By Larry Johnson, Substack, 3/30/25

Larry Johnson is Managing Partner of BERG Associates, and former CIA Officer and State Department Counter Terrorism official.

The New York Times article discussed below can be found here.

Adam Entous of the New York Times just published a lengthy article that pretends to tell the true history of the war in Ukraine. I can summarize the massive story in one sentence — Ukraine would have destroyed the weak, incompetent Russians if only the Ukrainian generals had followed the guidance from the US military. If you’re looking for a signal that the war in Ukraine is on its last legs, this article is it. This is a ridiculous attempt to burnish the image of the Pentagon and US European Command as strategic and tactical geniuses who could have beaten the Russians if only those damn Ukrainians had followed their advice.

The article opens with an admission — this should be no surprise to Russia — that the US was actively and heavily involved in equipping Ukraine with weapons, intelligence and plans to attack and kill Russians:

“On a spring morning two months after Vladimir Putin’s invading armies marched into Ukraine, a convoy of unmarked cars slid up to a Kyiv street corner and collected two middle-aged men in civilian clothes. . . . The passengers were top Ukrainian generals. Their destination was Clay Kaserne, the headquarters of U.S. Army Europe and Africa in Wiesbaden, Germany. Their mission was to help forge what would become one of the most closely guarded secrets of the war in Ukraine. . . . Its evolution and inner workings visible to only a small circle of American and allied officials, that partnership of intelligence, strategy, planning and technology would become the secret weapon in what the Biden administration framed as its effort to both rescue Ukraine and protect the threatened post-World War II order.”

Entous appears to have another objective in mind with his article — blame Trump.

“Today that order — along with Ukraine’s defense of its land — teeters on a knife edge, as President Trump seeks rapprochement with Mr. Putin and vows to bring the war to a close. . . . Now, with negotiations beginning, the American president has baselessly blamed the Ukrainians for starting the war, pressured them to forfeit much of their mineral wealth and asked the Ukrainians to agree to a cease-fire without a promise of concrete American security guarantees — a peace with no certainty of continued peace.”

Entous also makes sure to give the United States credit for any and all successes, whether real or not, while blaming Generals Zaluzhnyi and Syrsky for the failures. “Ain’t our fault the Ukrainians fucked this up,” is the implied lament that permeates the article. We, the US, were the backbone don’t cha know:

“But a New York Times investigation reveals that America was woven into the war far more intimately and broadly than previously understood. At critical moments, the partnership was the backbone of Ukrainian military operations that, by U.S. counts, have killed or wounded more than 700,000 Russian soldiers. (Ukraine has put its casualty toll at 435,000.) Side by side in Wiesbaden’s mission command center, American and Ukrainian officers planned Kyiv’s counteroffensives. A vast American intelligence-collection effort both guided big-picture battle strategy and funneled precise targeting information down to Ukrainian soldiers in the field.”

In the following passage, you have another example of the blame game as well as the specious claim that Russia was suffering incomprehensible losses, only to be saved by fractious politics in Kiev:

“As the Ukrainians won greater autonomy in the partnership, they increasingly kept their intentions secret. They were perennially angered that the Americans couldn’t, or wouldn’t, give them all of the weapons and other equipment they wanted. The Americans, in turn, were angered by what they saw as the Ukrainians’ unreasonable demands, and by their reluctance to take politically risky steps to bolster their vastly outnumbered forces.

“On a tactical level, the partnership yielded triumph upon triumph. Yet at arguably the pivotal moment of the war — in mid-2023, as the Ukrainians mounted a counteroffensive to build victorious momentum after the first year’s successes — the strategy devised in Wiesbaden fell victim to the fractious internal politics of Ukraine: The president, Volodymyr Zelensky, versus his military chief (and potential electoral rival), and the military chief versus his headstrong subordinate commander. When Mr. Zelensky sided with the subordinate, the Ukrainians poured vast complements of men and resources into a finally futile campaign to recapture the devastated city of Bakhmut. Within months, the entire counteroffensive ended in stillborn failure.”

The Entous article, taken as a whole, celebrates the Ukrainian illusory victories while ignoring the facts about Russia’s actual military conquests. Not one word about Russia’s taking of Mariupol early in the war. Not one word about the small size of Russia’s initial force in February 2022, which was dwarfed by Ukraine. Not one word about Russia’s rejuvenated defense industry cranking out artillery, artillery shells, tanks, armored vehicles and drones. Nope. Russia is just a weak nation that Ukraine had on the ropes, and Ukraine failed to administer the coup de grace advocated by the same US military leaders who were driven out of Afghanistan.

While Entous admits that Biden and his team repeatedly crossed lines they had previously refused to penetrate, he fails to explain that Russian successes on the battlefield were the primary reason for Biden’s desperate moves.

‘Time and again, the Biden administration authorized clandestine operations it had previously prohibited. American military advisers were dispatched to Kyiv and later allowed to travel closer to the fighting. Military and C.I.A. officers in Wiesbaden helped plan and support a campaign of Ukrainian strikes in Russian-annexed Crimea. Finally, the military and then the C.I.A. received the green light to enable pinpoint strikes deep inside Russia itself.”

Entous also falsely reports the reason for Russia’s withdrawal of forces from Kiev in March of 2022. He insists the Ukrainians had fought Russia to a standstill. Yet, we now know, that Putin ordered the withdrawal of forces as a sign of good faith as part of the Istanbul peace negotiations, which were subsequently sabotaged by the United States and our blond-haired bitch, Boris Johnson.

“In March (2022), their assault on Kyiv stalling, the Russians reoriented their ambitions, and their war plan, surging additional forces east and south — a logistical feat the Americans thought would take months. It took two and a half weeks.”

By the summer of 2022, the United States military started playing word games. Even though USEUCOM was providing Ukraine with targeting intel that was used to hit Russian targets, the US military leaders opted to employ euphemisms.

“Inside the U.S. European Command, this process gave rise to a fine but fraught linguistic debate: Given the delicacy of the mission, was it unduly provocative to call targets “targets”?

“Some officers thought “targets” was appropriate. Others called them “intel tippers,” because the Russians were often moving and the information would need verification on the ground.

“The debate was settled by Maj. Gen. Timothy D. Brown, European Command’s intelligence chief: The locations of Russian forces would be “points of interest.” Intelligence on airborne threats would be “tracks of interest.”

Entous’ article, after a long introduction, discusses Ukraine’s war in four separate sections. In Part 3 –The Best-Laid Plans — Entous recounts Ukraine’s failed counteroffensive in June of 2023, without calling it a failure. He tries to claim it as a lopsided victory, at least in Bakhmut, because Russia allegedly suffered more casualties than Ukraine, even though Russia enjoyed a decisive advantage in artillery and drones. At no point does Entous blame the US generals, who Entous claims planned the counteroffensive, for authorizing a plan that did not provide attacking Ukrainian troops with air cover.

“Though counts vary wildly, there is little question that the Russians’ casualties — in the tens of thousands — far outstripped the Ukrainians’. Yet General Syrsky never did recapture Bakhmut, never did advance toward Luhansk. And while the Russians rebuilt their brigades and soldiered on in the east, the Ukrainians had no such easy source of recruits. (Mr. Prigozhin pulled his rebels back before reaching Moscow; two months later, he died in a plane crash that American intelligence believed had the hallmarks of a Kremlin-sponsored assassination.)”

Entous, in the closing paragraphs of Part 3, grudgingly admits the counteroffensive was a clusterfuck, but refuses to assign any blame to the incredible US military leaders.

“But to another senior Ukrainian official, “The real reason why we were not successful was because an improper number of forces were assigned to execute the plan.”

“Either way, for the partners, the counteroffensive’s devastating outcome left bruised feelings on both sides. “The important relationships were maintained,” said Ms. Wallander, the Pentagon official. “But it was no longer the inspired and trusting brotherhood of 2022 and early 2023.”

You really should try to read the entire piece (I’ve linked to it above), but wear your hip waders, you’ll be walking through a massive pile of Male Bovine Excrement, aka BS.

***

Matt Taibbi: Biden Lied About Everything, Including Nuclear Risk, During Ukraine Operation (Excerpt)

By Matt Taibbi, Substack, 3/31/25

…The [New York Times] piece is also an extraordinarily comprehensive betrayal of Zelensky and Ukraine, exponentially worse than the “dressing down” by Trump. Authored by longtime veteran of controversial intel pieces Adam Entous, it’s sourced to 300 American and European officials who seem to be responding to their apparent sidelining via a shameless tantrum, exhibiting behavior that in the field would get military men shot. Not only do they play kiss and tell with a trove of operational secrets, they use the Times to deflect blame from their own failures onto erstwhile Slavic partners, cast as ignorant savages who snatched defeat from the jaws of America-designed victory. It’s as morally abhorrent a piece of ass-covering ever as I’ve seen in print, and that somehow is not its worst quality.

The people who quarterbacked the NATO side of the Ukraine war are so pleased with themselves, they can’t keep from boasting about things that will make the average American want to pitchfork the lot of them. Entous describes a tale told “through a secret keyhole” that reveals how America was “woven into the war far more intimately and broadly than previously understood.” (Translation: it was hidden from us.) Sources not only make it clear that the public was lied to on a continuous basis from the outset of the conflict, but they describe how we were lied to, apparently thinking the methods clever. Some are small semantic gambits the idiots wrongly believe exculpated their actions, but the main revelation involves one gigantic, inexcusable deception. From Joe Biden down, they all lied about the risk of World War III.

They risked our lives and our children’s lives, knowingly, repeatedly, and for the worst possible reason: politics. Afraid to admit a mistake, they planned individual excuses while letting bureaucratic inertia expand the conflict. Worse, as was guessed at on this site late last year, the Biden administration after last November’s election increased the risk of global conflict by “expanding the ops box to allow ATACMS and British Storm Shadow strikes into Russia,” in order to “shore up his Ukraine project.” If you check this “secret history” against contemporaneous statements of American and European leaders, you’ll find the scale of the lies beyond comprehension. Heads need to roll for this…

…If you’re wondering when we ever heard an American official acknowledge a non-zero threat of nuclear retaliation throughout this conflict, the answer is, never. In fact we were consistently told by Biden and everyone else that the opposite was true, that “World War III won’t be fought in Ukraine,” because the United States was not bringing its own troops into the theater of battle:

According to the Times, as Biden was saying these things, his administration “time and again… authorized clandestine operations it had previously prohibited.” This in turn forced us to “dispatch” advisers “to Kyiv and later… closer to the fighting,” out of concern of more line-crossing. The military and the CIA were then given permission to launch strikes “deep inside Russia itself,” which prompted thoughts from Entous:

In some ways, Ukraine was, on a wider canvas, a rematch in a long history of U.S.-Russia proxy wars — Vietnam in the 1960s, Afghanistan in the 1980s, Syria three decades later… It was also a grand experiment in war fighting, one that would not only help the Ukrainians but reward the Americans with lessons for any future war.

How many times were we scolded that this was no “proxy war,” and not a quagmire like Vietnam or Afghanistan? A hundred? A thousand? As early as April 28, 2022, right when this “partnership” run out of the Wiesbaden “warren” began, Biden explicitly denied we were in a proxy war, and said Russia was only making such claims to excuse their failures in defeating Ukraine:

Internally, concern along these exact lines was growing. American M777 howitzer batteries were effective at first against Russian troops, but soon they learned to pull material behind the 15-mile limit of those shells. Ukraine and some American and NATO officials began demanding the administration escalate by deploying “High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, known as HIMARS, which used satellite-guided rockets to execute strikes up to 50 miles away.” This is the moment when the Biden administration passed the point of mass-deception no return:

The ensuing debate reflected the Americans’ evolving thinking. Pentagon officials were resistant, loath to deplete the Army’s limited HIMARS stocks. But in May, General Cavoli visited Washington and made the case that ultimately won them over… At the White House, Mr. Biden and his advisers weighed that argument against fears that pushing the Russians would only lead Mr. Putin to panic and widen the war. When the generals requested HIMARS, one official recalled, the moment felt like “standing on that line, wondering, if you take a step forward, is World War III going to break out?”

Unbelievable! The U.S. began delivering HIMARS missiles to Ukraine in June 2022, which means for almost two years a White House that claimed not to be worried about World War III or nuclear war was worried about exactly that, each time they took a “step forward.” There were many steps after HIMARS, all cataloged by Entous, who began short-handing the nuclear war concern by referring to “red lines.”

When we upgraded from HIMARS to ATACMS missiles, expanding the range to 190 miles, it was “a particularly sore subject for the Biden administration,” because Russian commander Valery Gerasimov had “warned General [Mark] Milley that anything that flew 190 miles would be breaching a red line.”

…To many watching from afar, it seemed like simple common sense that using American weapons and American support personnel to attack Russians in Russia risked drawing this country into a shooting war with a nuclear enemy at any moment. Those of us who said these things were dismissed as alarmist, Putin-loving fellow-travelers. Now we have Entous describing American officials feeling the same after the opening of “ops box” attacks:

With Wiesbaden’s points of interest and coordinates, as well as the Ukrainians’ own intelligence, HIMARS strikes into the ops box helped defend Kharkiv. The Russians suffered some of their heaviest casualties of the war… The unthinkable had become real. The United States was now woven into the killing of Russian soldiers on sovereign Russian soil.

We never heard any concern of this type. Instead, we were told repeatedly that if anyone was risking World War III, it was Putin, and moreover that any nuclear risk would not involve Europe or the United States, but Ukraine. Former Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul described nuclear combat as a “low probability event” at the outset of the war, noting Russia had no reason to strike at us, because “they are not under an existential threat. NATO is not going to invade Russia.” A little over a year later, America was “woven into” the killing of Russians on Russian soil….

By Ret. Royal Navy Commodore Steve Jermy, Responsible Statecraft, 1/29/25

(Ret.) Royal Navy Commodore Steve Jermy commanded warships in the 5th Destroyer Squadron and Britain’s Fleet Air Arm. He served in the Falklands War and in the Adriatic for the Bosnian and Kosovo campaigns, and retired after an operational tour, in 2007, as Strategy Director in the British Embassy in Afghanistan. He is the author of Strategy for Action: Using Force Wisely in the 21st Century and now works in offshore energy.

In 2024, reflecting a popular Western belief, former Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said: “NATO is the most powerful and successful alliance in history.” Yet just two years earlier in 2022, after a 15-year campaign, NATO was defeated by the Taliban, a rag-tag group of poorly armed insurgents.

How can NATO’s humiliating defeat and Austin’s view be reconciled?

Of course NATO was never the most powerful military alliance in history — that accolade surely goes to the World War II Allies: the U.S., Russia, Britain, and the Commonwealth nations. Nevertheless, after 1945, NATO did its job, did it well, and those of us who served in it were proud to do so.

Since the Berlin Wall’s fall, though, its record has become tarnished. Satisfactory in Kosovo. Humiliated in Afghanistan. Strategic failure looming in Ukraine. Are we really sure NATO is up to the job of defending democratic Europe from a supposedly expansionist Russia in the doomsday scenario of a conventional NATO-Russia war?

The doomsday NATO-Russia war scenario is the defining way to explore this question. “Amateurs talk tactics, professionals study logistics,” and our strategic analysis needs to start all the way back in NATO’s logistics rear areas, then work forward to a future line of battle on the continent of Europe.

First, unlike Russia, no major NATO nation is industrially mobilized for war, as evidenced by the fact that Russia is still outproducing NATO on 155mm shells for Ukraine. Which, incidentally, gives the lie to the view that Russia is poised to take more of Europe — if we in NATO truly believed this, we would all be mobilizing at speed.

More importantly, it is not clear that NATO could mobilize at the speed or scale needed to produce the levels of equipment, ammunition, and people to match Russia. And certainly not without a long build up that would signal our intent. This is not just about lost industrial capacity, but also lost financial capacity. Of the largest NATO nations, only Germany has a debt to GDP ratio below 100%.

Second, to have the remotest chance of success in this doomsday scenario of a NATO-Russia war, U.S. forces would need to deploy at scale into continental Europe. Even if the U.S. Army was established at the necessary scale — with a 2023 establishment of 473,000, under one third of the current Russian Army, it is not — the overwhelming majority of American equipment and logistics would have to travel by sea.

There, they would be vulnerable to Russian submarine-launched torpedoes and mines. As a former underwater warfare specialist, I do not believe that NATO now has the scale of anti-submarine or mine-warfare forces needed to protect Europe’s sea lines of communication.

Nor, for that matter, would these forces be able to successfully protect Europe’s hydrocarbon imports, in particular oil and LNG so critical to Europe’s economic survival. Losses because of our sea supply vulnerability would not only degrade military production, but also bring accelerating economic hardship to NATO citizens, as soaring prices and energy shortages accompanying an outbreak of war rapidly escalated the political pressure to settle.

Third, our airports, sea ports, training, and logistics bases would be exposed to conventional ballistic missile attack, against which we have extremely limited defenses. Indeed, in the case of the Oreshnik missile, no defense.

An Oreshnik missile arriving at Mach 10+ would devastate a NATO arms factory, or naval, army and air force base. As in Ukraine, Russia’s ballistic campaign would also target our transport, logistics, and energy infrastructure. In 2003, while I was working for the British MOD’s Policy Planning staffs, our post 9/11 threat analysis suggested a successful attack against an LNG terminal, such as Milford Haven, Rotterdam, or Barcelona, would have sub-nuclear consequences. The follow-on economic shock-waves would rapidly ripple across a European continent, now increasingly dependent on LNG.

Fourth, unlike Russia, NATO nations’ forces are a heterogenous bunch. My own experience, while leading the offshore training of all European warships at Flag Officer Sea Training in Plymouth, and later working with NATO forces in Afghanistan, was that all NATO forces were exceptionally enthusiastic but had very different levels of technological advancement and trained effectiveness.

Perhaps more contemporarily important, other than a handful of NATO trainers forward deployed in Ukraine, our forces are trained according to a pre-drone “maneuver doctrine” and have no real-world experience of modern peer-to-peer attritional warfighting. Whereas the Russian Army has close to three years experience now, and is unarguably the world’s most battle-hardened.

Fifth, NATO’s decision-making system is cumbersome, hampered by the need to constantly communicate from Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe to national capitals — a complexity made worse each time another nation is admitted.

Worse still, NATO cannot do strategy. Shortly after arriving in Afghanistan in 2007, I was shocked to find that NATO had no campaign strategy. In 2022, notwithstanding numerous Russian warnings about NATO expansion constituting a red-line, NATO was wholly unprepared, strategically, for the obvious possibility of war breaking out — as evidenced again by our inability to match Russia’s 155mm shell production.

Even now, in 2025, NATO’s Ukraine strategy is opaque, perhaps best summarized as “double-down and hope.”

In summary, NATO is positioning itself as Europe’s defender, yet lacks the industrial capacity to sustain peer-to-peer warfighting, is wholly dependent on U.S. forces for the remotest chance of success, is unable satisfactorily to defend its sea lines of communication against Russian submarine, or its training and industrial infrastructure against strategic ballistic bombardment, is comprised of a diverse mix of un-bloodied conventional forces, and lacks the capacity to think and act strategically.

An easy NATO victory cannot be assumed, and I am afraid that the opposite looks far more likely to me.

So what? Conventionally, we could now work out how to redress the manifest weaknesses revealed. Strategic audits to confirm the capability gaps. Capability analyses to work out how to fill the gaps. Conferences to decide who does what and where costs should fall. Whilst all the time muddling on, hoping that NATO might eventually prevail in Ukraine, notwithstanding all the evidence to the contrary.

But without unanimous agreement of the NATO nations to increase military investment at scale, we would be lucky to solve these capability shortfalls within ten years, let alone five.

Or we could return to consider — at last — the judgement of many Western realists that NATO expansion was the touchpaper for the Russo-Ukraine War. The Russians warned us, time and again, that such expansion constituted a red line. So too did some of our very greatest strategic thinkers, starting with George Kennan in 1996, Henry Kissinger, Jack Matlock, even Bill Burns in his famous ‘Nyet means Nyet’ diplomatic telegram, and most recently John Mearsheimer with his 2014 forecasts. All ignored.

The truth is that NATO now exists to confront the threats created by its continuing existence. Yet as our scenario shows, NATO does not have the capacity to defeat the primary threat that its continuing existence has created.

So perhaps this is the time to have an honest conversation about the future of NATO, and to ask two questions. How do we return to the sustainable peace in Europe that all sides to the conflict seek? Is NATO the primary obstacle to this sustainable peace?

RT, 3/28/25

Russian President Vladimir Putin has proposed placing Ukraine under a temporary international administration as one possible way of resolving the ongoing conflict. The idea, he said, draws on international precedent and would aim to restore legitimate governance before any peace deal could be finalized.

During his meeting with Russian nuclear submarine officers on Thursday, President Putin described a possible international mechanism for stabilizing Ukraine – placing it under temporary external administration coordinated by the United Nations.

Here are the key takeaways from Putin’s proposal:

Problem: Collapse of legitimacy in Kiev

Putin argued that Ukraine’s constitutional legitimacy has broken down due to the expiration of Vladimir Zelensky’s presidential term last year and the lack of elections since – rendering all of his government’s claims to authority invalid.

“Presidential elections weren’t held… under the constitution, all officials are appointed by the president. If he himself is illegitimate, then so is everyone else.”

Consequence: Power vacuum filled by radicals

Putin has warned that groups with neo-Nazi views, such as the notorious Azov battalion – which receive Western weapons and actively recruit followers – could increasingly exert de facto control in Ukraine, potentially replacing formal civilian authorities.

“Amid the de facto illegitimacy… Neo-Nazi formations are receiving more weapons,” and could take “the actual power in their hands.”

Putin argued that this makes negotiating with Ukraine’s current government even more unreliable and unstable: “It’s unclear who you’re even signing any documents with – tomorrow new people could come and say, ‘We don’t know who signed this – goodbye.’”

Suggestion: UN-led temporary external administration

Putin proposed the use of a UN-led transitional authority, referencing prior international missions such as in East Timor, Papua New Guinea, and parts of former Yugoslavia.

“In such cases, international practice often follows a known path – under UN peacekeeping, through what is called external governance, a temporary administration.”

Purpose: Restoring constitutional order and setting a legal framework for stable peace

The main goal, according to Putin, would be to organize democratic elections and install a functioning, legitimate government trusted by citizens and recognized globally. He stated that only such leaders could sign peace agreements that would be recognized worldwide and upheld over time.

“Why do this? In order to hold democratic elections, in order to bring to power a government that is capable and enjoys the trust of the people, and then begin negotiations with them on a peace treaty, sign legitimate documents that will be recognized worldwide and will be reliable and stable.”

Not the only option – but a viable one

Putin emphasized that this idea is not the only possibility, but an example drawn from historical precedent.

“This is just one option… I’m not saying other options do not exist, but it is hard right now, or maybe even impossible, to lay everything out clearly because the situation is changing so fast,” he said.

Multilateral cooperation beyond the West

Putin said such an initiative should involve not just the UN or the US, but a broader coalition, including BRICS nations and others Russia considers reliable.

“We will work with any partners – the US, China, India, Brazil, South Africa, BRICS countries… and, for example, North Korea.”

He also stressed that Russia remains open to working with the EU, even though Moscow’s trust in the Western European countries has been fundamentally undermined by their manipulation of peace efforts as a tactic to buy time and rearm Ukraine.

***

Trump Says He’s ‘Pissed Off’ at Putin, Threatens ‘Secondary Tariffs’ on Russia

By Dave DeCamp, Antiwar.com, 3/30/25

President Trump said on Sunday that he was “pissed off” at Russian President Vladimir Putin and warned he could hit Russia with “secondary tariffs” on its oil if a peace deal to end the Ukraine war isn’t reached.

Trump said he was unhappy with Putin questioning Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s legitimacy. On Friday, Putin suggested replacing Zelensky with a “transitional administration” to prepare for elections in Ukraine.

Putin’s comments came after Zelensky said that he believes the Russian leader will soon be dead. “He will die soon, that is a fact, and everything will be over,” Zelensky said in an interview on March 26.

Trump has previously criticized Zelensky for not holding elections and even called the Ukrainian leader a “dictator,” but said in a phone interview with NBC News that he was “angry” over Putin’s comments about the Ukrainian leader.

“If Russia and I are unable to make a deal on stopping the bloodshed in Ukraine, and if I think it was Russia’s fault — which it might not be — but if I think it was Russia’s fault, I am going to put secondary tariffs on oil, on all oil coming out of Russia,” Trump said.

“That would be that if you buy oil from Russia, you can’t do business in the United States. There will be a 25% tariff on all oil, a 25- to 50-point tariff on all oil,” the president added.

It remains unclear if the current negotiations between the US and Russia will lead to a full ceasefire in Ukraine and a lasting peace deal. While both sides have nominally agreed to stop targeting energy infrastructure and halting attacks on the Black Sea, fighting continues to rage across the frontlines, Russian strikes are pounding Ukraine, and Ukraine is still launching drones into Russia.

By James Carden, Substack, 3/14/25

Alexander Motyl, a little known Ukrainian nationalist teaching in Newark, first came across my radar about a decade ago when he filed a bigoted attack on the people of the Donbas (who, at the time, were being targeted by a Western-funded “anti-terrorist operation” launched by Kiev) as “the most reactionary, intolerant and illiberal population within Ukraine.” They also—and this is the real sin from the standpoint of Ukrainian nationalists—speak and read and teach in their native language.

As the journalist and author Lev Golinkin pointed out in response,

…That is correct: eastern Ukraine — a land where the vast majority of the population speaks Russian as its native and primary tongue — has an overabundance of Russian schools and newspapers. A similar situation can be found in Canada’s French-speaking province of Quebec, whose reactionary, intolerant and illiberal French-speaking population has the gall to inundate their French-speaking region with the French language that nearly everyone there speaks. It can also be found in most Chinatowns, or Little Koreas, or pretty much most linguistic enclaves in America.

Over the past month, Motyl has published a number of pieces in The Hill which might fairly be, given the two assassination attempts on Trump during the 2024 campaign, characterized as incitement.

On February 25th, Motyl envisioned a “palace coup” that “could rid the country of an illegitimate leader [Trump] and usher in a transition to moderation and democracy — call it a Thermidor — that Vance would be unlikely to survive politically.”

“There will be chaos,” he concludes, “but America will have the opportunity to save itself from the revolutionaries and terrorists.”

The following day, Motyl once again appeared in The Hill to answer the question: “Was 40-year-old Trump recruited by the KGB?” Well, according to Moytl, could well be…

The former head of Kazakhstan’s intelligence service, Alnur Mussayev, recently claimed in a Facebook post that Donald Trump was recruited by the KGB in 1987, when the 40-year-old real-estate mogul first visited Moscow.

The allegation would, if true, be a bombshell. Mussayev provides no documentary evidence —but then how could he? He alleged that Trump’s file is in Vladimir Putin’s hands.

…the fact that three KGB agents located in different places and speaking at different times agree on the story suggests this possibility should not be dismissed out of hand. If there’s one thing we’ve learned from the first Trump administration and from the initial weeks of the second, it is that everything, including what appears to be impossible, is possible.

March 3rd found Motyl once again in the pages of The Hill warning readers that “Trump’s second administration resembles totalitarian political systems.”

This was followed up (does he sleep?) with a hysterical screed in which he charged that Trump has “effectively endorsed Vladimir Putin’s genocidal war” and that “Trump and his sycophantic subordinates” might one day be tried before the the International Criminal Court. To sum up: Trump, according to Motyl is a criminal, a totalitarian, and, possibly an agent of the Kremlin.

Galician nationalists specialize in these incitements to violence—as some of us who have been repeatedly placed on their enemies lists know only too well. Starting well before Putin’s February 2022 invasion, Galician nationalists and other far-Right extremists began publishing enemies lists such as the notorious Myrotvorets (Peacemaker) which doxxed hundreds of American and European journalists who were credentialed by the governing authorities in the breakaway People’s Republic of Donetsk.

As Daniel McAdams of the Ron Paul Institute has written,

…The Ukrainians seemingly love to make lists of their “enemies.” One of their most notorious of these is the infamous “kill list” put out by the Mirotvorets Center in Kiev. From that list several have already been murdered by Ukraine, including prominent Russian journalist Daria Dugina.

Last year, a Ukrainian NGO called TEXTY released a list of its own which included scores of American politicians, journalists and analysts. At the time, Dr. Sumantra Maitra, senior fellow at the Center for Renewing America, told The Spectator that in his view,

…It’s clarifying to see the State Department-funded Ukrainian NGOs showing their true colors and creating blacklists, demonstrating how utterly Soviet they still are.”

This week comes news of a Ukrainian “intelligence gathering” service called MOLFAR with an “enemies list” that includes, among other notables, the current vice president, JD Vance.

What makes this all the more galling is that it was ( is?) being funded by the US government though USAID. Whatever sympathy we may (and do) feel for people who have lost their jobs at USAID and at USAID-linked contractors, the Trump administration was absolutely right in pulling the plug on this kind of nonsense.

Worryingly, Trump’s determination to force Zelensky to the negotiating table could well put him in the crosshairs of Ukrainian nationalists—like those in the diaspora such as Motyl and those the Biden administration spent the last 3 years arming to the teeth.

Col. Douglas Macgregor was exactly right when, in a new interview with Tucker Carlson, said, with regard to Ukrainian ultras,

…I would be very worried about our president. I think the president is very much at risk, these people seem to have no sense of limitation—they’re capable of anything, I hope the Secret Service is on its toes.”

Russia Matters, 3/28/25

1. Russia and Ukraine are in a war of attrition, which “will lead to a gradual but steady erosion of Kyiv’s position on the battlefield, regardless of any U.S. or allied attempts to impose new and greater costs on Moscow,” according to the U.S. intelligence community’s annual Worldwide Threat Assessment presented this week. The document, which as its predecessor, refers to Russia as America’s adversary, predicts that Vladimir Putin “will be unable to achieve … total victory” in spite of having sacrificed 750,000+ in killed and wounded Russian soldiers, but acknowledges that “Russia in the past year has seized the upper hand in its full-scale invasion of Ukraine and is on a path to accrue greater leverage to press Kyiv and its Western backers to negotiate an end to the war that grants Moscow concessions it seeks.” It also follows from WTA-2025 that both Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Putin “for now probably still see the risks of a longer war as less than those of an unsatisfying settlement.” For a more detailed review of WTA-2025’s Russia-related propositions, see this blog post.
2. “Our troops have the strategic initiative along the entire contact line. Only recently, I said that we would squeeze them into a corner, but now we have reason to believe that we are set to finish them off,” Putin claimed while visiting the Russian Northern Fleet’s Arkhangelsk nuclear submarine on March 27. During the visit to this Project 885M Yasen-M vessel, Putin claimed that the Russian armed forces had captured 99% of the Luhansk region and over 70% of the Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions. Putin’s estimate regarding the four provinces is close to a March 23 estimate provided by the U.S.-based Institute for the Study of War to RM. According to the ISW estimate, Russian forces have captured 73.6% of Kherson Oblast; 73.3% of Zaporizhzhia Oblast; 70.2% of Donetsk Oblast; and 99.3% of Luhansk Oblast. It also follows from the interactive map maintained by Ukraine’s DeepState OSINT team that Russian forces had captured 46 square miles (118 square kilometers) in the 30 day period from Feb. 21, 2025, to March 23, 2025. It follows then that if Russia were to focus only on these four regions, advancing at this rate of 46 square miles per 30 days (or some 1.5 miles per day), then it would take Russian forces more than 15 years to “finish off” the takeover of these four regions, ceteris paribus.
3. In the past month (Feb. 25–March 25, 2025), Russia gained 73 square miles of Ukraine’s territory, an area roughly equivalent to about 3 Manhattan islands, according to the March 26, 2025, issue of RM’s Russia-Ukraine War Report Card. Meanwhile, in Russia’s Kursk oblast, Ukraine currently controls just 32 square miles, or 4%, of the 470 square miles it controlled in early autumn 2024, according to the card.  
4. The separate talks U.S.officials held first with Ukrainian officials, then with Russian officials, then with Ukrainian officials again, in Saudi Arabia on March 23–25, failed to either usher in a ceasefire in the Black Sea or prevent violations of an earlier moratorium on Russian and Ukrainian attacks on each other’s energy infrastructure. The three sides produced competing accounts of the outcomes of the talks, from which it could be inferred that the biggest obstacles to the Black Sea ceasefire are the conditions Russia has added to its account of the talks. The Kremlin said the agreement can enter into force only after Western sanctions impacting its agricultural exports are lifted, which the EU has rejected. That Russian-U.S. talks, which lasted for 12 hours on March 24, failed to produce any breakthrough was stated openly by one of the Russian negotiators on March 28. One of Russia’s negotiators and former deputy foreign minister Grigory Karasin said U.S. proposals at the talks were “unacceptable” and predicted that negotiations may drag on into next year. While keen to refrain from antagonizing Trump, who has invested political capital into the effort to end the war, the Kremlin didn’t expect a breakthrough at the talks in Saudi Arabia. This follows from Putin’s choice of Karasin and Sergei Beseda, who had lost high-ranking posts in the MFA in 2019 and FSB in 2024, respectively, some time ago, and whom Russian commentator Georgii Bovt described as “elderly retirees,” as the two lead negotiators for the March 24^th talks. If that signal was not strong enough, then Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov’s preview of the talks, in which he said, “we are only at the beginning of this path,” was.
5. This week has seen U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio reject the notion of setting any deadlines for the Russian-Ukrainian peace talks, even though his president has earlier promised to end the war in a day, or in 100 days. When asked on March 28 how long he anticipated the negotiations would take, Rubio responded: “We’re committed to trying to achieve peace as long as it takes. That doesn’t mean that I can guarantee you that there’s going to be an agreement in a week or a month. I just can’t put a timeframe on it because it doesn’t depend on us. It depends on the Russians, and it depends on the Ukrainians. It also depends on our partners in Europe who have sanctions that will have to be taken into account, I believe, as part of any final deal.” During his campaign for presidency last year, Trump claimed he could end the Russian-Ukrainian war within 24 hours of taking office. Upon beginning his term on Jan. 20, however, Trump designated retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg as his special envoy for Russia and Ukraine and tasked him with ending the war within 100 days, which put the deadline by or on April 30, 2025. More recently, “people familiar with the planning” of the Trump administration’s Ukraine peace efforts told Bloomberg they hope a broad ceasefire in Russia’s war in Ukraine can be reached by April 20, which this year is Easter in both the Western and Orthodox churches. That Rubio now refuses to offer a deadline for completing talks might be an indication that his evaluation of prospects of success at the negotiating table in the near future has evolved.
6. Even as European leaders rejected this week the possibility of easing sanctions on Russia per its demands as a precondition for implementing the Russian-Ukrainian Black Sea ceasefire, some European majors have begun to eye returning to Russia. Vitol, Trafigura and Gunvor are all weighing when to re-enter Russia’s markets, according to FT. In addition to these European oil traders, South Korea’s Samsung, LG Electronics and Hyundai are weighing whether to re-expand their presence in Russia, according to Korea Times. This week has also seen Putin welcome a Western consumer flagship, Italy’s Ariston, back by canceling the temporary nationalization of its Russian unit, according to AFP. Last week saw Putin tell the Russian Cabinet of Ministers to create a procedure for Western businesses to return to Russia. It has also been reported by Reuters earlier this month that the Trump administration is working on a plan that would ease sanctions against Russia, which is under more sanctions than the next six targets combined, according to The Economist. More recently, Rubio said on March 26 the United States will evaluate Russia’s aforementioned demands for easing sanctions.
7. Ending the war in Ukraine will be on Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s agenda  when he holds talks with Russian leaders during his visit to Russia on March 31–April 2. Meanwhile, North Korea, which has reportedly sent an additional 3,000 troops this year to fight against Ukrainian forces, is already in talks with Russia on potential visits by Kim Jong Un to Moscow and by Sergei Lavrov to Pyongyang.