By John P Ruehl, Asia Times, 11/3/26

The narrative surrounding the Ukraine war often marks its beginning on February 24, 2022, when Russia launched its full-scale invasion. But the rivalries and political decisions that brought the two countries into conflict stretch back centuries. The start of the Cold War, meanwhile, was the beginning of sustained US efforts to further antagonize Ukraine’s relationship with Moscow.

In his new book, “Boiling Point: How America Brought War to Ukraine”, author Stephen Kinzer presents an account of how successive US administrations sought to cultivate Ukrainian nationalism and challenge Moscow, helping set the stage for conflict.

Instead of viewing the invasion in isolation, Kinzer details Washington’s involvement over decades, from covert CIA operations in Soviet Ukraine during the early Cold War to Ukrainian independence and the post-Cold War tensions with Russia over NATO expansion, which all culminated in the outbreak of war.

Kinzer provides an extensive, detailed account of the history of US foreign policy in the region, without losing sight of the larger geopolitical forces at play. By challenging the conventional narrative of the war’s origins, Kinzer offers a deeply researched perspective largely absent from mainstream discussions.

Understanding the decades of geopolitical competition and political motives that preceded the war is essential to seeing why it began and where it might lead. Any eventual peace settlement will pose difficult questions about territory and security guarantees, as well as Ukraine’s reconstruction and place between Europe and Russia.

The war will likely end without resolving Ukrainian and Russian divisions that, as Kinzer describes in his book, US policy helped deepen, leaving both countries and the wider region to contend with the consequences for years to come.

As a journalist, author and historian, Kinzer has spent decades examining American foreign policy, interventionism and the consequences of US involvement abroad. His work has appeared in The New York Times and other major publications, and he’s written several books exploring America’s role in shaping international affairs.

I spoke with him about the history behind “Boiling Point”, the choices that might have prevented the war, and what he believes lies ahead for Ukraine.

John P. Ruehl: Your new book, “Boiling Point”, examines the history of US policy toward Ukraine and Russia, tracing Washington’s efforts since the end of World War II to cultivate Ukrainian nationalism and challenge Moscow’s influence.

It looks at how those efforts contributed to the tensions that ultimately erupted into the ongoing war in Ukraine. To start, could you tell us a little about the book, its central argument, and the history you believe readers need to understand to make sense of the war today?

Stephen Kinzer: One of the points that I hope people will take away from this book is that much of what we have been told about the Ukraine war is wrong. And, in particular, there’s one word we constantly hear about the Russian invasion, and it was that word, really, that set me off after about the 200th time I heard it, and that word, of course, is unprovoked.

We always read about that not just the February invasion, or the Russian invasion, or the military invasion, but the unprovoked invasion. Now, you can say a lot of things about this invasion, for example, that it was illegal under international law, just like many American operations have been, but it was definitely not unprovoked. How do I justify that statement? That’s my book.

The book traces 75 years of uninterrupted American plans to turn Ukraine into a battering ram against Russia. This began with the dropping of armed commandos into Ukraine back in the late 1940s, and it continued through a whole series of covert actions leading up to Ukrainian independence in 1991; then the project went into overdrive. [The US] spent huge amounts of money promoting anti-government groups in Ukraine and groups that would support the idea of confrontation with Russia.

That finally exploded. You might make an argument that we did the right thing to provoke Russia and to promote all this nationalist feeling in Ukraine. And I’m okay with that. But before you make any judgment on the justice or nature of the Ukraine war, you should know what happened before.

If you look at a snapshot of… February 24, 2022, you will see what happened. Russia invaded a peaceful country, Ukraine. But that picture should really be seen as just one frame in a very long movie that unfolded over 75 years. My book is an attempt to show you the real background of the Ukraine war.

JPR: Do you think Washington still has a bipartisan commitment to supporting Ukraine, or has it largely achieved what it set out to accomplish and now is unsure about how to proceed, amid the Trump administration’s efforts to negotiate peace?

SK: I think most people in Washington still think the Ukraine war is a great idea. It comes out of a deep-seated hatred for Russia, a belief that Russian expansion or anything good for Russia is bad for the world.

I actually think that many Americans consider this war a success. The reason is, we’ve killed a lot of Russians. The fact that tens of thousands of Ukrainians have been killed and their country has been devastated doesn’t really register in Washington.

Most of the people in Washington who are most eagerly promoting this war can hardly find Ukraine on a map. They are not interested in Ukraine. All they’re interested in is Russia. … The result is that Ukraine has gotten wrecked, but for Americans, and I think for some Europeans as well, it seems like a win because it has wounded Russia.

JPR: You write about the CIA’s espionage and covert operations in Soviet territory within Ukraine’s modern borders, particularly during the early Cold War, which created massive tensions. The NATO expansion after the Cold War has been another major source of tension with Russia.


Now, NATO appears less central to US policy under Trump. If NATO’s role diminishes, what other institutions or government agencies might take the lead in sustaining pressure on Russia?

SK: The whole NATO argument is really one of the saddest pieces of this whole story. If Joe Biden had simply stood up and said five words: “Ukraine will not join NATO,” the war would have been avoided.

He refused to say that. But the worst part of it is that in private, American leaders all admitted that Ukraine was never gonna join NATO; it’s not nearly ready, and there were all kinds of problems that would take decades [to resolve].

But nobody wanted to say this in public because it would seem like we were responding to Russia, we were intimidated by Russia, and we were doing what Russia wanted. The fear of seeming to grant any credibility to Russia was so great that we refused to do that.

There were many off-ramps for this war, and simply declaring that NATO would not accept Ukraine as a member would have stopped it. What you really need from Ukraine is essentially a peace accord, which was hammered out in Istanbul a month after the war began. Henry Kissinger used to say the same thing—Ukraine needs to be a bridge between East and West. It shouldn’t be a territory that the two sides fight over.

A great model would be Austria. After World War II, to ensure the withdrawal of occupying forces, Austria signed a treaty and inserted, in its constitution, a pledge that it would never join a military alliance and would never have foreign troops on its soil.

That has worked great. That should be a model for Ukraine, but Americans don’t like that because it doesn’t smell like victory.

JPR: You dedicate the book to the Ukrainian people and argue that they didn’t really understand the consequences of the policies pursued by the United States and NATO toward Russia.

How do you respond to those who would argue that opposing the United States and NATO policy toward Ukraine amounts to supporting Russian aggression? Beyond reading your book, what evidence or arguments do you find most persuasive in that view, and what convinces people to reconsider the United States’ and the West’s role in the conflict?

SK: I don’t think Russia is seeking to capture Ukraine, much less further territories, but Russia has a fear that is understandable, and that is, they don’t want a nuclear-armed military alliance that they are not a member of right on their border. I pose this analogy: suppose China decided with Mexico that it would open a military base in Veracruz, or suppose Russia would open an air base in Quebec.

Would the United States say, “Well, every country has a right to choose its own security partners, so I guess there’s nothing we could do about it.” Of course, we wouldn’t do that. We would bomb those bases. We would never tolerate that. So we’re now expecting Russia to accept something we would never accept.

There is room for negotiation, but only if the United States and the Europeans, who are now really taking on the extreme burden of the war, accept that they have to recognize Russia’s security interests. This is a horrific idea in some European capitals.

But in the end, the only way there is ever going to be peace and stability in Europe is if there is a security architecture that takes into account the security interests of all countries, including Russia.

JPR: You discuss Kosovo and the Western effort to separate it from Serbia. Was there ever a realistic possibility of peacefully accommodating separatist sentiment in eastern and southeastern Ukraine after the 2013–2014 Maidan Revolution? Or were Ukrainian nationalist forces, Western interests, and Russian influence too deeply entrenched? And what alternative policies might have prevented the current conflict after the end of the Cold War?

SK: The most important off-ramp we had was at the beginning of the post-Cold War period, so around 1990 and the early 90s. Our president then, George H.W. Bush, fully understood this, and he promised Mikhail Gorbachev that he would not promote any eastward expansion of NATO. Soon, of course, Bush was gone; Clinton came in. There was a completely different approach. But there is a perfectly reasonable argument for a neutral Ukraine.

And I’ll tell you, one of the reasons that I got so passionate about this project, I realized later on, well, part of my experience way back in the 1980s, I was the reporter covering the Contra War in Nicaragua.

And one thing I took away from that experience is that the war had nothing to do with Nicaragua. It was a conflict between two great powers that chose that poor country as the stage on which they fought. And, of course, [most of] the dead people were just the locals.

The same thing is happening in Ukraine. This war is not about Ukraine. It’s Ukraine that is suffering, and the big powers are holding its fate in their hands. Now, you talk about obstacles to peace. You’re absolutely right about the difference between eastern Ukraine and western Ukraine. Really, they are two countries that got stuck inside the same border by accidents of history.

And one of the real sticking points, one of the real difficulties in reaching some kind of a national accord, is that for non-Russian-speaking Ukrainians, those in the western part of Ukraine, being anti-Russian, hating Russia, is a fundamental part of the national patriotic Ukrainian identity. And as long as there are millions of Russians in the country, these other Ukrainians feel they are a fifth column; they’re always going to be promoting enemy interests.

So, any Ukrainian leader who signs a peace treaty runs an immense danger, not only from history, but also from far-right militias that are going to attack them. The cleavage between the two parts of the country is so deep that it’s hard to imagine how they would ever come together, at least without some kind of federalized structure, if not by moving those eastern provinces directly under Russian control.

JPR: Could Ukraine’s postwar frontline resemble the situation between Russia and Georgia after their 2008 war, with an unstable standoff and Russia gradually altering the boundaries? Or do you expect a different outcome in Ukraine?

SK: I think the Russians won’t stop until they’ve consolidated their power over [the] four eastern provinces that they claim. After that, I do think there is a possibility that it could settle into a kind of frozen conflict.

That would avoid forcing some Ukrainians to sign an agreement under which part of their territory is surrendered, but it could also end combat. It’s not an ideal solution. I would compare it to what’s happening in Korea. But at least that might be one way to end the conflict without putting people on either side in an untenable position.

JPR: What do you see as Volodymyr Zelensky’s political future after the war? Wartime leaders can struggle to retain public support in peacetime. Or do you think he will remain a central figure in Ukrainian politics?

SK: Zelensky is really an odd figure who emerged; I have a whole section in my book about how he did this. He was a TV personality. He was a fictional character who led a political party that was against corruption. And then this oligarch who owned the TV station said to him, “You know, we’re going to make that fake party. We’re gonna make it into a real party, and I’m gonna make you run for president.” So, he was about the most unlikely character you could imagine for that job.

And I don’t think he’s gonna wind up being a major figure in the future of Ukraine. Poor Zelensky, I think, is in a really difficult position now. Here’s what I think is going through his mind: “So the Americans are yelling at me because I didn’t make a deal. I didn’t accept a compromise with Russia.

But when I tried to make a compromise with Russia, just a month after the war started, they stopped me! They told me not to do it. So now I’m being punished for doing what you told me to do.” And I can understand and sympathize with Zelensky’s frustration.

JPR: There have been reports of Ukrainian involvement in training militants in Mali against Russian interests, while Ukraine has also continued striking Russian oil infrastructure, despite pressure from Washington to stop. And Ukraine now has a large battle-tested military, even if the country itself is severely weakened. What consequences could this have for Europe and the United States, particularly if the Ukrainians come to feel that the West and the United States have betrayed them?

SK: The situation you’re describing is somewhat analogous to what’s happening in the Middle East; a war that was supposed to be localized has metastasized and is turning up in different incarnations in different places, even far from the nations that were supposed to be the target.

So, I do think we’re gonna wind up with a highly militarized Ukraine. The worst part is that many of the strongest military units are not the actual regular army, but are far-right militias, which proudly use Nazi insignia and proclaim their loyalty to Ukrainians who fought alongside the Nazis and helped participate in the Holocaust. That is going to be a project that Europe’s going to have to deal with.

But I don’t even think Europe is thinking about a postwar yet. I feel like Europe is in a complete delusion. They have the idea that if we just keep pouring weapons into Ukraine and pouring money into Ukraine, somehow the tide will turn.

Meanwhile, inside those European countries, there’s tremendous political turmoil. Much of it is based on frustration that the government isn’t using its money to provide schools and other services people want. One reason is that so much money is going to Ukraine.

So, I think you might see resentment [toward] Ukraine growing, and depending on the way the war finally ends or freezes, people will become generally sympathetic to Ukraine, or very hostile to Ukraine.

It’s another example of how wars like this set in motion processes that can’t be stopped and can affect international relations for decades to come. It’s really an object lesson in how you should stop and think about long-term consequences before launching foreign interventions.

JPR: What will or what can the EU do if Washington pulls away from Ukraine?

SK: The EU then has two choices. One is to continue its policy, which is ever more war, ever more arms for Ukraine, ever more money, or Ukraine could go back to the agreement that was tentatively reached a month after the war began and accept Ukrainian neutrality. This would be very wise for Europe.

It’s foolish for the United States to be promoting war in Ukraine; it’s even more foolish for the Europeans. They are going to face real crossroads, and I fear the rise of radical political parties in Europe will create an even more difficult situation.

So that’s another reason I dedicated Boiling Point to the people of Ukraine; it’s my sympathy for them as victims of a great-power rivalry they don’t want anything to do with.

JPR: What was one of the biggest revelations you had while writing and researching for the book?

SK: The biggest revelation, by far, was my realization of how completely American foreign policy toward Russia and Eastern Europe has been shaped by officials with family backgrounds in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

We had [former] Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. We had [former] National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski. We had a [former] ambassador to NATO, Victoria Nuland. There’s a whole list of these [names] in my book.

So, what you had was a group of children and grandchildren of emigres from Eastern Europe and what became the Soviet Union. These people grew up with bitter, anti-Russian hatred, and that’s quite understandable, frankly, when you look at the history of what Russia has done to those countries.

But when those grandchildren and children of emigres decided they wanted to affect American politics and foreign policy, they found themselves unwelcome in the Republican Party, which was then not interested in ideological crusades. So, they became Democrats. And all these people filled the Biden administration, the Obama administration, and the Clinton administration.

It’s the only example in the entire history of American foreign policy where all major policies toward one part of the world were shaped by people with family background in that region. They turned the United States into the instrument of their vengeance against Russia, and thereby greatly distorted American foreign policy.

Those diplomats were quite capable. They should have been made ambassador to Brazil, or assistant secretary of state for Asia or something like that. But to place them in these positions where they were able to wreak havoc against Russia in accordance with the long instincts that had been bred into them from childhood is unique, and it greatly distorted American foreign policy.

That was really the greatest single revelation I had.

JPR: And that’s a dynamic we really don’t see regarding China and Taiwan.

SK: Absolutely. You don’t see Chinese, let’s say, the children of Chinese immigrants, or the grandchildren, trying to get into the State Department so they can shape the US policy toward China.

That would be the equivalent, but that has never happened in US policy toward any other part of the world, and it’s the piece of the story that I don’t think has been told, and I hope it’s one of the pieces of “Boiling Point” that turns out to be a major revelation and point of discussion.

JPR: With much of Ukraine’s industrial base, energy infrastructure, and population severely diminished by the war and emigration, what realistic prospects does the country have for rebuilding?

SK: Rebuilding prospects are very difficult to imagine. First of all, you have to have an end to active fighting. Now, in the Russian-speaking regions, there’s been a tremendous amount of destruction. But if you look at what Russia did in Chechnya, where the capital city essentially was completely destroyed, you get the idea that they do know how to rebuild things, because Grozny is now a thriving city.

What about the rest of Ukraine, the western part? I think Ukrainians would be very justified in turning to the Europeans and saying, “You’re the ones who pushed us into this war; how about helping us resolve some of the damage?”

JPR: Finally, is this the end of NATO expansion, or is there room in the Balkans for more?

SK: I don’t believe there’s gonna be any expansion of NATO anytime soon. But what I would really like is that since everybody in Washington realizes this, they would say it. Instead, they try to keep it vague to pressure Russia.

Announcing that would be a way to lower global tensions, but in some circles that is seen as a concession to Russia, and maintaining tensions is actually thought to be in our interest. I don’t believe that’s true, and until that mindset fades, it’s difficult to see a prosperous future for Ukraine.

Reuters, 11/11/26

MOSCOW, Nov 11 (Reuters) – A senior Russian diplomat said on Wednesday that Moscow could conclude non-aggression pacts with NATO member states as part ​of a new security architecture for Europe being discussed ‌as part of the Ukraine peace process.

Vladimir Medinsky, Russia’s chief negotiator at those Ukraine peace talks – which resumed this week for the first time ​since February – said on Wednesday that the idea of a ​new security framework for Europe had been the central theme ⁠of two days of negotiations in Abu Dhabi, but did ​not provide details of what had been discussed.

Alexey Drobinin, a senior ​diplomat at Russia’s Foreign Ministry, on Wednesday outlined a series of detailed proposals on the idea to a security conference in Moscow.

The first option he ​set out was that of a collective defensive alliance or ​of bilateral mutual assistance agreements like those Russia has with Belarus and North ‌Korea.

The ⁠second possibility he cited included political agreements not to help each other’s adversaries in the event of aggression, like the pact Moscow has with Iran.

And the third option he presented were bilateral ​mutual non-aggression pacts.

“For ​example, agreements ⁠of this kind could be reached, among other things, with individual NATO member states, which would ​then receive, for instance, additional individual security guarantees from ​the ⁠Russian Federation,” Drobinin told the conference, according to video of his speech posted online.

Some European politicians oppose any discussion of Europe’s overall ⁠security architecture, ​saying progress on Ukraine – including a ​ceasefire – must be agreed first, although US officials have made clear they are open ​to such discussion.

***

Russia and Ukraine say some progress made at talks, US cites a lack of trust

By Roula Rouhana, Reuters, 11/11/26

Summary

-Second day of talks ends in Abu Dhabi

-Kyiv and Moscow agree on prisoner-of-war exchange

-US envoys set to hold talks in Moscow on Thursday

-US mediators see a lack of trust between the sides

-Differences remain on issues including territory

ABU DHABI, Nov 11 (Reuters) – Russian and Ukrainian negotiators reported some progress in two days of peace talks in Abu Dhabi that ​ended on Wednesday, but US mediators said there was a lack of trust between the warring sides and differences remained on issues including territory.

In their first peace talks ‌for nine months, Russia and Ukraine agreed to a major release of prisoners of war, but there was little else in the way of concrete announcements after the US-brokered meetings.

US envoy Jared Kushner, US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, said mediators were appealing to each side’s interests to end Europe’s biggest conflict since World War Two and that he was convinced they could find a pathway to peace.

Despite public optimism from Trump, there has been no sign of major compromises on the main ​issues after more than 4-1/2 years of war since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

With talks deadlocked on land – Ukraine has rejected Russian President Vladimir Putin’s demands to surrender the whole of ​the eastern region of Donbas in return for peace – US mediators have tried to steer talks toward post-war security guarantees and reconstruction.

“The reality is there is ⁠no trust right now between the sides and that is to be expected after a conflict like this,” Kushner said, adding that the talks in the capital of the United Arab Emirates had touched on ​territorial issues and that these would be the hardest to resolve.

“Some areas we see places where we can find compromises, other we need to have more discussions, but I think this was a very good ​step,” he said.

Kushner said he and fellow US envoy Steve Witkoff would travel to Moscow on Thursday for talks with Putin at which they would raise the question of broadening the talks to include European partners, who he said must be at the table.

He said security architecture in Europe could form the basis for an agreement, without providing details.

As the Trump administration has scaled back its direct support to Ukraine, Europe has become its leading provider of finance and military ​support.

After Thursday’s meetings in Moscow, Kushner and Witkoff will fly for talks with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskiy during a visit to Ireland.

ATTACKS CONTINUE

Each side said the other had launched attacks overnight, despite the peace talks ​being under way.

Russia struck six large electricity substations in central Ukraine, officials said, and an attack on a busy market in the Odesa region killed three people, the regional governor said. One person was killed in a Ukrainian drone attack ‌in Russia’s Belgorod ⁠region, local authorities said.

Ukrainian negotiator David Arakhamia said the talks had been tough, with Russia’s delegation arriving with “strict directives”, but they provided “good momentum” towards reaching a solution before the end of the year. He gave no details.

Arakhamia said that future talks should be multilateral, not trilateral, and should include European officials. Although European officials and NATO representatives met US and Ukrainian envoys in Abu Dhabi, Russia’s delegation declined to meet them.

Russia’s chief negotiator, Vladimir Medinsky, said understanding had been reached on some issues, but was cool on the prospects of European countries joining talks.

He told a press conference it was unclear what Moscow could discuss with ​the European Union because it had made no new ​proposals. Even so, Russian state news agency ⁠TASS cited the Kremlin as saying Putin was open to contacts with the EU.

There has been no sign publicly that Putin is willing to drop a demand that Ukraine surrender all the land in the Donbas region that it still holds before a peace deal can be struck.

FRONT LINE STATIC

Russian forces control about ​a fifth of Ukraine, much of it captured before the 2022 invasion, and their progress on the battlefield has slowed this year.

With the front line largely ​static, Moscow has been pounding ⁠Ukrainian cities and energy sites, while Ukraine has stepped up attacks on Russian oil refineries and other infrastructure.

Russian officials are increasingly calling for a broad agreement on European security architecture to be reached before tackling the specifics of the war.

Before its full-scale invasion in February 2022, Russia demanded the withdrawal of NATO forces from countries that joined the alliance after 1997, which the alliance rejected.

Trump said last week the war was close to being ⁠settled in a “big ​beautiful agreement” that could include security guarantees for Europe. He has frequently predicted breakthroughs that have not materialised.

Trump has intensified ​pressure on Kyiv to reach a deal to end the war, or face “a very bad thing”.

The new American peace drive has galvanized European officials into pushing for a place at the talks.

European officials say wider security talks should only come after a ceasefire, ​and Russia should not be allowed to influence Europe’s security arrangements or [be] rewarded for starting the war.

By Alastair Crooke, The American Conservative, 11/1/26

The Atlantic on October 23 published a profile of CIA chief John Ratcliffe. Its subheadline contains the most significant “tell” from the piece—“CIA Director John Ratcliffe leads an agency that’s at war with Russia, even as Trump makes nice with Putin.”

The Atlantic article makes no bones about its ulterior purpose. It is to present Ratcliffe as an even-handed professional who has mastered the intricacies of the Ukraine War and tells it “like it is” to the president, leaving the latter to decide his options.

This panegyric to Ratcliffe, however, hides substantive issues about the probity of CIA intelligence analyses, their impact on policy, and the extent to which the pure excitement of militarized covert action inevitably hobbles intelligence agencies and analytic reporting.

Intelligence is never wholly objective. And its professionalism largely hangs on service culture, which can—and does—change.

As one example, a former head of the IDF’s Military Intelligence research and analysis division, General Itai Brun, warned that Israel’s inability to recognize what Hamas was planning for October 7 resulted, not from a lack of information, but from a failure of culture and approach. Per the Times of Israel’s report of his comments:  

Even after the massacre, intelligence didn’t internalize that Hamas believed it could succeed…. The whole military intelligence network “was not listening, because it was convinced it knew…. It could not accept the possibility that it was wrong.

So, when it comes to “culture,” in this sense, two points in the Atlantic piece stand out: First, the article hints that Ratcliffe is seen by his staff to be “clear-eyed about the threat Russia poses not just to Ukraine—but to the United States and its allies.” This suggests that Radcliffe sees Russia as an eternal enemy of the West, or at least a current enemy with nefarious intentions. Secondly, the article emphasises that the CIA is in “the lead” on Ukraine and that its paramilitary wing—Covert Action—is thrilled at being so busy. As Larry Johnson, a former CIA official, outlines:

The CIA helps Ukraine knock out Russian refining capacity. Diesel prices soar. Then… in the middle of peace talks in Miami… President [Trump] announces a deal for Russia to sell its diesel on the world market…. So the United States is simultaneously paying to destroy Russian diesel production and begging Russia to sell it more diesel. You could not design a more incoherent policy if you tried.

The Atlantic piece lends credence to what has long been supposed—that Trump’s attempts to secure a “deal” with Russia (most recently by importing Russian diesel into America to bring the price down for the midterm elections) is a deceit intended to coax Moscow towards making a deal (unfavorable, in the Kremlin optic) with Trump.  

It would be a deceit because the CIA pursues its own (militarised) covert action war on Russia. The Atlantic, citing a CIA officer, reports: 

Armed with information that the U.S. provides, Ukraine’s military has launched strikes deep inside Russia. And U.S. spy satellites provide early warning about incoming missiles and drones. Among U.S. personnel on the ground, “the CIA is in the lead,” a retired senior officer who travels frequently to Ukraine told me.

The recent Starlink fracas—was its military communications network deactivated, was it go-slowed, did it glitch?—only highlights ever more clearly the dysfunction inherent to the U.S. institutional contradiction underlined by the Atlantic’s subheadline.

Plainly—for whatever the behind-the-scenes reason—Trump does not choose (or cannot choose) to exert control over the CIA. (Although, he could cancel all previous “Presidential Findings” that legally frame what the CIA can and cannot do and could substitute them with his own Finding).  

Evidently, all that Trump was able to do in this instance to advance his putative “peace deal” was to withhold Starlink communications and intelligence sharing, ad interim, until Zelensky agreed to stop hitting Russian fuel refineries. The storm was over in days; Starlink was reactivated.

How should we read these events? Plainly, the deep state isn’t on board with Trump’s “making nice” with Russia, and Trump isn’t bringing them along.

Does the Russian leadership understand what is afoot with Trump’s apparent soft deceit that is intended to appease the MAGA constituency at home, whilst the CIA, as the Atlantic piece says, continues to “have gotten too good at hurting Russia, for Trump’s taste”? 

President Vladimir Putin, of course, understands completely. That is why Russian policy has pivoted to an operational-level strategy to destroy the militarily useful infrastructure of Ukraine, thus banishing the specter of a potential attack from the “space” to the west of Russia for at least a generation, maybe more. As Dmitri Trenin outlines:

The Russian army has launched its own [campaign]… dropp[ing] some of its self-imposed restraint… hitting the targets that heretofore it had avoided… [as] a way “to escalate to de-escalate”—six to nine months of intense air war in combination with advances on the ground that could bring the conflict to an end.

Russia’s tested resilience in this war is superior to Ukraine’s in material terms and to Europe’s in nonmaterial ones, which will likely determine what happens in the future.

The question, then, is does the CIA “get it”? Or is it, on the pattern outlined by Brun, the aforementioned Israeli general, that the CIA “knows” that Russia—in fact—is failing? In which case, the CIA was, in Brun’s words, “was not listening, because it was convinced it knew.” The Atlantic, again: “No one knows the state of the war, and the stakes involved, better than the CIA officers who are working in Ukraine and monitoring the fight from headquarters.”  

And are the Europeans listening? Not at the moment. The denial amongst some of the political class may be cracking, but it remains nonetheless largely intact—mainly because no European leader has any feasible plan to end the Ukraine entanglement in any cogent way. And, at the same time, no European leader knows how the EU can fund Ukraine and its war without crashing the very financial architecture that underpins “liberal” Europe.

Yet they soon will come to understand, because Europe is politically broken and financially broke—Eurozone government debt has increased to nearly 89 percent of GDP in the past six months. France’s debt has ballooned to 119 percent of GDP, while Italy’s is approaching 140 percent. Economic growth is slowing, unemployment has edged higher, consumer confidence is falling, and the ECB has already started raising interest rates again.

Europe surely can’t cough up the further €155 billion that Zelensky is insisting Europe should provide to Ukraine—particularly as the EU is already currently paying installments of the €90 billion loan for Ukraine that was meant “to help cover funding to the end of 2027.”

Russia is very aware of Europe’s fracturing. As Timofey Bordachev of the Valdai Club lays bare, “Western Europe is falling apart.” Bordachev writes,

The unrest sweeping several European countries… marks a new phase in the continent’s systemic crisis… [reflecting] the convergence of two long-term problems that much of Europe’s political establishment has proved incapable of resolving. The first is the exhaustion of the socioeconomic model that sustained Western European prosperity… The second is Western Europe’s long-standing absence of genuine sovereignty…. The [American-led NATO] alliance’s practical [function] has been to preserve the existing political order…. Transform[ing] that order would require a reassessment of relations with Washington and such independence is something these European governments have long been unwilling, or unable, to contemplate.

One wonders whether the CIA, which supposedly knows so much, knows about any of this either.

By MK Bhadrakumar, Indian Punchline, 11/2/26

 Peace comes in driblets in Ukraine

The famous line of Irish poet WB Yeats from the poem The Lake Isle of Innisfree comes to mind: ‘And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow…” Yeats was expressing his longing for the peace and tranquility of Innisfree, an uninhabited island in Ireland near which he spent his summers as a child while residing in an urban setting. And that is how Ukraine’s search for peace is meandering – not in a sudden, overwhelming wave; rather, in tiny, quiet increments, much like a gentle rain or a slow leak.

The ‘leak’ by Russia’s presidential aide for foreign policy Yuri Ushakov is no doubt an increment of potentially immense consequence when he told Kremlin’s preferred reporter Pavel Zarubin on Sunday that President Vladimir Putin never refused to speak with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky. Replying to a pointed question whether Putin would answer a call from Zelensky, Ushakov foretold, “I think he would answer, of course. Putin has never refused to talk. He [Zelensky] is sending signals through various sources. If he really wants to negotiate, he is free to come [to Moscow].”

The remark comes within a week of the joint phone call on October 27 by Finland’s President Alexander Stubb and Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre to Putin during which, per a subsequent disclosure by Ushakov, the Nordic leaders discreetly broached the subject of direct contact between Putin and Zelensky. Zelensky later appreciated their debriefing. This is the first thing. Apparently, Putin repeated the refrain that Zelensky can always visit Moscow and that the Kremlin would ensure his personal safety and security. Now, an addendum, as it were, has appeared for the first time to Putin’s standing offer. Presumably, it was an orchestrated Q&A. This is the first thing.

Secondly, the Kremlin closely studied the commotion in Europe that the two Nordic leaders’ impudent behavior triggered — as if the wolf entered the hay pen. The two Nordic leaders broke ranks. Denmark and Sweden protested they were not consulted. However, the two EU heavyweights — France, Germany – simply looked away, and the super hawkish European Commission (EC) leadership under Ursula von der Leyen and her fiery foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, were uncharacteristically subdued.

How to explain it? As Guardian newspaper (no friend of Russia or Putin) noted, “The confusion reflects a wider disagreement across Europe over how to approach Putin, even as governments remain broadly united in their support for Ukraine… France has long advocated keeping a channel to Putin open, while Germany and Britain have been more cautious. The Baltic states and Kaja Kallas fear that renewed high-level engagement could ease pressure on Moscow without securing concessions.”

Thirdly, the dissonance is at its loudest when it came to the question of who should lead any European outreach. Von der Leyen insists on nominating someone who will faithfully execute her policy line – in sum, put her in the driving seat. It is excruciatingly painful for Von der Leyen to dismount the high horse she has been riding to demonize Putin and insist Russia can be defeated in the war.

This is the crux of the matter: EU, with its narrative on the war collapsing, is not able to come up with any peace proposals. Its one-point demand is to have a physical presence at the high table of negotiations. Moscow has said it does not make sense unless EU has something to bring to the peace table. Trump agrees.

In fact, across the Atlantic no one is paying attention across to the acrimony in Europe regarding the seating arrangement at the peace table. The American elites are busy with domestic politics and if at all on the US’ war with Iran. Generally speaking, Ukraine war has ceased to be a hot button foreign-policy issue among the elites. The ease with which Trump could mothball the Graham Act sanctions on Russia is telling. Zelensky’s support base in the US is also steadily shrinking. In practical terms, it turns out to be is CIA’s war.

Clearly, the trilateral meeting in Abu Dhabi will go ahead without any European participation. Meanwhile, Slovakia says Bratislava will represent itself. The house that Von der Leyen built to centralize all decision-making seems far too fragile as multipolarity gains ground in Europe. This trend can only gather pace as incumbent governments may be replaced in four of the EU’s biggest member states in national elections during 2027 – France, Italy, Poland and Spain. A recent Carnegie paper in mid-September assessed that radical-right parties with Eurosceptic orientation and are Russia friendly are expected to do well.

The Carnegie paper titled How Europe’s 2027 Elections could Test EU Governance reluctantly admitted that the war in Ukraine “is likely to remain the EU’s most urgent security challenge. Radical-right parties are sharply divided on this issue, but as the cost of the EU’s support for Ukraine rises, resistance in several countries will increase. Locking in the union’s backing for Kyiv through multiannual programs would reduce the risk of a new constellation of political forces putting the union’s commitment to Ukraine in doubt.”

Overall, therefore, the Kremlin’s overture to engage Zelensky in a phone conversation comes not a day too soon. The catch is, Zelensky is a protégé of Britain’s MI6’s but here too, Britain’s ability to sustain the present momentum of the war is increasingly debatable. A BBC report gave a stark warning of “painful and depressing few years ahead” for the British people “after forecasts showed growth in living standards grinding almost to a halt.”

Ushakov’s remark testifies to the suppleness of the Kremlin’s strategy of not being an impediment to peaceful settlement in Ukraine but with no let-up in the frontline. Large scale Russian troop movements, the destruction of bridges over the Dnieper, the focus on Odessa and Kharkov, etc message that in the Kremlin’s estimation, there might be no alternative but to seek a military victory.

In a Substack piece, Gordon Hahn, the US security expert and specialist on Russia, visualised that Moscow may “add to its original demands” by pushing the ante on territorial issues, including the seizure of Kiev (“the mother of all Russian cities”) and Odessa (which Putin calls a Russian city’) – ie., gain control of the territory east of Dnieper (what Russians call the ‘Left Bank’) letting western Ukraine collapse into warlordism.

By Ben Aris, Substack, 10/29/26

Putin is having fun as delegations from 48 of Africa’s 54 countries, 22 led by heads of state, are in Moscow for the third Russia-Africa summit, where Putin is selling Russia as Africa’s anti-colonial partner.

He is on a roll to an eager audience, giving rousing speeches on his favourite topic: the world has been ruled by a bunch of neo-colonist imperialists that are just interested in bleeding the developing world of its human capital wealth to enrich themselves and the workers of the Global South should unite!

This is the third time for the summit, following the first one in Sochi in 2019 and it has been a huge success. The message resonates as much of the message is true. A study we reported found that the West exports some 80% of its manufacturing needs to the developing world, to sweat shops in places like Myanmar, where the “multinationals” pay pennies to have our phones and jeans made. That really does export the human capital wealth from these countries and enrich us in the developed world as a iPhone costs $1,000 and not the $5,000 it would cost if an American made it. That’s $4,000 of cash you can spend on something else. This system was politely known as “globalization” until recently but, as Putin keeps pushing, it can also be called neo-colonialism. At least, the Africans see it that way.

Ironically, this system is exactly what US President Donald Trump is complaining about and the reason for his Liberation Day tariffs – to bring “good manufacturing jobs back home.”

But this is beyond stupid, as it takes no account of the income delta: we did a back of the envelope calculation of the unit cost of making a widget in the EU, US and China using one kilo of metal, 100kWh of power and an hour of average labour: it costs around $25 in the developed world and only $7 in China – and China already has some of the more expensive labour costs in the EMs.

You can’t compete with this, no matter how high you build your trade protectionist walls. As we have been arguing all year, we are now in a post-Pax Americana world as the “emerging markets” have emerged. They should be renamed something like the “dynamic markets” (that is not really catchy enough, eh?) as they still have a lot of problems and the wage delta remains, but the China story shows very clearly that they are catching up in a lot of sectors and even overtaking the DMs in things like Greentech.

But not Africa. That really is still an emerging market story. The per capita incomes in Africa are still a fraction of even Russia’s income. It’s the last really big EM catch up story that has yet to unwind. And Russia is promising to help.

Russia was in the first wave. I was in the room at Putin’s first ever state of the nation speech in 2000 when he put demographics at the top of the agenda – it’s still top of the list – but he his top economic agenda item was to “catch up with Portugal.”

26 years later Russia has overtaken not only Portugal, but everyone else, except the US on a ppp basis.

This process is going in waves. Central Europe caught up with the DMs really fast after the EU accession wave in 2003. China has seen its growth accelerate for about a decade and is now slowing and maturing. Central Asia is only coming to its critical mass now, where Uzbekistan has been putting in 6% growth for a decade but recently started to accelerate and growth is now around 8% with another decade of fast growth ahead. Latin America is doing the same and the Brazilian economy in particular has been transformed and now accounts for a third of GDP of the whole continent by itself.

Africa is right at the start of the process, with a few hot spots like Nigeria. Sub-Saharan African growth averaged 4.5% in both 2026 and 2027 with East Africa growing the fastest at 6.5% projected for this year.

It usually starts with FDI into light manufacturing, but most of Africa is still at the exporting-raw-materials stage. It’s an issue of low wages vs productivity. The Balkans is currently booming as productivity has risen to the point where the combination of the two makes it more profitable than investing in Central Europe. In Africa the wages are essentially zero, but so is the productivity.

In this context, listening to Putin’s speeches today and yesterday and he is pushing all of Africa’s buttons. He is not only promising to provide grain – a top necessity for many countries – but yesterday he also promised to invest into African pharmaceutical sector, and today promised to build factories and move some Russian production to Africa. He also mentioned that the number of African students studying in Russia has doubled in the last year and Rosatom was holding talks on building half a dozen floating nuclear power stations in Africa. These are all productivity multipliers and the assembled presidents are creaming themselves over the prospects as Russia usually finances these sorts of investments itself – for the Africans they are essentially free (in the short-term but come with strategic dependencies…).

The neo-colonial troupe is the Xmas wrapping paper this is all bundled into. Another story earlier this month that went by largely unnoticed was a Russia sponsored UN motion to condemn sanctions as neo-colonial, which was universally approved by the Global South and university condemned by the EU and US. The Kremlin completely outplayed the West with that one. France was booted out of Niger in 2023 because it was paying a fraction for a kilo for uranium, an estimated €68/kg, when the market price was closer to €200. Macron regularly gets booed when he tours in francophone Africa – he simply doesn’t get it.

All this is important as its part of Putin’s big bet on the Global South Century. He must have been fully aware of what would happen when he marched into Ukraine – a permeant break with the West and the end of his dream of a single market “from Lisbon to Vladivostok” which most of his foreign policy was built around. Swapping Germany for Sahel may not look like such a great idea, but when you add in Latam, SE Asia and particularly China, it starts to get more appealing: Putin pointed out that just the BRICS generated 40% of global GDP last year. And Africa will eventually be a big catch as it shares many features with Russia: a large land mass, a large population, and a cornucopia of raw materials. Putin’s plan is clearly to accelerate the catch up, and the Africans are lovin’ it.

Russia is so well received as it never tried to colonise Africa and indeed, during the Cold War the communist USSR supported the independence movements against their colonial overlords. And since then Russia remains the destination of choice for a quality higher education. You’d be surprised at how many of the African delegates in Moscow today speak fluent Russian from their university days. For example, presidents João Lourenço of Angola and John Dramani Mahama of Ghana both studied in Moscow.