Trump and a raft of pundits and US intelligence officials continue to operate on a set of false assumptions and delusional beliefs about Russia and the war in Ukraine. Sy Hersh is out with a new article, and the quotes from his source (or sources) in the Trump administration illustrate this.
The article is titled, WILL TRUMP MEET PUTIN? As of now, the answer is, yes. The meeting is set for next Friday in Alaska. I want to focus on four paragraphs from Sy’s piece that illustrate the continued failure of the West to understand what Putin means by “root causes.” Here are the choice quotes from Sy’s article:
Putin talks to Witkoff because he understands he’s got power and speaks for the boss,” a knowledgeable US official told me. He said it was Witkoff who understood that the way to get Putin’s attention was to cut off his access to the oil markets in India and China by increasing the US secondary tariffs on both buyers. Interest rates in Russia have risen to 18 percent and the economy, hit hard by the cost of the ongoing war, is limping along in part due to Putin’s ability to keep on selling government bonds to Russian banks.
The official told me that in essence Witkoff “has said to Putin: You need the oil money and we can control the market. . . .
The official’s point was that Trump, along with many elsewhere in the world, views settling the war in Ukraine as an acknowledgement that Russia has seized large chunks of Ukraine and any settlement would involve agreements about new international borders. In other words, it has been just another territorial war. Early in Trump’s second presidency, there was a one-sided hope from Washington that Putin would join him in real estate investments and rare earth mineral extraction in the Ukrainian territories seized by Russia. Unless there is a last-minute breakthrough in diplomacy, such US investments are off the table.
I was told by the US official and other experts on the war that Putin and those in his government want more than a big chunk of Ukraine. They want to keep Ukraine demilitarized, out of Western hands, and especially out of NATO. Put another way, they want a guarantee that Ukraine will never be a serious threat to Russia again. President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine wants to join NATO and to remain in power, but he is playing a losing hand in the war and has been slipping in recent polling
Here is the first flawed assumption: “It has been just another territorial war.” Russia does not need the territory because it already is a massive land mass that covers 11 time zones. This war was provoked by NATO expansion to the east. That’s the point that Trump and his team still do not grasp. The draft treaty that Putin presented to Biden in December 2021 was all about pushing NATO away from Russia’s borders, which explains one of Putin’s goals for the Special Military Operation (SMO)… Demilitarization.
Then there is the false belief that the US can cut off Russia’s access to the oil markets in China and India:
The official told me that in essence Witkoff “has said to Putin: You need the oil money and we can control the market. . . .
Since Trump announced his tariffs against China and India, both governments have rejected the Trump tariffs as irresponsible interference with their economies, and they are continuing to buy oil from Russia. If Witkoff is so dumb as to believe that was a credible threat for Putin, then Trump is being set up for failure when he meets with Putin.
Sy, who is not an economist, gets it completely wrong when he suggests that Russia’s economy is in trouble because Russian interest rates:
have risen to 18 percent and the economy, hit hard by the cost of the ongoing war, is limping along in part due to Putin’s ability to keep on selling government bonds to Russian banks.
Wrong. Russia’s central banker raised the interest rates to 21% in October 2024 in order to combat inflation. During the 2nd quarter, the rate was dropped to 20%, followed by another cut to 18% in the 3rd quarter. This was sound fiscal policy, which achieved the goal of slowing the growth of Russia’s economy to 1.4% in the second quarter. The Russian central bank is going to make addition cuts, probably in September, and is projecting that the economy will grow by 3% in the fourth quarter. Here again, Sy is being fed a line of Western bullsh*t that is still predicated on the assumption that Russia is a gas station masquerading as a country.
Sy’s source finally gets one thing right: “They want to keep Ukraine demilitarized, out of Western hands, and especially out of NATO.” Which brings me to the title of my article. Yesterday’s White House ceremony that featured the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan signing an agreement to end their conflict, with Armenia coughing up major territorial concessions, is just an extension of the plan the US tried to execute against Russia using Ukraine as a proxy.
While not included in the agreement, Armenia reportedly plans to withdraw from CSTO by early 2026. (The CSTO is the Russian founded military alliance in Eurasia consisting of six post-Soviet states: Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Tajikistan.) Moreover, the US also reportedly secretly promised NATO membership to Armenia and Azerbaijan for signing on to this deal, which would give NATO access to the Caspian Sea by virtue of the Zangezur corridor.
And here is the kicker (if true): Some telegram channels claim that US troops are set to be deployed in Armenia within the next 48 hours. In other words, rather than ratchet down tensions and reduce the threat of NATO, Trump is signing off on a plan to continue the NATO encirclement of Russia. So yes, Trump is setting the stage for World War 3 if he is serious about adding Armenia and Azerbaijan to NATO.
Reprinted with permission from Sonar21.
This article originally from the Ron Paul Institute.
