Russia Matters, 12/20/24

1. “I would like to emphasize from the very beginning that the outgoing year has been crucial in achieving the goals of the special military operation,” Vladimir Putin told an expanded annual meeting of the Russian Defense Ministry Board on Dec. 16. He then claimed during his annual call-in show on Dec. 19 that Russian forces were moving toward achieving their “priority goals.” Russia is yet to establish full control over the four Ukrainian regions it has annexed since the beginning of its re-invasion of Ukraine in February 2022,¹ but Vladimir Putin is already seeking to shape the narrative so that he can present his gains in Ukraine as a victory next year, while his planning horizon for the five Ukrainian regions Russia has already claimed as its own stretch as far as 2030.*
2. “He [Zelenskyy] should be prepared to make a deal. That’s all,” Donald Trump asserted on Dec. 16 at his first post-election victory press conference. Trump is already planning to send his special envoy for the Ukraine war Keith Kellogg to Kyiv, along with London, Paris and Rome after his inauguration, and Kellogg, a retired general, is also open to visiting Moscow, according to Bloomberg. Meanwhile, Putin is sending conflicting signals on whether he would agree to a ceasefire instead of pursuing a peace deal. “I didn’t reject it,” Putin said during his Dec. 19 call-in show with regard to Viktor Orban’s proposal for a Christmas truce, according to Meduza. At the same time, however, Putin told the annual call-in-show that “we don’t need a truce; we need peace.” When asked during the call-in show about Russia’s conditions for negotiations with Ukraine, Putin reiterated that negotiations can begin without preliminary conditions, but at the same time they must be based on what he has described as “agreements in Istanbul” that Ukrainian and Russian negotiators discussed during the early weeks of the war, and negotiations must also take into account “the realities that are taking shape on the ground today.” He added that any treaty could only be signed with a “legitimate government.” In his turn, Volodymyr Zelenskyy rejected a return to the Istanbul agreements because he claimed that there were none. At least one of the drafts of the agreement Ukrainian and Russian negotiators discussed in Spring 2022 would have designated Ukraine as a “neutral” state that would not join NATO, but could join the EU and could seek security guarantees from other countries. On top of that, Putin—who insists Zelenskyy’s presidential powers have expired—continues to demand regime change in Kyiv by stressing that he can only negotiate with a legitimate government of Ukraine. 
3. In the past month, Russian force have made a net gain of 204 square miles (an area roughly equivalent to 1/3rd of the total area of London), according to RM staff’s estimate that was published in the Dec. 18 issue of the Russia-Ukraine War Report Card, and that is based on data provided for that period by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW). One sign of how worried the Ukrainian leadership has become about Russian advances in this eastern province of Ukraine, where Russian troops have reached the outskirts of the key town of Pokrovsk this week, is the replacement of the commander of the Ukrainian forces there less than a month after replacing the commander of Ukraine’s ground forces. As NYT has observed, “On the battlefield, the situation has not looked this desperate for Ukrainian troops since the start of the invasion.”
4. The commander of Russia’s Nuclear, Biological and Chemical (NBC) Defense Forces Lt. Gen. Igor Kirillov has been killed in an bomb blast, which was allegedly set up by an Uzbek national on the orders of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU). The SBU claimed the Russian military’s NBC chief—whom it had accused of ordering the use of chemical weapons against Ukrainian troops—was a legitimate target, but even inside Ukraine some questioned the wisdom of the assassination. Joe Biden’s NSA Jake Sullivan disapproved of the hit, arguing that “we do support and enable Ukraine to defend itself and to take the fight to Russian forces on the battlefield, but not operations like this,” while Keith Kellogg, Donald Trump’s nominee for special envoy for the conflict, called the assassination “not a very good idea.” Moreover, Ukraine’s forces are steadily losing ground on the battlefield and assassination won’t improve their war effort, analysts and Western officials told NYT. The Russians will find a replacement for that general, a Ukrainian special forces officer told NYT, predicting that as a condition of any peace settlement, Russia would insist not only on a cessation of military operations, but also of secret operations that kill their generals. As for the Russian reaction, it went beyond threats of retaliation, with Vladimir Putin offering a rare criticism of his special services. “Our security services allowed a serious terrorist act to happen. Such grave failures cannot be tolerated,” Putin said during his call-in show one day before it was revealed that the head of the FSB’s Military Counterintelligence Department Nikolai Yuryev resigned. Such a public criticism of Russia’s secret services by Putin, an ex-KGB officer and former head of the FSB himself, occurs rarely and could be a sign of what Russians call “organizational conclusions.”
5. Vladimir Putin flaunted Russia’s nuclear forces during his Dec. 16 address to the expanded annual meeting of the Russian Defense Ministry’s Board yet again. “The army and navy are being re-equipped with up-to-date weapons and equipment at an accelerated pace. For example, the share of such weapons in the strategic nuclear forces has already reached 95%. Meanwhile, we have specified the fundamental principles for the use of nuclear weapons envisaged in the updated Basic Principles of State Policy on Nuclear Deterrence. Let me stress once again, so that no one accuses us of trying to scare everyone with nuclear weapons: this is a policy of nuclear deterrence,” he said. He also flaunted the purported capabilities of the Oreshnik MRBM yet again both in the Dec. 16 address to the MoD board and during his Dec. 19 annual call-in show. During the latter, he proposed a “21st-century high-tech duel,” in which Russia would field the Oreshnik and the West deployed a system in Ukraine that Western experts think can intercept that MRBM. This week also saw Putin threaten to stop complying with the INF Treaty, which he claims to be complying with in spite of the legal death of that treaty, while also having the chief of his Strategic Missile Forces Sergei Karakayev participate in nuclear saber-rattling, including a claim that Russia may automate nuclear retaliation. In his interview to the RF MoD’s Red Star this week, Karakayev also implied Russia may have disclosed to the U.S. the area the Oreshnik was to target in Ukraine prior to the Nov. 21 launch of this MRBM.
6. On Dec. 16, Russian Defense Minister Andrei Belousov told an expanded meeting of his agency’s board that one of the priorities for the Russian armed forces is “ensuring full readiness for a possible military conflict with NATO in the next decade… The first among the priority areas is victory in the special military operation,” he said.
7. Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham in Syria has conceded that it will probably allow Russia to keep some or all of its bases, and it is likely to respect Russia’s lease at Tartus port, according to The Economist.

By Geoffrey Roberts, Brave New Europe, 12/8/24

1. What do you think of Trump’s nomination of General Keith Kellogg as Ukraine special envoy and his plan for ending the war?

Trump’s nomination of General Kellogg shows he is serious about achieving peace in Ukraine. Kellogg has made an effort to understand the Russian perspective on the war and has identified ending the Ukraine conflict as a key American interest. Kellogg may be tempted to use hardball negotiating tactics to force Putin to accept an early ceasefire, but the US has leverage over the Ukrainians, not the Russians. By the time Trump becomes President again, Russian forces may well have conquered all, or nearly all, of Donets, Kherson, Lugansk and Zaporozhe – the four provinces that Putin incorporated into the Russian Federation in October 2022. In those circumstances the key issue to resolve before agreement on a ceasefire would be Putin’s demand that Ukraine becomes a neutral state. Kellogg has suggested a long-term moratorium on Ukraine’s membership of NATO. That is a good starting point for negotiations and there may be room for a compromise between Kellogg’s proposal and Putin’s demand for a declaration from Kiev that Ukraine will not join NATO, providing Putin can be satisfied that Russia’s future security is protected from further NATO threats and encroachments.

2. What should we expect from Moscow? Is Putin planning escalation or the opposite? Will he sit at the negotiating table? What will be his conditions for ending the war? Where will his territorial claims in Ukraine stop?

 The Biden Administration’s final gambit seems to be to provoke Putin into an escalation of the war that will make it difficult for Trump to pursue peace in Ukraine. But Russia is winning the war decisively. Putin has no reason to snatch defeat from the jaws of the Russian army’s many victories on the battlefield. His actions in response to Western and Ukrainian provocations will be moderate and restrained.

Putin’s terms for peace were spelt out last June: Ukraine’s neutrality and concession of Crimea and the four provinces – Donets, Kherson, Lugansk and Zaporozhe – that have already been formally annexed by Russia. In addition, he will demand protections for the millions of pro-Russian Ukrainians that will remain under Kiev’s control, and a deal with the West about the return of its frozen foreign assets and the ending of Western sanctions against Russia.

However, if the war drags on, Putin may feel impelled to grab an even bigger chunk of Ukrainian territory as part of his military strategy and to enlarge the buffer zone between Russia and NATO. 

       3.      Will negotiations and the end of the war be an indirect defeat by Russia of Ukraine and the West?

 Peace negotiations will only begin when there is an armistice i.e. a ceasefire based on prior concession of Putin’s demands for Ukrainian territory and neutrality. Such an armistice would be a terrible defeat for Ukraine and for NATO’s proxy war with Russia. But continuation of the war can only lead to even greater disaster.  The war has been a catastrophe for Ukraine. An imposed neutrality will restrict its sovereignty but it can survive as a free and independent state, much like Finland did after World War II.

Russia’s defeat of Ukraine and the West will be no great victory for Putin. It has been a costly and highly dangerous war for Russia. The damage done to Russia’s relations with the West has been huge. Russia has reoriented to developing partnerships with global South countries but, in the end, Russia’s prosperity and security requires good relations with the West, especially its European neighbours, as well as with China, India and other members of BRICS. The war has not changed the facts of geography and history or the reality that culturally and identity-wise Russia is a European country.

         4.       Which are the prospects for Ukraine once Donald Trump takes office?

 Much better than they are at present, assuming Trump can help broker a peace deal for Ukraine. The slaughter of Ukraine’s people will stop and its economy and society can begin to recover from the ravages of war. Defeat by Russia will be a very bitter pill to swallow but most Ukrainians now believe that even a bad peace will be better than the continuation of a disastrous losing war.

         5.      What will be Europe’s role in the negotiations to end the war in Ukraine and for the country’s future?

 The main external role in the negotiations will be played by the Americans. Europe may exercise a degree of influence but the Russians have lost all respect for most European political leaders. Europe’s role in Ukraine’s recovery from the war is, potentially, far greater. Frankly, Europe has a moral obligation to do all it can to aid Ukraine’s postwar reconstruction, given its role in encouraging Ukraine to fight on  rather than accept the relatively benign peace deal offered  by Russia in Istanbul two and half years ago.

 I’m not very optimistic about Ukraine’s prospects for entry into the EU. Putin has signalled he has no in -principle objection to Ukraine joining the European Union, though, as the Russians point out, the EU is increasingly a military-political organisation as well an economic union, but when the war is over, the fine words spoken by the EU’s leaders will dissipate and negotiations about Ukraine’s membership will inevitable bog down in years of technical discussions. 

       6. Who will protect European soil in a future attack? NATO? EU defence alliance? Can Moscow be a future threat?

 There is no such danger or threat from Russia. NATO will continue and the United States will stay involved in Europe, even under Trump. 

 Putin’s ambitions are limited to Ukraine. The is no evidence, he will threaten or attack any other country, with the possible exception of the Baltic States and Moldova, should Moscow see the Russian minorities in those states being persecuted even more than at present. The only country that will require additional security after the war is Ukraine. Agreement on an international security guarantee for a neutral and disarmed Ukraine will be central to any final settlement of the Ukrainian conflict. Putin has indicated he is amenable to such a guarantee. It’s not impossible that NATO could be a partner of that guarantee, but Putin won’t risk any deal that could provide cover for Ukraine, with Western help, to rebuild its military power.

       7.    What about Trump and Russia?

Trump says he wants a good relationship with Putin and competitively he is focussed on China. But the same was true during his first presidency and in practice relations with Russia deteriorated even further, not least because the United States built up Ukraine’s military. True, Trump was dogged by the Russiagate controversy and influenced by the many Neocons in his administration. His second presidency be may well turn out differently because it will contain fewer Neocons and more America First Trump Loyalists, people like Kellogg. In any event, loyalty to Trump will be the defining characteristic of the members of his second administration and he will call all the shots in relation to Ukraine.

 Putin will remain sceptical of Trump but open to an improvement in Russia’s relations with the US, especially if the Ukraine war comes to a suitable conclusion.

       8.    One  more question: what is Putin’s goal for the position of Russia in the world after the Ukraine war?

Putin is a visionary whose overarching goal  is to end American global hegemony and usher in a new, post-Western system of international relations – a multipolar system of sovereign states based on diversity, equality and common security. It is not an empire that Putin is seeking to build, but a new world order that will safeguard the long-term security of Russia and its civilisational values. Defeating Ukraine and winning Russia’s proxy war with NATO are necessary preconditions, but Putin has his eye on an even bigger prize and he needs a stable peace to realise his historic ambitions to transform global politics.

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By Prof. Glenn Diesen, Substack, 11/26/24

For almost three years, NATO countries have boycotted diplomatic contacts with Russia, even as hundreds of thousands of men have died on the battlefield. The decision by diplomats to reject diplomacy is morally repugnant as diplomacy could have reduced the excess of violence, prevented escalation, and even resulted in a path to peace. However, the political-media elites skilfully sold the rejection of diplomacy to the public as evidence of their moral righteousness.

This article will first outline how NATO planned for a long war to exhaust Russia and knock it out from the ranks of great powers. Second, this article will demonstrate how the political-media elites communicated that diplomacy is treasonous and war is virtuous. 

NATO’s Long War

To exhaust Russia in a long war, the goal was to ensure that the Russians and Ukrainians kill each other for as long as possible. The US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin outlined the US objective in the Ukraine War as weakening its strategic adversary: “We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine”.[1] In late March 2022, Zelensky revealed in an interview with the Economist: “There are those in the West who don’t mind a long war because it would mean exhausting Russia, even if this means the demise of Ukraine and comes at the cost of Ukrainian lives”.[2]

The Israeli and Turkish mediators confirmed that Russia and Ukraine agreed to the terms of a peaceful settlement in Istanbul, in which Russia would withdraw its forces and Ukraine would restore its neutrality. However, why would the US and its allies accept that Ukraine return to neutrality, when the alternative was to use the powerful proxy army they had built in Ukraine to bleed and weaken Russia?[3]

The Turkish Foreign Minister acknowledged that there are “NATO member states that want the war to continue—let the war continue and Russia gets weaker. They don’t care much about the situation in Ukraine”.[4] The former Israeli Prime Minister also confirmed that the US and UK “blocked” the peace agreement as there was a “decision by the West to keep striking Putin” to destroy a strategic rival.[5] The retired German General, Harald Kujat, a former head of the German Bundeswehr and former chairman of the NATO Military Committee, also argued that this was a war deliberately provoked by NATO, while the US and UK sabotaged all paths to peace “to weaken Russia politically, economically and militarily”.[6] Interviews with American and British leaders in March 2022, revealed that a decision had been made for “the conflict to be extended and thereby bleed Putin” as “the only end game now is the end of Putin regime”.[7]

Chas Freeman, the former US Assistant Secretary of Defence for International Security Affairs and Director for Chinese Affairs at the US State Department criticised Washington for the objective to prolong the fighting to “fight to the last Ukrainian”.[8] Republican Senator Lindsey Graham argued that the US was in a favourable position as it could fight Russia to the last Ukrainian: “I like the structural path we’re on here. As long as we help Ukraine with the weapons they need and the economic support, they will fight to the last person”.[9] Republican leader Mitch McConnell was similarly explicit:

“the most basic reasons for continuing to help Ukraine degrade and defeat the Russian invaders are cold, hard, practical American interests. Helping equip our friends in Eastern Europe to win this war is also a direct investment in reducing Vladimir Putin’s future capabilities to menace America, threaten our allies, and contest our core interests”.[10]

Senator Mitt Romney argued that financing the war was “the best national defense spending I think we’ve ever done” as “We’re diminishing and devastating the Russian military for a very small amount of money” and “we’re losing no lives in Ukraine”. US Congressman Dan Crenshaw also celebrated the proxy war as “investing in the destruction of our adversary’s military, without losing a single American troop, strikes me as a good idea”.[11]

Retired US General Keith Kellogg similarly called for extending the war in Ukraine as knocking out Russia would allow the US to focus on China: “if you can defeat a strategic adversary not using any US troops, you are at the acme of professionalism”. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg shared this logic as he argued defeating Russia on the battlefield will make it easier for the US to focus on China. Stoltenberg also noted that “if Ukraine wins, then you will have the second biggest army in Europe, the Ukrainian army, battle-hardened, on our side, and we’ll have a weakened Russian army”.[12]

Diplomacy as Treason and War as Virtue

When the decision had been made for a long war, the politicians and media began to construct narratives and a moral case for a long war, which would convince the public that diplomacy is treasonous, and war is virtuous.

Presenting the world as a struggle of good versus evil lays the foundation for effective war propaganda, as perpetual peace can be achieved by defeating the evil opponent while negotiations entail sacrificing indispensable values and principles. To this end, the Hitler analogy is very effective as diplomacy becomes dangerous appeasement while peace requires military victory. Reminiscent of George Orwell’s “war is peace”, Stoltenberg argues that weapons are the path to peace.

The Western public was reassured that fuelling the war was required to push Putin to the negotiation table, however, during almost three years of war the West never proposed negotiations. Reading the Western media, one gets the impression that Russia would not negotiate. However, Russia never opposed diplomacy or negotiations, it was the West that shut the door. So-called “peace summits” were held to give the public the impression that governments pursued peace, although Russia was not invited and the stated purpose was to mobilise public opinion and resources against Russia.

In November 2022, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley argued for starting negotiations with Russia. Ukraine had just captured large swaths of territory in Kherson and Kharkov, and General Milley argued Ukraine would not be in a better position to negotiate a peace deal. General Milley was correct in this assessment, yet he neglected that the principal objective of the war was to keep it going to bleed Russia. General Milley had to walk back his statements that threatened to end the war.[13]

The EU almost always advocates for immediate diplomacy and negotiations in conflicts around the world. In Ukraine, the EU’s foreign policy chief at the beginning of the war, Josep Borrell, argued that the war would be won on the battlefield.[14] The incoming foreign policy chief of the EU, Kaja Kallas, rejected any need for diplomacy during the war: “Why talk to him [Putin], he is a war criminal”.[15] Diplomacy now entails sitting in a room with people who agree with you, and pat each other on the shoulder for having isolated the adversary. The EU has completed its transition from a peace project to a geopolitical project.

Anyone suggesting to restore diplomacy or start negotiations is immediately smeared as a far-left or far-right pro-Russian stooge. It is hardly original to present the opposition to war as taking the side of the adversary, yet the accusation of treason is a powerful instrument to crush dissent. The Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban travelled to Ukraine, Russia, China, and the US (to meet with Trump) to explore the possibility of charting a path to peace. The EU responded by punishing Hungary and the political-media elites sought to delegitimise him as a puppet of Putin. The same script is applied to anyone suggesting to end the war.

Arguing against the dangerous precedent of “rewarding” Putin’s aggression with territory has been another seemingly moral argument against peace negotiations. However, this argument is based on the false premise that the war began as a territorial dispute. As we learned from the Istanbul peace agreement, Russia agreed to pull back its troops in return for Ukraine restoring its neutrality. Furthermore, the proxy war has been lost and Ukraine will only lose more men and territory with each passing day.

NATO’s continued insistence that Ukraine will become a member state after the war is presented to the public as a moral sign of support for Ukraine, although in reality, it has the effect of obstructing a political settlement. Ending NATO expansionism must be the cornerstone of any lasting peace agreement as this was the source of the war.

The Coming Backlash

As the Ukrainian frontlines collapse and their causalities subsequently intensify, the Americans are pushing Ukraine to lower its conscription age as sacrificing the youth could keep the war going for a bit longer. The Ukrainian public no longer wants to fight, desertions increase drastically, and “recruitment” consists of grabbing civilians off the streets and throwing them into vans that take them almost directly to the front lines. A recent Gallup poll found that there is not a single oblast in Ukraine where the majority support continuing the war.[16]

Oleksyi Arestovych, the former advisor to President Zelensky, predicted in 2019 that the threat of NATO expansion would “provoke Russia to launch a large-scale military operation against Ukraine”. NATO would then use the Ukrainian army to defeat Russia: “In this conflict, we will be very actively supported by the West—with weapons, equipment, assistance, new sanctions against Russia and the quite possible introduction of a NATO contingent, a no-fly zone etc. We won’t lose, and that’s good’.[17]

The war did not go as planned and Ukraine is being destroyed, and Arestovych recognises the folly of continuing the war. There is a growing realisation in Ukrainian society that NATO sabotaged the peace to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian. Ukrainians will resent Russia for decades to come, although there will also be hatred against the West. The war propagandists in the Western media will then surely act bewildered and blame Russian propaganda.

---

[1] G. Carbonaro, ‘U.S. Wants Russia ‘Weakened’ So It Can Never Invade Again’, Newsweek, 25 April 2022.

[2] The Economist. ‘Volodymyr Zelensky on why Ukraine must defeat Putin’ The Economist, 27 March 2022.

[3] The Minsk Peace Agreement was never intended to be implemented but used as an opportunity to build a large Ukrainian military, which both German and France have admitted.

[4] R. Semonsen, ‘Former Israeli PM: West Blocked Russo-Ukraine Peace Deal’, The European Conservative, 7 February 2023.

[5] N. Bennett, ‘Bennett speaks out’, YouTube Channel of Naftali Bennett, 4 February 2023.

[6] Emma, ‘Russland will verhandeln!’ [Russia wants to negotiate!], Emma, 4 March 2023.

[7] N. Ferguson, ‘Putin Misunderstands History. So, Unfortunately, Does the U.S.’, Bloomberg, 22 March 2022.

[8] A. Maté, ‘US fighting Russia ‘to the last Ukrainian’: veteran US diplomat’, The Grayzone, 24 March 2022.

[9] A. Maté, ‘US, UK sabotaged peace deal because they ‘don’t care about Ukraine’: fmr. NATO adviser’, The Grayzone, 27 September 2022.

[10] M. McConnell, ‘McConnell on Zelenskyy Visit: Helping Ukraine Directly Serves Core American Interests’, Mitch McConnell official website, 21 December 2022.

[11] L. Lonas, ‘Crenshaw, Greene clash on Twitter: ‘Still going after that slot on Russia Today’’, The Hill, 11 May 2022.

[12] T. O’Conner, ‘So, if the United States is concerned about China and wants to pivot towards Asia, then you have to ensure that Putin doesn’t win in in Ukraine’, Newsweek, 21 September 2023.

[13] K. Demirjian, Milley tries to clarify his case for a negotiated end to Ukraine war, The Washington Post, 16 November 2022.

[14] Foreign Affairs Council: Remarks by High Representative Josep Borrell upon arrival | EEAS, https://www.eeas.europa.eu/eeas/foreign-affairs-council-remarks-high-representative-josep-borrell-upon-arrival-1_en

[15] “Why talk to Putin? He’s a war criminal” Estonian PM Kaja Kallas,

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/DG1IbMP7SR4?rel=0&autoplay=0&showinfo=0&enablejsapi=0

[16] B. Vigers, Half of Ukrainians Want Quick, Negotiated End to War, Gallup, 19 November 2024, Half of Ukrainians Want Quick, Negotiated End to War

[17] A. Arestovich, ‘Voennoe Obozrenie’ [Military Review], Apostrof TV, 18 February 2019.

Rumble link here.

By Kit Klarenberg & Max Blumenthal, The Grayzone, 11/25/24

After years in the wilderness of right-wing radio, where he flamboyantly proclaimed his loyalty to president-elect Donald Trump for years, Sebastian Gorka has finally found his way back into Trump’s inner circle, earning an appointment as incoming White House counter-terror advisor. 

Gorka served as Trump’s deputy assistant advisor on national security issues for eight months in 2017, storming out of his job with a petulant resignation letter that blamed “forces” within the administration that did not support Trump’s “MAGA promise.” During his brief tenure in the White House, Gorka, a London-born immigrant, was credited with masterminding the President’s so-called “Muslim ban,” which refused admission to the US for citizens of countries identified as national security threats.

While Democrats have hammered Gorka as “a far-right extremist” and MAGA sycophant, he has stood out as a voice of Biden foreign policy continuity within Trumpworld, pledging further aggression against Russia and even greater military aid to Kiev. During a November 23 interview, for example, Gorka promised that “the aid that we have given to Ukraine thus far will look like peanuts” if “the murderous KGB colonel” Vladimir Putin does not obey Trump’s dictates. 

Gorka’s full origin story explains why his views on the Ukraine proxy war track more closely with those of the anti-Trump turncoat John Bolton than incoming Vice President J.D. Vance, who has vowed to negotiate an end to the conflict. As this investigation will demonstrate, the mindset of the Transatlantic policy operative was molded primarily through his intimate involvement in British intelligence circles—not his role within the America First movement.

The son of an anti-communist Hungarian exile, Gorka joined a British Army intelligence unit while still in university. When he entered the world of national security studies, he learned at the knee of a notoriously conniving British military intelligence officer named Chris Donnelly, who has dedicated his career to instigating conflict with Russia, and was exposed by The Grayzone as an architect of the notorious Kerch Bridge bombing.

Donnelly personally endorsed Gorka’s PhD thesis, granting him the imprimatur of a top intelligence officer in the British Ministry of Defence. The relationship fueled Gorka’s career within the burgeoning Atlanticist military infrastructure, yet ultimately cost him security clearance in his family’s native Hungary, where the country’s National Security Office suspected him of being a UK spy.

Soon after Gorka resigned from the first Trump administration, leaked documents exposed Donnelly as the founder of a secret, UK state-funded influence operation called the Integrity Initiative, which was aimed at drumming up war with Russia through a covert international propaganda network. A 2017 funding proposal submitted by the Integrity Initiative to the British Ministry of Defence promised to deliver a “tougher stance on Russia” by arranging for “more information published in the media on the threat of Russian active measures.”

When Donnelly visited Washington in 2018 to expand his secret initiative, the first item on his agenda was breakfast with Gorka. To this day, Gorka refuses to discuss the meeting, or any aspect of his relationship with Donnelly, erupting with rage at reporters who have dared to inquire about the long friendship.

Gorka’s security clearance rejected “due to his connections with British intelligence”

Sebastian Gorka grew up in London in the shadow of his father, Paul, an exiled Hungarian nationalist activist affiliated with the Vitezi Rend, an anti-communist order that collaborated with Nazi Germany during World War II. Sebastian Gorka blames Kim Philby, the British double agent, for betraying his father to the Soviets, leading to his imprisonment – and seemingly exposing his father’s role as an MI6 asset. However, Paul Gorka provided a different account of his capture in an interview with the British historian and Holocaust revisionist David Irving, claiming Hungarian intelligence broke his cell after discovering papers on one of his cell’s couriers. 

After members of Vitezi Rend broke Paul Gorka out of prison during their failed 1956 attempt to topple the country’s communist leadership, he found refuge in the UK. From London, Paul Gorka worked for the British government, helping them vet anti-communist emigres arriving from Hungary. Young Gorka’s mother, Susan, found part-time work as a translator to Irving, the Holocaust revisionist historian. She was credited as an interpreter in his 740-page tome, “Uprising! One Nation’s Nightmare, 1956,” which portrayed the CIA and MI6-backed Hungarian rebellion of 1956 as a worker’s insurrection against a corrupt communist leadership, which happened to be disproportionately Jewish. 

With the collapse of the Soviet bloc, Sebastian Gorka set his sights on a career serving British national security interests. From 1990 to 1993, Gorka served in Unit 22 of the British military’s Territorial Army Intelligence Corps as an interrogator. The duties he carried out in the intelligence unit later became a source of intrigue, and remain mysterious to this day.

In 1999, following a fellowship at NATO, Gorka returned to Hungary to advise the first government of Victor Orban, establishing himself as a prominent national security commentator in the country of his family’s origin. Three years later, when Hungary’s new Prime Minister Peter Medgyessy faced accusations that he had conducted counter-espionage operations for the country’s communist government 20 years prior, Gorka was selected to investigate the charges on a parliamentary committee. However, the country’s National Security Office rejected the security clearance he needed to join the committee because, as the Hungarian news outlet Origo reported, it “became risky from a national security point of view due to [Gorka’s] connections with British intelligence.”

As the scandal swirled in Hungarian media, dramatically different accounts of Gorka’s involvement in British Army intelligence appeared in the media. The UK’s Sunday Times reported that Gorka’s duties in the unit included gathering “evidence for the war crimes tribunal set up after the collapse of Yugoslavia.” However, Gorka claimed to Hungarian media, “I never dealt with intelligence… we were tasked with guarding key facilities [in Northern Ireland], such as fending off IRA threats.”

It was unclear how Gorka could have served in two regions at around the same time, or what his intelligence duties actually entailed. When contacted by American reporters about his service, the British Military of Defense declined to provide details.

A year after being publicly accused of working for British intelligence, Gorka left Hungary for the US. “My American wife and I woke up one morning and realized America was the future,” he claimed.

Donnelly praises Gorka’s “academic excellence”

The scandal over Gorka’s security clearance received a smattering of coverage from liberal blogs when he was appointed to serve during the first Trump administration in 2017. But US media has not written a word about the much more consequential relationship he enjoyed with the British intelligence officer Chris Donnelly.

Donnelly brought Gorka under his wing during the post-Cold War period, while he personally lobbied for NATO enlargement in former Soviet satellite states like Hungary. The officer’s 2005 work, “Nations, Alliances and Security,” was edited by Gorka, who also wrote its foreword. 

Two years later, Gorka published a PhD dissertation on “Content and End-State-based Alteration in the Practice of Political Violence since the End of the Cold War.” Donnelly, then-chief of the British Ministry of Defence intelligence unit known as the Advanced Research and Assessment Group, authored a glowing “external review” of Gorka’s doctorate, describing it as “a work not only of academic excellence, but also of significant current policy relevance.”

In October 2008, Britain’s Ditchley Foundation, which holds regular conferences on the topic of British-American relations, convened an event in conjunction with the Foreign Office, on “the future of NATO, in Europe and globally.” Both Donnelly and Gorka appeared on the discussion panel, alongside spies, high-ranking military NATO officials, and lawmakers. The meeting was “deliberately timed to sit between the Bucharest summit of April 2008 and the 60th Anniversary Summit in April 2009.”

The Bucharest summit was where NATO member states agreed Georgia and Ukraine “will become members of NATO.” Then-US Defense Secretary Robert Gates has since written with intense regret about the decision, which laid the foundations for Russia’s crushing of Tbilisi in a brief war five months later, as well as the current Ukraine proxy conflict.

When Gorka and his mentor reunited in Washington almost a decade later, Donnelly was intent on working his connections to drive conflict with Russia.

Below: Chris Donnelly’s passport, leaked in the Integrity Initiative files

Donnelly meets secretly in DC with Gorka, pushing war with Russia

During Trump’s first term, as the president battled a deluge of partisan propaganda painting him as a Putin puppet, and with American liberals transformed overnight into frothing Russophobes, British intelligence gleaned a perfect opportunity to escalate a simmering new Cold War.

On September 18, 2018, Integrity Initiative chief Chris Donelly flew into Washington to expand his new covert influence network. The following morning, he headed straight to breakfast with his former understudy, Sebastian Gorka. 

Afterwards, Donnelly took a car to the Arlington, Virginia offices of CNA, the think tank adjunct of the US Center for Naval Analyses and key Integrity Initiative “partner” in DC, to deliver a lengthy presentation on “mapping Russian influence activities.” 

Leaked files of Donnelly’s Initiative listed Gorka’s wife, Katharine, as a key contact. At the time, she was a senior advisor at the Department of Homeland Security. (Today, she is the chair of the GOP in Northern Virginia’s Fairfax County, a hub for private military and intelligence contractors).

The same file described how the organization’s clusters “engage only very discreetly with governments, based entirely on trusted personal contacts…and try to influence them gently.”

On that basis, both Gorkas clearly fit the bill for Integrity Initiative cluster members, even though the covert operation played an apparent role in several propaganda operations aimed at destroying Trump and subverting his agenda.

For instance, Integrity Initiative operatives were instrumental in circulating disgraced MI6 officer Christopher Steele’s bogus “Trump-Russia” dossier at the highest levels of the US government, and in turn, disseminating it throughout Western media. That connivance was clearly aimed at delegitimizing Trump while boxing his administration into a belligerent stance on Russia.

In Britain, Integrity Initiative operatives fraudulently linked the Brexit referendum’s result to Russian meddling. In Spain, meanwhile, the Initiative spread disinformation falsely portrayjng the Catalan independence movement as a Russian-controlled operation, delivering a body blow to cordial relations between Madrid and Russia. 

In March 2021, when grilled by The American Conservative about his secret meeting in DC with Donnelly, Gorka exploded, telling the outlet’s reporter to “go to hell,” and asking “who the hell” they were to ask him about “private conversations…with a friend.” Gorka refused to discuss his bond with Donnelly any further.

He similarly ignored questions sent by The Grayzone through direct message to his personal Twitter/X account.

Today, Donnelly helps oversee Britain’s clandestine role in the Ukraine proxy war. As The Grayzone revealed, Donnelly oversaw the blueprints for the Ukrainian terror attack which damaged the Russian-built Kerch Bridge in October 2022. By design, the bombing was a pivotal step up the escalation ladder.

Now, as Trump sets out to fulfill his promise to end the conflict in Ukraine, Donnelly enjoys a direct line to one of the president’s top national security aides, who happens to be his longtime understudy.