Kremlin website, 12/4/25

Geeta Mohan: Mr President, things have changed a little between the US and Russia. The fact that America is engaging you, we would have loved to be a fly on the wall when you were meeting with Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff. That was an important meeting. Were there red lines that Russia reiterated? What really happened?

Vladimir Putin: It’s premature to discuss that now. I doubt it would interest you to hear about it, as it lasted five hours. Frankly, even I grew weary of it – five hours is too much. However, it was necessary because…

Anjana Om Kashyap: Five hours! Witkoff and Kushner?

Vladimir Putin: Yes, and I was alone. Can you imagine it?

But speaking seriously, it was a very productive conversation, as what our American colleagues presented was, in one way or another, based on our prior agreements made before my meeting with President Trump in Alaska. We had discussed these very issues, to some extent, at the meeting in Anchorage. However, what the Americans brought us this time was truly new; we hadn’t seen it before. Therefore, we had to go through practically every point, which is why it took so much time. So it was a meaningful, highly specific, and substantive conversation.

Anjana Om Kashyap: Were there certain specific points of disagreement?

Vladimir Putin: Yes, such issues were raised, we discussed them. But this is a complex task and a challenging mission that President Trump took upon himself – fair enough, I say without irony, because achieving consensus among conflicting parties is no easy task. But President Trump, truly, I believe, he sincerely tries to do this.

We went through each point again, let me reiterate this. Sometimes we said, “yes, we can discuss this, but with that one we cannot agree.” That was how the work proceeded. To say now what exactly doesn’t suit us or where we could possibly agree seems premature, since it might disrupt the very mode of operation that President Trump is trying to establish.

But that’s what they do – shuttle diplomacy. They spoke with Ukrainian representatives, then with Europeans, came here, had another meeting with Ukrainians and Europeans. I think we should engage in this effort rather than obstruct it.

Geeta Mohan: You are saying that the 28 points peace proposal is not on the table?

Vladimir Putin: They’re discussing – that’s what they’re discussing right now. They simply broke down those 28 points, then 27, into four packages and proposed discussing these four packages. But essentially, it’s still just the same old 27 points.

Anjana Om Kashyap: We will go back to that and try to understand how it’s going forward.

What happened in Alaska? You met President Trump and it was all about the peace deal, right? What happened? Did you actually have sense of or see a sincere intent?

Vladimir Putin: Yes, there was indeed a sense – no, more than just a sense, I have absolutely no doubt that President Trump had genuine intentions (we won’t discuss here what caused them or why they appeared, but they’re definitely present). Both the United States and President Trump likely have their own understanding of why this needs to be resolved quickly.

Moreover, by the way, on humanitarian grounds too. I truly believe that is one of the motives behind President Trump’s actions regarding this matter because he constantly speaks about his wish to minimise losses, and I’m confident that his sincerity is genuine. He undoubtedly considers these humanitarian concerns when formulating his decisions.

However, other factors also come into play: political considerations and economic interests. Therefore, I believe that the US is actively seeking a solution to this problem.

Geeta Mohan: Yes, he has spoken about intentions, you’re right about. He claimed he would end wars and conflicts – causing consternation in India when he claimed that he had brought peace between India and Pakistan, now he’s looking at Russia and Ukraine. Do you really think he’s a peacemaker?

Vladimir Putin: Regarding the situation in Ukraine – yes, let me repeat once again, I am absolutely certain, with no doubt at all, he sincerely aims for a peaceful resolution.

Let me stress once again: the United States may have various reasons for this – humanitarian ones personally for Trump because he genuinely wants to end hostilities and prevent further loss of life, but there could also be political interests tied to ending the confrontation between Russia and Ukraine, or economic motives too. By the way, they can be in the energy area and in other areas. There are numerous areas where restoring economic relations between the US and Russia would benefit both sides.

I showed you some letters – I won’t go into this now – large US companies sent to us. We should remember this.

Comment: Really?

Vladimir Putin: Of course. About their existence. They’re waiting until all problems are solved, and they’re ready to return to us, they want this, asking us not to forget about them. The letters are there.

Comment: It’s surprising.

Vladimir Putin: What’s so surprising about that? Many want to return. So, of course, the Indian government is saying right: “Why should we leave…?”

Geeta Mohan: They arrived with letters from companies – quite astonishingly unexpected indeed.

Vladimir Putin: No, I believe there has been a misunderstanding. We have letters from American companies – letters they have sent us, where they urge us not to forget about their existence. These are our former partners, who did not leave by choice. They express a clear desire to resume cooperation and are waiting, among other things, for a corresponding political signal.

Anjana Om Kashyap: This conversation is becoming very interesting because there are so many highlights of understanding and it is really pleasant to see you, and your sense of humour, and how you are putting things forth.

But now we are going to go into a very serious matter – and that is the Russia-Ukraine war. So what, in your view, would constitute a victory for Russia in the Russia-Ukraine war? What are the red lines? Because you have, and I quote you, you have said very clearly that Russia will lay down arms only if Kiev’s troops withdraw from the territories claimed by Russia, which parts would that be?

Vladimir Putin: You know, it’s not about victory, like you have said. The point is that Russia is determined – and will certainly do so – to protect its interests. Protect its people living there, protect our traditional values, Russian language, and so on. Protection, by the way, of religion that has been cultivated on these lands for centuries. Yet you know that the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine is almost banned: they seize churches, drive people out of temples, etc. – it is a problem. And I’m not even mentioning the ban on the Russian language, etc. It is all part of a big set of issues.

Let me remind you: we were not the ones to start this war. The West egged Ukraine on and supported the events, orchestrating a coup d’état. That was the point that triggered the events in Crimea, followed by developments in southeastern Ukraine, in Donbass.

They don’t even mention it – we’ve tried to resolve these issues peacefully for eight years, signed the Minsk agreements, hoping that they could be resolved through peaceful means. But Western leaders openly admitted later that they never intended to honour those agreements, signing them merely to allow Ukraine to arm itself and continue fighting against us. After eight years of relentless violence against our citizens of Donbass – something the West hasn’t uttered a word about – we were forced to recognise these republics first, and secondly, provide support. Our special military operation isn’t the start of a war, but rather an attempt to end one that the West ignited using Ukrainian nationalists. That’s what is really happening now. That’s the crux of the problem.

We will finish it when we achieve the goals set at the beginning of the special military operation – when we free these territories. That’s all.

Anjana Om Kashyap: What is the end gain for Vladimir Putin in Ukraine?

Vladimir Putin: I have said that already. Listen, we didn’t recognise these self-proclaimed republics for eight years. Eight years. They declared independence, while we were trying to establish relations between the rest of Ukraine and those republics. But when we realised this was impossible, that they were simply being destroyed, we had no choice but to recognise them – and not just their existence on part of the territory, but within administrative boundaries established during Soviet times, then later under independent Ukraine after its independence, still within those administrative borders.

And right away we told Ukraine, the Ukrainian troops: ”People don’t want to live with you anymore. They voted in a referendum for independence. Withdraw your troops from there, and there won’t be any military actions.“ No, they chose to fight instead.

Now they have pretty much fought themselves into a corner, all this boils down to one thing: either we take back these territories by force, or eventually Ukrainian troops withdraw and stop killing people there.

Anjana Om Kashyap: Before we move to the other one, just one last question. On March 8, 2014, during the annexation of Crimea, you were addressing the Federation Council and you said, ”Kiev is the mother of all Russian cities.“ What did you mean?

Vladimir Putin: Here I haven’t made up anything – historically this is how it was said. Originally, the Russian state was formed from several centres. The first capital, according to history, was in Novgorod in the northwest. Later the federal status moved to the city of Veliky Novgorod, and then it moved to Kiev. This was Ancient Rus. And since then, Kiev has been known as the ”mother of all Russian cities.“

Later, historical events unfolded in such a way that the ancient Russian state split into two parts. One part began developing with Moscow as its centre, while another part fell under other countries. For instance, the part with Kiev, along with some other lands, these parts first formed a state with Lithuania, subsequently merged with Poland, forming the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Thus, this part of the ancient Russian state ended up in Poland, and by the seventeenth century, it sought to return back to Russia.

Geeta Mohan: The fact that you know, you were mentioning the history and it brings me to what I did when the conflict was underway. I had travelled to Donetsk, I had travelled to Lugansk, Zaporozhye, Kherson, and most of the people there are Russian-speaking, they speak Russian language. They were very disappointed that Kiev had banned that language in eastern Ukraine. But they were also a little shocked at how Putin is doing this to us, we are his people. A lot of women I spoke to were in shock. So, what do you have to say to people in eastern Ukraine who actually have families in Russia, who, on a daily basis, move from Ukraine to Russia. What do you have to say to them?

Vladimir Putin: I didn’t understand the question. What exactly shocked them?

Geeta Mohan: They were shocked that there was an operation that happened, and their homes were destroyed, because they lived in eastern Ukraine. And they have love for Russia and the Russian people, and they are Russian-speaking themselves.

Vladimir Putin: The answer is quite straightforward. These individuals presumably resided in those parts of Ukraine – specifically, in the areas of the Lugansk or Donetsk region – that remained under the control of the Kiev authorities at the time. Meanwhile, that part of the Lugansk or Donetsk region outside their control was being subjected to intense military action by the Kiev authorities. We were consequently forced to extend support to those areas that had declared independence. That is the first point.

Secondly, we provided people with an opportunity to express their will in an open referendum. Those who believed it was in their interest to join Russia voted accordingly. Those who did not were free to leave unhindered for other parts of the Ukrainian state. We have never placed any obstacles in the way of that choice.

Geeta Mohan: What do you make of President Zelensky? He was promised NATO, the European Union promised him the EU. But nothing really happened. Was NATO ever on the table for Ukraine?

Vladimir Putin: When this gentleman came to power, he declared that he would pursue peace at all costs, using every means possible, without sparing even his career. But now we see things differently. He follows the same pattern as his predecessors – putting the interests of a narrow nationalist group, particularly radical nationalists, ahead of those of the people. Essentially, he is addressing their concerns rather than those of the nation.

This regime’s mindset truly resembles a neo-Nazi regime because extreme nationalism and neo-Nazism are almost indistinguishable concepts. Today, undeniably, military action dominates their approach. However, they haven’t achieved much success here either.

I have already said before that what matters most for them is realising that the best way to resolve the problems is through peaceful negotiations, and we attempted to negotiate with them back in 2022. What exactly they plan to do remains to be asked from them directly.

Anjana Om Kashyap: That would be interesting to see what they have to say on that, and how this peace process goes forward.

But you have always said that the eastward expansion of NATO is your real concern. Ukraine has not got this NATO membership as of now. My question to you – is NATO expansion a real threat or just a pretext for what you think is a part of Ukraine which is probably you want control over? Or you think that injustice is being done, the Russian language is being banned – these are the real issues?

Vladimir Putin: Listen, NATO is another matter altogether. The Russian language, Russian culture, religion, and even territorial issues – these are very important topics, one subject. NATO is something entirely different. We don’t demand anything exclusive for ourselves here.

First of all, there are general agreements that the security of one state cannot be guaranteed by undermining the security of others. This idea might seem somewhat obscure, but I’ll explain it simply. Each country, including Ukraine, has the right to choose its own means of defence and ensure its own safety. Correct? Absolutely correct. Do we deny Ukraine this? No. But it’s not acceptable if done at Russia’s expense. Ukraine believes it would benefit from joining NATO. And we say: that threatens our security, let’s find a way to secure yours without threatening us.

Secondly, we are not asking for anything unusual or unexpected, nothing falling from the sky. We are just insisting on fulfilling the promises already made to us. These weren’t invented yesterday. They were pledged to Russia back in the ’90s: no expansion eastward—this was stated publicly. Since then, several waves of expansion took place, culminating with Ukraine being drawn into NATO. This completely displeases us and poses a serious threat. Let’s remember that NATO is a military-political alliance, and Article Five of the Washington Treaty establishing NATO hasn’t been repealed. It’s a threat to us. Nobody bothers to take us seriously.

Lastly, when Ukraine became independent, few people recall this: what was the first document ratifying independence? It was the Declaration of State Sovereignty, Independence of Ukraine. That forms the foundation of Ukrainian sovereignty and modern statehood. And it clearly states that Ukraine is a neutral state.

Geeta Mohan: Was that also the basis for what happened when you decided to annex Crimea, you only seized the water port, a very important strategic port for Russia? And then Russia was no longer part of the G8. Today, the West claims, or says, that you actions in the recent past are the reason for, and I quote-unquote, the isolation of Russia.

Vladimir Putin: We didn’t need to seize that important port in Crimea because it was ours already – our Navy had been stationed there under the agreement with Ukraine, which is a fact. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, our fleet remained there regardless. The matter isn’t about that, though it’s significant, but that’s not what we’re talking about here.

And we did not annex Crimea, I want to emphasise this point. We simply came to help people who didn’t want their lives or fate tied to those who staged a coup in Ukraine. They said: “Hey, nationalist extremists took over in Kiev. Did anyone ask us? Ok, we ended up as part of independent Ukraine after the dissolution of the USSR. So be it, history happened like that. Fine, ok, now we’ll live that way. But we believe that we exist in a democratic state. And if coups happen here with unknown consequences, then we won’t accept that, we don’t want to live like that.” There was a threat not just of pressure, but of outright violence against the Crimeans. Russia stepped in to help them. How could we do otherwise? If someone believes differently, thinking that Russia would act differently, they’re deeply mistaken. We’ll always defend our interests and our people…

By Ben Aris, Intellinews, 12/7/25

In a damning report, the The New York Times (NYT) detailed institutional corruption in the Zelenskiy administration, where the government has systematically undermined checks and balances to appoint its placemen in charge of key companies and institutions. 

President Volodymyr Zelensky’s government systematically dismantled independent oversight mechanisms in key state-owned enterprises, undermining anti-corruption safeguards even as billions of dollars in Western aid flowed into Ukraine, NYT reported on December 5. [https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/05/world/europe/ukraine-corruption-zelensky.html]

The investigation, based on interviews with about 20 Ukrainian and Western officials and reviewed documents, found that Kyiv stacked supervisory boards with loyalists, left seats vacant, or delayed their formation altogether. These boards—mandated by international donors to monitor procurement, executive appointments and spending—were often rendered powerless through political interference and revised company charters.

“They understood that as soon as they start the activities of the supervisory board they can lose control,” Oleksii Movchan, a member of parliament from Zelensky’s own party who has supported stronger oversight mechanisms to the NYT. “They didn’t want to lose control.”

The report comes in the midst of the mushrooming Energoatom corruption scandal that has already claimed the heads of two ministers and head of Ukraine’s presidential office, Andriy Yermak, who was forced to resign on November 28 after the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) raided his office and home.

The scandal centres on Timur Mindich, Zelenskiy former business partner and close personal friend, who ran a $100mn kickback scheme using his influence. He skipped the country only hours before NANU searched his home and offices, where a solid gold toilet was discovered as well as bundles of hundreds of thousands of dollars and euros in cash. He is reportedly sheltering in Israel, which does not extradite its citizens.

Zelenskiy has sanctioned Mindich for three years, but no arrest warrant has been issued. Zelenskiy’s reputation has taken a severe blow as a result of the scandal and comes just as the EU is battling to raise an additional €140bn to fund Ukraine’s war with Russia with the highly controversial Reparation Loan.

The EU is highly displeased and warned Kyiv that it won’t be allowed to join the EU unless it eradicates corruption from the government.

Ukraine’s reputation as a feisty David to Russia’s Goliath is now being dragged in the dirt. The NYT report centres on Energoatom, the state nuclear energy company. The administration has blamed the company’s supervisory board for failing to prevent the corruption, and Zelenskiy has ordered a shake up of the management of the entire energy sector. But NYT found that the board was deliberately hobbled by delayed appointments and unfilled seats, in moves to consolidate Bankova (Ukraine’s equivalent of the Kremlin) control over the company.

A former British financier and incoming board member, said he had planned to scrutinise a controversial $600mn reactor deal but was blocked from taking office. “The whole thing was just a complete rat’s nest,” Dr Stone told the paper.

At Ukrenergo, the state power grid operator, the administration allegedly bypassed the EU-vetted shortlist of board candidates to appoint Roman Pionkowski, a Polish expert deemed unqualified by Western partners. Pionkowski later voted to remove Ukrenergo’s chief executive, Volodymyr Kudrytskyi, despite the remaining foreign board members resigning in protest and calling the move “politically motivated”.

Kudrytskyi is responsible for bringing in $1.5bn of foreign investment into the power sector and used it to build 60 concrete defences to protect Ukraine’s key energy assets from Russian missiles, to great effect. The same defensive constructions were due to be built for Energoatom, but when Kudrytskyi complained to the then Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko, the government opened an corruption investigation Kudrytskyi, who was sacked and the defences were never built. Halushchenko is one of the two ministers implicated by NABU and has since been sacked by Zelenskiy. The hundreds of millions of dollars of foreign aid for the energy sector that Kudrytskyi brought into Ukraine has since dried up to a trickle.

Supervisory boards were just window dressing according to experts interviewed by NYT. And blatant meddling by the state to get its representatives appointed caused many respected foreign independent directors to resign their board seats.

European officials have long been aware of the corruption problem but have shied away from punishing Ukraine. Ukraine was downgraded to B in the last EU accession progress report released in November from A due to the corruption issue. While EU officials went out of their way to scold Kyiv for its lack of progress on making reforms in the “Fundamental cluster” that includes judicial reforms, no concrete actions to limit aid were taken.

A European Commission-commissioned report this year, obtained by NYT, warned of “persistent political interference” in Ukraine’s energy sector and identified the undermining of supervisory boards as a key vulnerability.

A spokeswoman for the European Union said there was no evidence that EU funds were misused but did not comment on the report’s findings regarding corruption.

Eight individuals, including a former deputy prime minister and a business associate of Zelensky, have been accused of charges including embezzlement and money laundering in the Energoatom case. NABU has said that some 40 high government officials may be implicated in the scandal.

Corruption is the system

As bne IntelliNews reported, corruption is not a problem of the Ukrainian system, corruption is the system. Since the 2014 annexation of the Crimea, Ukraine’s supporters have tried to play down the corruption issue, but in the last months, the international coverage has turned increasingly negative as the warts and blemishes of Ukraine’s government have become increasingly hard to ignore. Zelenskiy has been accused of showing increasingly authoritarian traits, but came to a head when he attempted to gut Ukraine’s anti-corruption organs with Law 21414 that sparked the first anti-government protests since the war began. Things have only gotten worse since then, culminating with NABU’s investigation into the Energoatom kickback scheme.

Weak institutions and a dysfunction and venal judicial system means checks and balances do not work. Political power becomes the ability to give underlings lucrative jobs where they can skim off the top. Power is the ability to take those jobs away.

Under the first post-Soviet president Leonid Kuchma, corruption was on an industrial scale with scams coordinated by the original Gazprom management where officials from both Russia and Ukraine skimmed off billions of dollars from the gas transit business between Russia and its EU customers, via vehicles like RosUkrEnergo.

After a brief hiatus under the Orange Revolution government of Viktor Yushchenko, but where no progress in the fight against corruption was made, his replacement Viktor Yanukovych set up what has been dubbed as a “mafia state” who is accused of stealing billions of dollars of state money, leading to this ousting in the 2014 EuroMaidan revolution. He was replaced by oligarch turned politician former President Petro Poroshenko, but even this pro-Western administration was knee-deep in corruption.

Aivaras Abromavičius, a Lithuanian fund manager and naturalised Ukrainian, was appointed Minister of Economic Development and Trade in December 2014 by Poroshenko and also put in charge of cleaning up corruption of Ukroboronexport, the state-owned arms agency. However, he sparked a small political crisis when he gave a press conference and publicly resigned in early 2016, saying corruption in the government made his job impossible. He told bne IntelliNews at the time that Poroshenko tried to force appointments on him in an effort to gain control over revenue streams.

Excerpt from Die Welt (courtesy of Geoffrey Roberts and John Attfield)

Moderators: Good morning from Berlin to Kyiv to Christoph Wanner. Christoph, let’s look at this new attempt to bring peace to Ukraine. What can we take away from Miami? What details are we hearing that could actually influence Moscow’s decision to say yes or no?

Wanner: There is increasing news here in Ukraine that no agreement could be reached in Miami on the really important points. This mainly concerns the possible cession of territory. There is repeated talk of the Russians wanting the Donbas, i.e. the two Ukrainian provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk. And the Ukrainians are said to have stuck to their guns and continued to say: ‘No way. That’s completely contrary to our constitution. We won’t give it up voluntarily, we won’t back down, we won’t vacate the whole thing.’ NATO membership, or possible NATO membership, must be mentioned. The Ukrainians do not want to be deprived of their right to become a NATO member. And the Russians say that this is a taboo subject, completely out of the question. The Ukrainians must renounce this. Security guarantees for the Ukrainians – here, too, no agreement seems to have been reached yet. So, on the really essential points, there is still disagreement between the Americans and the Ukrainians. And now, of course, the Russian war bloggers are quick to comment on this. As is so often the case, they are always the first to break the news, and the tenor is then: ‘If the Ukrainians don’t give in, this war will continue. I often read things like ’dead end”, which is where we still find ourselves. But let’s wait and see what the Americans will discuss with Vladimir Putin. Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are flying to Moscow today, and tomorrow there will be a meeting with Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin, and then we will know more. Perhaps the Russians are willing to make compromises that we don’t know about yet. I can’t imagine it. I think the key issues for Putin are territorial issues and the NATO question. If he gets Donbas and assurances that Ukraine will not become a NATO member, he might be willing to talk about many other things. 

Moderators: Christoph, you say if he gets the Donbas. The American broadcaster NBC is now reporting that even if the Ukrainians, i.e. Zelensky, were to support this decision, the military would refuse to give up this territory. How likely is a kind of military coup?

Wanner: The news comes from the American media outlet NBC, and their colleagues apparently spoke to Ukrainian military personnel and asked them: What would you do if you received the order to evacuate Donbas? And the answer from many of them was apparently: We will not evacuate, that is out of the question. I asked around among my Ukrainian colleagues this morning because I myself have too little knowledge of how the military would react. And my colleagues assured me that the high-ranking Ukrainian military officers have no political agenda of their own, are not politicians, have no ambitions and will do exactly what Zelensky orders them to do. And so they would probably evacuate the Donbas. Of course, there are always hardliners, there are always hawks, even in the military, ultra-nationalists who do not want to give the Russians a single square centimetre. That’s clear, but there are also many Ukrainian soldiers, and this is what I know from my own experience and hear time and again when we are in the east of the country, who, I have to say it as it is, please forgive me, are simply fed up, who just want this war, this dying, to stop. And these men may be willing to make painful compromises. 

Russia Matters, 12/5/25

1. The Trump administration’s newly released U.S. National Security Strategy 2025 asserts that an “expeditious cessation of hostilities in Ukraine” is a core U.S. interest—not only to enable Ukraine’s survival as a “viable state,” but also to stabilize the European economy, prevent escalation and reestablish strategic stability with Russia. Managing Europe’s relationship with Russia, the NSS notes, will require vigorous U.S. diplomatic engagement to avoid further conflict and promote Eurasian stability. The document calls for “reestablishing conditions of stability within Europe and strategic stability with Russia,” thus, highlighting nuclear arms control. On nuclear policy, the strategy promises America the “world’s most robust, credible and modern nuclear deterrent,” alongside investment in “next-generation missile defenses.”¹
   1. On Dec. 5, Ukraine’s security chief Rustem Umerov and General Staff head Andriy Hnatov met U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner—who had previously visited Vladimir Putin to run an evolving peace plan by him with no agreement reached—in Miami to discuss the four-package peace plan. These talks in Miami were adjourned in the afternoon of Dec. 5 without agreement. Despite no deal being reached, further negotiations were reportedly expected with the participation of Umerov and Hnatov in the U.S. in the evening of Dec. 5, after the negotiators were due to brief their respective leaders. U.S. Vice President JD Vance expressed optimism about progress, though he acknowledged talks have been slower and more complex than expected.
2. During a recent meeting with Ukrainian officials, U.S. Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll warned that Ukraine was facing an imminent defeat on the battlefield. The Russians were ramping up the scale and pace of their aerial attacks, and they had the ability to fight on indefinitely, Driscoll said, two sources with knowledge of the matter told NBC. The situation for Ukraine would only get worse over time, he continued, and it was better to negotiate a peace settlement now rather than end up in an even weaker position in the future. In separate remarks in Kyiv to European diplomats, Driscoll warned that Russia is amassing a growing stockpile of long-range missiles, citing it as a reason to rapidly reach a peace deal before Ukraine’s defenses are overwhelmed, according to New York Times. European officials pressed Driscoll on including accountability for Russian war crimes in the peace deal, but he reportedly deflected, arguing that some disputed Ukrainian cities would inevitably end up under Russian control and warning that the terms for Ukraine would worsen if they delayed making a deal, according to Financial Times.
3. RM’s analysis of ISW data for the past four weeks (Nov. 4–Dec. 2, 2025) indicates that Russian forces gained 247 square miles of Ukrainian territory in that period, an increase over the 154 square miles it gained over the previous four-week period (Oct. 7–Nov. 4, 2025), according to the Dec. 3, 2025, issue of The Russia-Ukraine War Report Card.^2,3 In the past week, Nov. 25–Dec. 2, 2025, Russia gained 23 square miles of Ukraine’s territory in a significant decrease from the previous week’s reported gain of 128 square miles. Since Jan. 1, 2025, Russia has gained an average of 176 square miles per month, according to RM’s war card. Its latest gains include the city of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region, which is “fully in the hands of the Russian army,” Vladimir Putin claimed in Dec. 2 remarks. According to the map by Ukraine’s OSINT DeepState group, however, most but not all of Pokrovsk was controlled by Russian forces as of Dec. 5 noon, with RF units attacking this key city from the east and west in what looked like an effort to turn AFU’s Pokrovsk-Myrnohrad salient into a cauldron.
4. Vladimir Putin said on Dec. 2 that Russia was “ready” for war if Europe seeks one, accusing the continent’s leaders of trying to sabotage a deal on the Ukraine war before he met with U.S. envoys, according to MT/AFP. “They have no peaceful agenda, they are on the side of war,” he added, repeating his claim that European leaders were hindering U.S. attempts to broker peace in Ukraine.
5. The United States wants Europe to take over the majority of NATO’s conventional defense capabilities, from intelligence to missiles, by 2027, Pentagon officials told European diplomats in Washington this week—a tight deadline that struck some European officials as unrealistic, according to Reuters. The U.S. officials told their counterparts that if Europe does not meet the 2027 deadline, the U.S. may stop participating in some NATO defense coordination mechanisms, said the sources, who requested anonymity to discuss private conversations, Reuters reported.

By Kautilya The Contemplator, Substack, 11/6/25

The United States once prided itself on a foreign policy elite that combined intellectual depth with cultural fluency. In the early Cold War, the State Department, intelligence community and leading universities cultivated a generation of scholars fluent in Russian, Chinese, Arabic, Persian and Hindi. These were experts who could not only interpret foreign texts but also civilizations.

Yet, as the 21st century advances, this infrastructure of serious scholarship has deteriorated. The study of comparative civilizations is dying, language training is in decline and “expertise” has become synonymous with partisanship. Few in Washington today possess genuine understanding of how Russia, China, India, Iran or the Arab world actually think and act within their own civilizational frameworks. The consequences of this intellectual vacuum are visible in the hubris, incoherence and repeated strategic failures of US foreign policy.

The End of the Scholar-Statesman Tradition

During the Cold War, the US recognized that to compete with the Soviet Union it needed more than weapons and alliances. It required minds capable of understanding its adversary’s history and worldview. The Ford and Rockefeller Foundations were among several prestigious institutions that poured millions in funding to build Area Studies centers at universities like Harvard, Columbia and Berkeley. These institutes trained generations of scholars who became advisers, analysts and diplomats. Among the most notable were George Kennan, Robert Tucker, Jack Matlock and Stephen Cohen who embodied the “scholar-statesman” ideal – intellectually rigorous, linguistically trained and able to explain Russia to Americans in Russia’s own terms.

That generation has faded away. Today’s policy community is dominated not by historians or linguists but by lawyers, political consultants and think-tank operatives whose expertise lies in managing narratives, not in understanding nations. The passing of Professor Stephen Cohen in 2020 symbolized more than the death of a single scholar. It marked the end of a tradition of empathy-based analysis. Cohen’s deep study of Soviet political evolution and his willingness to challenge prevailing orthodoxies made him one of the few American voices capable of understanding Russia’s post-Cold War trauma. No comparable figure has replaced him. In his absence, debate about Russia has hardened into a binary of demonization versus silence.

The Hollowing of Area Studies and the Language Pipeline

This intellectual decline has institutional roots. The Area Studies system that once underpinned US global understanding has been hollowed out in many centers of higher education. After the Cold War, universities re-directed funding away from regional specialization toward globalized, quantitative and theory-heavy “international studies.” Departments of Slavic, East Asian, South Asian and Middle Eastern studies withered as enrollments fell and budgets were slashed.

The post-1991 “end of history” mentality reinforced the illusion that ideological triumph rendered local knowledge unnecessary. If liberal democracy was destined to be universal, why study the cultural and historical particularities of others? Funding agencies followed suit. The US Department of Education’s Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) program under Title VI, which once supported language training and regional centers, has been repeatedly cut. As recently as September 2025, the Department prematurely terminated funding for FLAS fellowships stating that “international and foreign language education is not in the best interest of the federal government.”1 Meanwhile, defense and intelligence funding has shifted toward technology and cyber-security, not cultural or linguistic intelligence.

When the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1 on October 4, 1957, the first artificial Earth satellite, not only did it raise concerns about America’s ability to compete technologically but it also sparked an urgency to markedly increase the training of Russian speakers capable of monitoring Soviet military and scientific developments. In 1958, the National Defense Education Act authorized funding to strengthen US education in language instruction creating a pipeline of Soviet specialists.

Today’s landscape echoes that moment. China’s military power is expanding, Russia is fielding next-generation hypersonic weapon systems and Iran has developed a sophisticated drone and missile complex from loitering munitions to solid-fuel medium-range systems that is reshaping regional deterrence. Tracking these developments in real time still demands deep language and technical literacy – to read foreign-language journals, factory disclosures, procurement data and doctrinal debates rather than filtered summaries. Yet, the pipeline has thinned just as the need for rigorous language-based analysis has returned.2

The contraction is visible in the numbers. Between 2009 and 2021, nearly 30 percent fewer college students in the US enrolled in a foreign language course. Russian language programs in American universities have fallen sharply since 2010. Chinese language enrollment briefly surged but then declined since 2018, driven by political suspicion and bureaucratic scrutiny of Confucius Institutes. Hindi, Persian and Turkish studies survive only at a handful of institutions. Most undergraduate programs in “International Studies” now emphasize global governance, human rights and climate change rather than deep area expertise. Students are encouraged to think in universal categories, not to grapple with foreign particularities.

From Pipeline to Flagships: How Incentives Rewired the Hubs

The decline in language training and the reorientation of funding streams do not remain abstract trends. They cascade upward into the very institutions built to convert linguistic and regional mastery into strategic understanding. Centers recalibrate to surrounding incentives such as grant cycles, media salience and Washington’s messaging, thereby substituting high-tempo programming and advocacy for long-horizon scholarship.

This deterioration is most tragically symbolized by the transformation of once-prestigious centers like the Harriman Institute at Columbia University and the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard. During the Cold War, these were the beating hearts of serious scholarship on the Soviet Union and then Russia and Eurasia post-1991. They produced a generation of scholars and diplomats fluent in Russian history, culture and language.

Today, both have become almost unrecognizable and are entirely aligned with the prevailing anti-Russia line in Washington. Rather than fostering nuanced scholarship, they have drifted into ideological activism. The Harriman Institute’s programming, research priorities and guest speakers overwhelmingly echo the US government’s Ukraine narratives. Its intellectual atmosphere, once defined by debate between liberals, conservatives and realists, is now defined by conformity. Russia is no longer studied as a civilization or as a complex historical entity but as a political problem to be solved.

The tragedy is that these institutions once represented America’s intellectual pluralism at its finest. These were places where a young scholar could argue that Russia’s worldview, though different, was legitimate in its own right. Today, that space for intellectual independence has drastically reduced.

The “Ideologization” of Expertise and the Neoconservative Turn

The replacement of real scholarship by ideological conformity has resulted in a chorus of predictable talking points. Russia is “aggressive,” China is “expansionist,” India must “align with the West.” Complex realities are flattened into slogans and the very idea of understanding the “other” becomes suspect. Scholars who advocate dialogue or mutual respect are derided as “apologists”. The late Stephen Cohen faced such treatment in the years following the 2014 Maidan coup in Ukraine.

The political economy of the think-tank world reinforces this dynamic. Funding flows from defense contractors, technology companies and government grants aligned with national security priorities. A young researcher quickly learns that advancing a career requires writing in the idiom of confrontation. Russia is to be condemned, China is to be contained, Iran is to be punished. Nuance is penalized, empathy is suspect. “Understanding Russia” or “engaging China” becomes synonymous with “appeasing authoritarianism.” The very intellectual virtues of objectivity, curiosity and historical imagination that once defined scholarship are now liabilities.

Within this environment, figures such as Fiona Hill and Anne Applebaum have become canonical voices on Russia and Eastern Europe. Both have influence in Washington far disproportionate to their scholarly depth, largely because they reinforce the neoconservative worldview that frames Russia as the perpetual aggressor and the West as the moral custodian of liberal order. Their writings, while rhetorically forceful, are less the products of comparative history, archival or linguistic research than of ideological conviction. They exemplify the shift from scholarship to sermon, diagnosing not to comprehend but to condemn.

By contrast, scholars like Stephen Cohen approached Russia through historical empathy, recognizing its civilizational continuity and its cyclical struggles between centralization and reform. Cohen’s methodology was comparative, historical and dialectical. It sought to understand Russia within its own logic rather than through moralistic templates.

Methods Over Terrain: How US Doctoral Training Crowds Out Deep Regional Expertise

If Washington now rewards slogan over study, a contributing cause is that universities have retooled scholarly formation, prioritizing methods and tempo over languages, archives and long immersion. Since the 1990s, many US Area Studies centers were consolidated into broader ‘global’ units, while leading International Relations (IR) departments increasingly emphasized formal and statistical methods.

The result in many programs has been looser language expectations, thinner country-specific coursework, shorter (often unfunded) fieldwork and greater reliance on English-language secondary sources or datasets when archives or vernacular materials are harder to access. Career incentives also favor rapid publication in high-prestige IR outlets over the slow, cumulative craft of philology, history and ethnography. What often remains is area-adjacent analytics focusing on work about regions rather than scholarship grounded in them.

Contrast this with the Russian model where Area Studies remains a discipline rather than a branding exercise. At the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO), the Higher School of Economics and institutes of the Russian Academy of Sciences, multiple foreign languages are compulsory, archival methods and country seminars are core and students are embedded in policy networks that demand granular cultural, legal and historical competence. The pedagogy starts from terrain that includes language, documents and memory. Only then is technique layered on.

By comparison, many US programs privilege technique over terrain, producing excellent modelers who too rarely read the societies they analyze in the original. A system that increasingly prefers technique before terrain produces analysts who model the world better than they read it, thereby creating an imbalance that predictably migrates from dissertations to desks, and from desks to doctrine.

The Consequences: Strategic Blindness and Repeated Failure

The intellectual bankruptcy of American foreign policy has tangible outcomes. The US has repeatedly misread major power transitions of the past three decades. It assumed post-Soviet Russia would become a liberal democracy integrated into the West. Instead, it became a Eurasian power asserting multipolarity. It believed China’s economic rise would lead to political liberalization. Instead, it produced a more confident, centralized and cohesive state. It expected India to align against China. Instead, India pursues its own civilizational destiny.

Each of these miscalculations stems from deficiencies in understanding the civilizational memories of states, their historical traumas, strategic geographies and lived narratives. Washington projects its own categories of liberalism, democracy and deterrence onto societies that operate by different logics. Russian policy is interpreted through the lens of “aggression” rather than security depth. Chinese strategy is seen as “revisionist” rather than civilizational. Indian autonomy is dismissed as “hedging” rather than a coherent tradition of non-alignment rooted in ancient statecraft.

When the intellectual class cannot think beyond its own mirror, policy becomes reactive and moralistic. The US swings between hubris and hysteria, celebrating the “rules-based order” one decade and decrying “authoritarian resurgence” the next. The deeper constants of geography, demography and history vanish from view. This blindness is not inevitable, it is the result of choices made by institutions that abandoned scholarship for ideology.

Toward a Rebirth of Understanding

If America wishes to regain strategic wisdom, it must rebuild the intellectual foundations of global understanding. That means reviving the humanities of geopolitics that embody history, geography, languages and comparative civilizations. Universities should restore Area Studies as a core mission, supported by stable funding rather than episodic grants. Government programs must reward linguistic and cultural fluency, not ideological conformity.

Equally, the policy ecosystem must value independent scholarship. Think tanks should be compelled to disclose funding sources and the media should cultivate voices who actually know the societies they discuss. Exchange programs and long-term residencies abroad, not short study tours, should again become the norm for aspiring diplomats. Most importantly, policymakers must recover the humility to learn before judging.

Understanding does not mean agreement and empathy does not mean endorsement. It means acknowledging that other civilizations think differently and that effective strategy begins with comprehension, not condemnation. Without that, the US will continue to stumble blindly across the world stage, armed with power but bereft of wisdom.

In an age of multipolarity, ignorance is strategic suicide. America needs fewer ideologues and more scholars, fewer “Russia hawks” and more Russia knowers, fewer “China hands” who tweet in English and more who can read Sun Tzu in the original. The restoration of understanding will not come from the think tanks of Washington but from the libraries, classrooms and archives where genuine curiosity still flickers. Only by reviving the disciplines of deep thinking can America hope to recover the lost art of seeing the world as it is, not as it wishes it to be.

1. US Department of Education, Notice of Non-Continuation of Grant Award, September 10, 2025.
2. Deborah Cohn, Fewer U.S. college students are studying a foreign language − and that spells trouble for national security, The Conversation, November 16, 2023.