By Anatol Lieven, Responsible Statecraft, 5/14/25

Direct talks between senior Ukrainian and Russian representatives, if they do take place in Istanbul on Thursday, will be a real step forward and a significant achievement by the Trump administration.

It is worth remembering that only three months ago the Ukrainian government was still rejecting even the idea of talks with the Putin administration as illegal, and demanding prior Russian withdrawal from all the occupied areas of Ukraine as a precondition for negotiations.

Putin’s apparent rejection of Zelensky’s challenge to a face to face meeting is a disappointment, but not a crucial setback. It is very rare for real progress in peace talks to be made in meetings between leaders themselves, and the Russians have some reason to see this as a maneuver, or stunt, by Zelensky to gain Trump’s favor rather than a serious proposal.

Normally, before leaders meet there have to be long and detailed negotiations by officials to lay the groundwork for agreement. Hopefully, the Istanbul meeting of officials proposed by Moscow will advance that process, whereas a public shouting-match between Putin and Zelensky could set it back.

The Ukrainian and European governments have stated that Moscow’s rejection of a 30-day ceasefire shows that “Putin is not interested in peace”, but this is disingenuous. Russia’s ability to advance — even if slowly — on the battlefield is Moscow’s main source of leverage in negotiations, and it is not going to give that up unless substantial agreement has already been reached.

Nor, and for the same reason, were Western countries ever going to agree to Russia’s demand for a complete and permanent end to military supplies to Ukraine as the precondition of a ceasefire. We have to accept that while the talks continue, so will the fighting. That should be a spur to efforts to move as quickly as possible to a comprehensive settlement.

And a comprehensive settlement is what we should be aiming at. Even if Russia could be brought to agree to a long-term ceasefire, absent a settlement, such a ceasefire would resemble that in the Donbas from 2014-22: deeply unstable, constantly interrupted by clashes and exchanges of fire, and at permanent risk of collapsing back into full scale war.

This situation would make Ukraine’s economic development and progress towards the European Union virtually impossible, both because it would prevent Western investment and because it would mean that Ukraine remains a highly militarized and semi-authoritarian society permanently mobilized for war.

It would also make it far more difficult for the U.S. to reduce its military presence in Europe so as to concentrate resources elsewhere – which is indeed probably a key motive for the European approach.

Trump’s threat to “walk away” from the peace process has succeeded in bringing both sides to the negotiating table, but they agreed only so as to avoid being blamed by him for refusal. On key issues, the Russian and Ukrainian positions remain quite far apart, and it will be a miracle if one round of direct talks in Istanbul is able to bring them together. Continued U.S. engagement in the peace process therefore seems essential.

For Washington’s involvement to be effective, it will have to set out concrete and detailed conditions for agreement and bring both pressure and incentives to bear on both sides to accept them. A U.S. incentive to the Ukrainian side has already been established in the form of the the minerals deal and its promise that long-term American economic engagement in Ukraine will also ensure Washignton’s interest in maintaining Ukrainian security.

For Russia, the Trump administration has a huge potential incentive in the form of a new U.S.-Russian relationship, and an end to Washington pressure on what the Russians see as their vital interests.

Some of the elements of an agreement between Ukraine and Russia were laid down at the talks in Istanbul in March 2022, and are still applicable. Conditions meeting the vital interests of both sides, and on which the U.S. could help them to agree, include the following: that the ceasefire line runs where the battle line eventually runs, and neither side can be asked to withdraw further; that both sides should promise not to try to change the ceasefire line through force, subversion or economic pressure; that the issue or the legal status of the occupied territory should be left for future negotiation and that NATO membership for Ukraine should be excluded, but that Ukraine should be guaranteed the right to seek membership of the EU.

Conditions also included that no NATO troops should be deployed in Ukraine, and any peacekeeping force should be from neutral countries under UN auspices; that the UN should guarantee the sovereignty and independence of Ukraine; that both sides should guarantee linguistic and cultural rights of minorities; that Western sanctions against Russia should be suspended, but with a “snap-back” clause guaranteeing that they would automatically resume in the event of new Russian aggression; that any limits on Ukrainian armaments should be restricted to long-range missiles, and that the West should be able to go on arming Ukraine for defense.

A settlement along these lines would leave both sides unhappy — but hopefully, not so unhappy that they would be willing to take on dreadful the risks and costs of a return to war. We may hope that — to adapt President Lincoln’s words — the “better angels” of the Russian and Ukrainian negotiators’ natures will incline them to such compromises at their talks in Istanbul this week. If not, and however incongruous this partnership may seem to many, it will be for the Trump administration to give the angels a helping wing.

By Andrew Korybko, Substack, 5/13/25

Five New York Times (NYT) journalists collaborated to produce a detailed report earlier this week about “Why Trump Suddenly Declared Victory Over the Houthi Militia”. It’s worth reading in full if time permits, but the present piece will summarize and analyze its findings. To begin with, CENTCOM chief General Michael Kurilla proposed an eight- to -10-month campaign for degrading the Houthis’ air defenses before carrying out Israeli-like targeted assassinations, but Trump decided on 30 days instead. That’s important.

The US’ top regional military official already knew how numerous the Houthis’ air defenses were and how long it would take to seriously damage them, which shows that the Pentagon already considered Houthi-controlled North Yemen to be a regional power, while Trump wanted to avoid a protracted war. It’s little wonder then that the US failed to establish air superiority during the first month, which is why it lost several MQ-9 Reaper drones by then and exposed one of its aircraft carriers to continued threats.

The $1 billion in munitions that were expended during that period widened preexisting divisions within the administration over whether this bombing campaign was worth the mounting costs. New Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General John Caine was concerned that this could drain resources away from the Asia-Pacific. Seeing as how the Trump Administration’s grand strategic goal is to “Pivot (back) to Asia” for more muscularly containing China, this viewpoint was likely decisive in Trump’s final calculations.

Oman reportedly provided the “perfect offramp” for him by proposing to his envoy Steve Witkoff, who was visiting them as part of the US’ nuclear talks with Iran, that the US could stop bombing the Houthis while they’ll stop targeting American ships but not ships that they deem helpful to Israel. This draws attention to that country’s outsized diplomatic role in regional affairs, but it also shows that the US was hitherto unsure of how to end its campaign in a face-saving way despite already realizing that it failed.

Two pathways were considered: ramping up operations for another month, carrying out a “freedom of navigation” exercise, and declaring victory if the Houthis didn’t fire on them; or continuing the campaign while strengthening the capacity of local Yemeni allies to start another offensive in the North. Both were reportedly scrapped in favor of Trump’s sudden victory announcement after another US jet fell off of an aircraft carrier, a US attack killed dozens of migrants in Yemen, and the Houthis hit Ben Gurion Airport.

Five conclusions can be drawn from the NYT’s report. For starters, Houthi-controlled North Yemen is already a regional power and has been so for some time, the status of which they achieved despite the Gulf coalition’s previous years-long bombing campaign and ongoing partial blockade. This impressive feat speaks to their resilience and the effectiveness of the strategies that they’ve implemented. North Yemen’s mountainous geography indisputably played a role in this, but it wasn’t the sole factor.

The second conclusion is that Trump’s decision to authorize a very time-limited bombing campaign was therefore doomed from the get-go. He either wasn’t fully informed of the fact that North Yemen had already become a regional power, perhaps due to military officials self-censoring for fear of getting fired if they upset him, or he had ulterior motives in having the US bomb them for only a brief time. In any case, there was no way that the Houthis were going to be destroyed in just several months’ time.

Optics are important for every administration, and Trump’s second one prioritizes them more than any other in recent memory, yet the third conclusion is that he still beat a hasty retreat once the strategic risks started spiraling and the costs began piling up instead of doubling down in defiance. This shows that ego- and legacy-related interests don’t always determine his policy formulations. Its relevance is that no one can therefore say for sure that he won’t cut and run from Ukraine if peace talks collapse.

Building upon the above, the Trump Administration’s acceptance of Oman’s unsolicited proposal that led to the “perfect offramp” shows that it’ll listen to proposals from friendly countries for defusing conflicts in which the US has become embroiled, which could apply towards Ukraine. The three Gulf states that Trump is visiting this week have all played roles in either hosting talks or facilitating exchanges between Russia and Ukraine so it’s possible that they’ll share some peace proposals for breaking the impasse.

And finally, the China factor looms over everything that the US does nowadays, ergo one of the reported reasons why Trump suddenly ended his unsuccessful bombing campaign against the Houthis after being informed by his top brass that it was wasting valuable munitions that would be better sent to Asia. Likewise, Trump might be convinced by similar arguments with regard to the strategic costs of defiantly doubling down in support of Ukraine if peace talks collapse, which the Gulf states might convey to him.

Connecting the lessons from Trump’s Yemeni debacle with his ongoing efforts to end the Ukrainian Conflict, it’s possible that he might at first instinctively double down in support of Ukraine if peace talks collapse only to soon thereafter be dissuaded by his top brass and/or friendly countries. Of course, it would be best for him to simply cut his country’s losses now instead of continuing to add to them, but his increasingly emotional posts about Putin hint that he might blame him and overreact if talks collapse.

It’s therefore more important than ever that peace-loving countries which have influence with the US immediately share whatever creative diplomatic proposals they might have in mind for breaking the impasse between Russia and Ukraine. Trump is creeping towards a Yemeni-like debacle in Ukraine, albeit one with potentially nuclear stakes given Russia’s strategic arsenal, but there’s still time to avert it if the “perfect offramp” appears and he’s convinced that accepting it would assist his “Pivot (back) to Asia”.

So NED is still alive and well, it’s just not going to have transparency about who it’s funding. We’re getting the worst of all worlds. – Natylie

By Jack Poulson & Lee Fang, Substack, 5/1/25

The National Endowment for Democracy, a U.S.-government backed nonprofit designed to influence the domestic politics of countries across the globe, says its efforts are part of a campaign to promote “open and transparent government.”

The group, funded by Congress and working in tandem with the State Department, has backed activists and civil society groups across Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa to push for greater disclosure among government entities. For instance, a recent NED report argues that “enhancing transparency” is vital for building trust in institutions and democratic governance, and urges the adoption of new disclosure laws for countries in the Balkans.

Despite the altruistic goals of disclosure for the developing world, NED is now going dark. In a new “duty of care” policy published this week, NED quietly announced a new rule to conceal the names of recipients of its programs from the public. Its 2024 grant list, attached to the policy, features dollar figures and one sentence summaries for over 1,700 grants. All of the external recipient names and identities have been wiped.

The move amounts to a fundamental shift in NED programming. For decades, the group, in accordance with its public demands for transparency, has published annual lists featuring grant recipients.Subscribed

Formed in the early years of the Reagan administration in response to increasing controversy surrounding the activities of the Central Intelligence Agency, NED set out to engage in pro-American foreign influence initiatives that were once the domain of covert operations. “This program will not be hidden in the shadows. It will stand proudly in the spotlight, and that’s where it belongs,” stated Reagan in 1983.

“A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA,” stated former acting NED president Allen Weinstein in a widely quoted 1991 interview with Washington Post columnist David Ignatius. “The biggest difference is that when such activities are done overtly, the flap potential is close to zero. Openness is its own protection,” he continued.

The primary U.S. funder of overt operations has been the NED, the quasi-private group originally headed by Carl Gershman that is controlled by the U.S. Congress, Ignatius explained. Through the late 1980s, it did openly what had once been covert — such as dispensing money to anti-communist forces behind the Iron Curtain and funding dissident media known as ‘samizdat’.

The endowment was initially active inside the Soviet Union. It gave money to Soviet trade unions; to a foundation headed by Russian activist Ilya Zaslavsky; to an oral history project headed by Soviet historian Yuri Afanasyev; to the Ukrainian independence movement known as Rukh, and to many other projects. Avoiding the scandal of journalists and governments uncovering covert political action funding has been the raison d’être.

More recently, NED has been highly active in efforts to highlight Chinese human rights abuses, especially in the predominantly Muslim Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, and its grantees have worked in Ukraine to counter alleged Russian influence. In a report titled “Long-Term Investments Pay Dividends in Ukraine,” NED touted its work funding local think tanks and activists pushing for civil society reforms, including the controversial media registration law in 2023 used to shut down media outlets accused of spreading Russian narratives.Subscribed

NED, despite its status as a quasi-independent nonprofit, continues to serve as an arm of the U.S. government. Its leadership features former government policymakers and elected officials, and its funding is virtually all from appropriations earmarked by Congress. As of fiscal year 2024, 99.3% of the organization’s $356.5 million in revenue came from the U.S. Government.

The push for secrecy by NED is justified as a security measure designed to protect the recipients of its funds. In a statement, the group noted that the Taliban had targeted Afghans associated with NED and that NED grantees were on Russian “kill and capture” lists.

In 2022, NED reportedly deleted its Ukraine-related grant lists. Archived internet records show that over $22 million in grants to groups and activists in the country appear to have been wiped.

Yet the sudden reversal on transparency comes amid a broad push for secrecy. Last month, the U.S. Government-backed international journalistic group Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) similarly advised its peers to “launder money legally” as part of hiding sensitive donors, in response to what OCCRP described as a “toxic future” for pro-democracy journalists. The State Department further retroactively deleted details of the vast majority of USAID’s personal services contractors from public records.

“Rather than listing names that could serve as a roadmap for those seeking to silence advocates for freedom, we provide descriptive information that reflects the nature of their work without compromising their security,” wrote Wilson in Monday’s policy announcement. The new policy, he added, still maintains “the spirit of transparency.”

Photo: National Endowment for Democracy president and CEO Damon Wilson. Credit: Twitter/@NEDemocracy

See Related Reporting:
— NGOs Backing Judicial Coup in Romania Funded by USAID, State Department (Dec. 11, 2024)
— U.S. Funds Ukraine Groups Censoring Critics, Smearing Pro-Peace Voices (April 11, 2024)

By Dave DeCamp, Antiwar.com, 4/30/25

On Wednesday, the US and Ukraine signed a deal that will establish a new investment and reconstruction fund to give the US access to Ukrainian rare earth minerals and other natural resources.

“I am glad to announce the signing of today’s historic economic partnership agreement between the United States and Ukraine establishing the United States-Ukraine Reconstruction Investment Fund,” said US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

Bessent said the deal “allows the United States to invest alongside Ukraine, to unlock Ukraine’s growth assets, mobilize American talent, capital, and governance standards that will improve Ukraine’s investment climate and accelerate Ukraine’s economic recovery.”

While it does not appear Ukraine received any concrete security guarantees as part of the deal, it means the US now has more of an interest in staying involved in the country’s affairs. Bessent said the agreement “signals clearly to Russia that the Trump administration is committed to a peace process centered on a free, sovereign, and prosperous Ukraine over the long-term.”

The signing of the deal comes after months of contentious negotiations, which included the Oval Office blow-up between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Vice President JD Vance, and President Trump.

Trump has been saying that Ukraine owes the US hundreds of billions of dollars for its spending on the proxy war, an idea Zelensky has rejected. Yulia Svyrydenko, Ukraine’s first deputy prime minister, who signed the deal with Bessent in Washington, said the agreement didn’t include any sort of debt repayment.

“The agreement does not contain any mention of any debt obligations of Ukraine to the United States. The implementation of the agreement will allow both countries to expand their economic potential through equal cooperation and investment,” she said.

By Peter Hitchens, The Daily Mail (UK), 4/26/25

Peter Hitchens is an English conservative author, broadcaster, journalist, and commentator. He writes for The Mail on Sunday and was a foreign correspondent reporting from both Moscow and Washington, D.C.

In my trade I have long grown used to the way governments lie and get others to lie for them. It is what they do. But I have seldom seen such a cloud of lies as we face now.

Hardly anyone in this country knows the truth about Ukraine. There has been nothing like it since we were all lied to about the Iraq invasion, with bilge about fictional ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’. The liars were caught out. And they learned from it. They learned to lie more skilfully.

Meanwhile, many of those in our society who knew how to challenge such lies died off or retired and were not replaced.

We have never had a debate about the Ukraine crisis which started from the beginning. Did anyone in power ever tell you truthfully how, when or why this war began? No. Did anyone in power explain why Britain, crime-blighted, decrepit, rubbish-strewn, rat-infested, broke Britain, had to get involved in it? Never.

You have just been fed propaganda rubbish about ‘democracy’, freedom and an invented Russian menace. Here are some of the lies you have repeatedly been told.

The war, they say, was not provoked. Seldom in history has a war been more provoked.

Russians, nice ones like the liberal, democratic politician Yegor Gaidar, and nasty ones like the bloody despot Vladimir Putin, begged the West to stop trundling its military alliance, Nato, eastwards towards Russia.

All Russians, including the great anti-Communist author Alexander Solzhenitsyn, had been shocked and angered when Nato in 1999 abruptly gave up its defensive posture and launched attacks on Yugoslavia – which had not attacked a Nato member.

These protests reached their peak in February 2007, when Putin made a dramatic speech in Munich. He said Nato expansion was ‘a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust. We have the right to ask: against whom is this expansion intended?’

Look, if someone as gaunt as Putin spoke to you like that in a pub late in the evening, you’d take it as a warning that he was seriously riled. And unless you wanted a fight, you’d back off. But we didn’t back off.

US President George W. Bush, the genius who invaded Iraq, deliberately raised the temperature the following year. Can it be that Bush likes wars?

In April 2008, Bush said that Ukraine should be placed on the path towards joining Nato. Even the Guardian, the Liberal Warmonger’s Gazette, conceded that this was ‘likely to infuriate the Kremlin’. And so it did. I suspect we were on the path to war from that moment.

I am always accused, when I say that, of making excuses for Putin. I am not. I think he was stupid as well as wrong to be provoked. Wise men ignore provocations. But to claim he was not provoked is just to lie.

Another lie we are repeatedly told is that Russia attacked Georgia later in 2008. But anyone can find, on the web, a 2009 Reuters news agency story headlined ‘Georgia started war with Russia: EU-backed report’.

The dispatch summarises an inquiry by the respected Swiss diplomat Heidi Tagliavini. She had been asked by Brussels to look into that war. That is what she said. But, somehow or other, a lot of Western media outlets failed to find space for it. I still meet supposedly informed people who have never heard of Ms Tagliavini or her report.

And then there is the claim that this is about democracy and freedom. It isn’t. The more the West claims to care for these things, the less it does to help them.

Some examples: Ukraine’s elected president was lawlessly overthrown by a mob in 2014. Britain and the USA condoned this shameful event because they preferred the illegal rebels to the elected government. You just can’t do that and pretend to be the guardian of democracy. But then, we aren’t anyway.

You will search in vain for protests against the treatment of Romania’s presidential candidate, in a country that is in the EU and Nato.

Calin Georgescu’s election was annulled by judges in December when he looked like winning the first round. And he has been banned from standing in the second round – all because he has the wrong kind of politics. And if that’s not enough, look at the West’s deep, shaming silence over the frightening, thuggish behaviour of Turkey’s President Recep Erdogan.

A few weeks ago, this Turkish Putin arrested and jailed Ekrem Imamoglu, an opposition politician who looked likely to beat him at the polls.

Mr Imamoglu joined the many journalists and democrats who already rot in Turkish prisons.

Erdogan has crushed free media, free speech and the freedom to protest. But his country is still allowed to stay in Nato, and Western states have made less noise than an angry vole guarding its nest. They’re scared of Erdogan.

I won’t even try to explain how Germany recently recalled its old, dead parliament to push through laws the newly elected parliament would not pass. This was done to allow the spending of extra billions on the Ukraine war. But I hope you get my drift.

Demand proper debate. Demand the truth. Don’t be dragged into more stupidity, or we will end up with bomb craters as well as potholes.