by John Helmer, Moscow
@bears_with [2]
Presidential candidate Donald Trump has repeated his promise to end the Ukraine war the day after his re-election with a bribe for President Vladimir Putin and his two pro-American constituencies, the Central Bank of Russia and the Russian oligarchs.
Applauded by an audience of New York lawyers and businessmen on Thursday afternoon, September 5, Trump answered a question from a Sullivan & Cromwell lawyer, Rodgin Cohen [3], who asked if Trump “would strengthen or modify any of these economic sanctions, particularly Russia.”
Trump replied that sanctions “ultimately kill the dollar and kill everything the dollar represents. We have to continue to have that be the world currency…I think that if we lose the dollar as the world currency, I think that would be the equivalent of losing a war. That would make us a third world country…you’re losing Iran; you’re losing Russia.China is out there trying to get their currency to be the dominant one…I want to use sanctions as little as possible.”
Instead, Trump proposed penalty tariffs on hostile-country trade with the US. “I stopped wars with the threat of tariffs…The biggest threat you have is that you lose that [dominant] currency, and we have lost something we can never get back…. If we win [on November 5], I believe I can settle that war while I am president-elect, before I ever get into office… Sanctions have to be used very judiciously. We have things much more powerful, actually, than sanctions – we have trade [tariffs] but we cannot lose our dollar standard. Very important.” Minute 1:02-1:06 [4].
The mainstream US media have not reported what Trump said. The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and New York Post – all supporting Vice President Kamala Harris in their campaign coverage – ignored the Economic Club meeting entirely. The Hill, a Washington-based publication for political specialists, headlined its report, “5 takeaways from Trump’s economic address in New York”, but the report didn’t include the sanctions proposal [5].
For the full 80-minute video of the Trump appearance at the Economic Club, including the audience cheers and applause, click to watch [4].
Trump addressing the Economic Club of New York. At far left, front row, his questioner on sanctions, Rodgin Cohen. Source: https://www.youtube.com/ [4]
The next day, September 6, the New York Times reported Trump at a rally in Wisconsin: “though American spy agencies have assessed that the Kremlin favors Mr. Trump, the former president made light of President Vladimir V. Putin’s apparently sarcastic [sic] statement recently that he supported Ms. Harris. ‘He endorsed Kamala,’ Mr. Trump said [7]. ‘I was very offended by that. I wonder why he endorsed Kamala. No, he’s a chess player.’”
RT, the Russian state propaganda organ, did not notice Trump’s remarks on sanctions. But it reported his next-day attack on Putin for endorsing Harris, emphasizing, like the Times [8] about Putin, that Trump was speaking tongue in cheek.
Source: https://www.rt.com/ [8]
Last week in New York Trump was rehearsing presentation of his economic policies ahead of the television debate with Harris scheduled for Tuesday.
He was also repeating the “limited sanctions relief” proposal recommended [10] to Trump in April by his former staffers, US Army Lieutenant-General (retired) Keith Kellogg and Frederick Fleitz, a 19-year CIA official and race war fighter. For details of this Trump sanctions plan and the Kremlin reaction, read this [11].
In Moscow there have been several signals of Putin’s readiness to negotiate on Trump’s terms. The president’s deputy chief of staff, Sergei Kirienko, told a group of Kremlin officials and consultants working on US election propaganda in 2022 that the US sanctions [12] “don’t need to be lifted, they need to be bypassed.”
In July of this year, Putin discussed with Hungarian prime minister Victor Orban end-of-war terms for Orban to relay to Trump. Orban met with Putin in Moscow on July 5; he then met Trump on July 11.
After meeting Trump, Orban told [14] Reuters “The discussion was about the possibilities of peace." Following this meeting, Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said [15]:
“Mr. Orban did not inform Putin about these plans of his and no letters
or messages, written or verbal, were handed over.” When asked who might
act as mediators in end-of-war negotiations, Putin has identified [16]
former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett, and last week he
mentioned “our friends and partners, whom I consider to be sincerely
interested in resolving all the issues pertaining to this conflict. This
is primarily the People's Republic of China, Brazil and India.” No
mention of Orban.
For analysis of the end-of-war terms Putin was considering in July – before the Kursk attack on August 6 – read this [17].
The impact of the Kursk invasion on Putin’s operational orders to the General Staff, and the reaction of senior officials behind Dmitry Medvedev, deputy secretary of the Security Council, have been reported here [18].
Source: https://johnhelmer.net/ [18] Listen to the podcast discussions here [20] and here [21].
Details of the planning and timing of the Kursk invasion are now known
to the General Staff’s military intelligence agency GRU from advance
reconnaissance and subsequent prisoner-of-war interrogations. Since
Orban met with Vladimir Zelensky in Kiev on July 2, Zelensky (his Biden
Administration allies too) was in a position to anticipate whether a
Trump-Putin accord would be beneficial or damaging for his interests,
and he issued his Kursk operation orders accordingly.
In Vladivostok on September 5 — speaking hours before Trump in New York — Putin announced that his latest, post-Kursk formulation of end-of-war terms is the same as he claims to have accepted during the negotiations in Istanbul in March and April 2022 [22]. “Are we ready to negotiate with them? We have never refused it. However, not on the basis of some ephemeral demands but on the basis of the documents that were agreed and actually initialised in Istanbul…So, what is to be done? We just need to look for such forms and guarantees that could work somehow or to any extent. Still, the core security guarantee is the growth of the economy and military potential of the Russian Federation itself, reliable and sustainable relations with our partners and allies.”
“You’ve said that we failed to reach an agreement in Istanbul during the talks mediated by President Erdogan. But we managed to agree – that’s the trick! – as evidenced by the signature of the head of the Ukrainian delegation that initialed that document, which means that the Ukrainian side was generally satisfied with the agreements reached. The document did not come into force only because the Ukrainians were ordered not to do this. The elites in the United States and some European countries felt the desire to seek Russia’s strategic defeat. They thought they could use the opportunity to bring Russia to its knees, dismember it or whatever else they were planning to do. They thought here it is, manna from heaven for them, and they will achieve all their strategic goals that they had been craving for dozens or hundreds of years. That’s what it was all about. Boris Johnson came and said: “Don’t do it. Just fight till the last Ukrainian.” And fighting they do, to this very day…let me repeat. If indeed they express the desire to negotiate… – we have never refused to talk, but only on the basis of the agreements that were reached and initialed in Istanbul [22].”
President Putin at the Vladivostok Economic Forum on September 5 [22], with Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim (left) and China’s Vice President, Han Zheng (right).
Putin was implying that the terms of Istanbul-II might be the same as those of Istanbul-I if Trump provided new “forms and guarantees that could work somehow”. Putin was ignoring the sustained domestic opposition to Istanbul-I from the General Staff and the Security Council which persuaded the president to rescind his agreement to the initalled papers.
In Vladivostok last week, when Putin was asked about the US presidential election, he answered: “as for my preferences, it is not up to us to decide. After all, the American people will have to make their own choice. As I have already said, we favoured Mr Biden, the current President, but they took him out of the race. That said, he advised his supporters to support Ms Harris. So, we will act accordingly and lend her our support. This is the first point I wanted to make in this regard.”
“Alexandra Suvorova: Do you have to follow this kind of advice? Vladimir Putin: My second point is that she has a very contagious laughter, which shows that everything is fine for her. And if this is the case…Take Trump – no other President has ever imposed so many restrictions and sanctions against Russia. But if everything is so great for Ms Harris, maybe she would refrain from acting this way [22]?”
Twelve hours later in the New York afternoon, Trump told Putin that if he is elected on November 5, he would refrain from acting this way.
After another 48 hours, Medvedev replied to Trump, dismissing his sanctions statement as empty [24]. “Will you remove [sanctions] if you’re elected? No, of course not. For all his seeming dissent, Trump is ultimately a creature of the system. Yes, he’s an extravagant narcissist, but he’s a pragmatist. Trump, as a businessman, understands that sanctions harm the dollar’s dominance in the world. However, not enough to make a revolution in the United States and go against the anti-Russian line of the notorious Deep State, which is much stronger than any Trump. What about Harris? You don’t have to wait for any surprises. She’s inexperienced and, as her enemies claim, she’s plain stupid. She will be prepared with beautiful but meaningless speeches and tediously correct answers to the questions that she, with her characteristic laughing, will read off the teleprompter. Sanctions against the USSR lasted for the entire 20th century. They have returned in the 21st century on an unprecedented scale. For all of us, sanctions are forever.”
A Moscow source responds that “it’s risky for Putin to settle only for sanctions relief. I believe the security part of the [Istanbul-II] agreement will be written by the General Staff. This will mean demilitarization terms which will set Ukraine back three to five years until the next big conflict. NATO non-membership is settled. The territory question is for Putin to decide. He might well stop and freeze at a ceasefire line which will have moved 30 to 40 kilometres west of the Donbass by November. This means no additional regions to the four [Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, Zaporozhye] for now. With these, Putin wins peace and relief for the next few years. Four at the most, if Trump wins. Irrespective of who will be president in 2028 war will return soon after. So it’s a four-year proposition in the event Trump wins, but that is in no way a big strategic compromise for Russia. So I think that even in this scenario one has to find something cheerful.”