  Whether Russia joins the Palestinians to oppose the second and third parts of the Trump plan, or not, makes next to no difference to most Americans. They are also indifferent to Trump’s peacemaking media promotion, according to the polls.

US voter approval and disapproval of Trump’s performance has not changed significantly as a result of the Gaza peace negotiation, according to this compilation of polling results across the US.   On September 14, disapproval of Trump was running at 51.4%, approval at 45.8%; on October 13, it was 51.8% to 45.5% — statistically speaking, this is no change at all.

Source: https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/approval/donald-trump/approval-rating 

To date, only the CBS-YouGov national poll has been taken after Trump announced his Gaza plan on September 29. Until then disapproval for his handling of the Israeli-Palestinian war was running high.  

Source: https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/approval/donald-trump/issues/israel-palestinian

According to the CBS-YouGov poll, Trump’s domestic policies are generating far more attention and discontent, and his “peacemaking” abroad is making little impact on voter sentiment.

Source: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cbs-news-poll-shutdown-trump-democrats-republicans/ 

by Editor - Tuesday, October 14th, 2025