By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

Last week it was President Donald Trump telling reporters he didn’t know what response President Vladimir Putin had made to the term-sheet for ending the Ukraine war which he sent to the Kremlin on December 2 with Steven Witkoff and Jared Kushner.  

“I don’t know what the Kremlin is doing,” Trump said on December 3. “I can tell you that they had a reasonably good meeting with President Putin. We’re going to find out. It’s a war that should have never been started…It’s a war if I were president — we had a rigged election. If I were president that war would have never happened. It’s a terrible thing. But I thought they had a very good meeting yesterday with President Putin. We’ll see what happens. President Putin had a very good meeting yesterday with Jared Kushner and with Steve Witkoff. What comes out of that meeting I can’t tell you because it does take two to tango. You know, Ukraine — I think we have something pretty well worked out with them…[Putin] would like to end the war. That’s what they — that was their impression. Now, whether or not — that was their impression. You know, their impression was that he would like to see the war ended. I think he’d like to get back to a more normal life. I think he’d like to be trading with the United States of America, frankly, instead of losing thousands of soldiers a week. But their impression was very strongly that he’d like to make a deal. We’ll see what happens.”  

This week, on December 7, Trump claimed it is Vladimir Zelensky who doesn’t know. “So we’ve been speaking to President Putin and we’ve been speaking to Ukrainian leaders, including Zelenskyy, President Zelensky. And I have to say that I’m a little bit disappointed that President Zelenskyy hasn’t yet read the proposal. That was as of a few hours ago. His people love it, but he hasn’t. Russia’s fine with it. Russia’s, you know, Russia, Russia, I guess, would rather have the whole country, wouldn’t you think a bit? But, uh, Russia is, I believe, fine with it, but I’m not sure that Zelenskyy’s fine with it. His people love it, but he hasn’t read it.”  

Although Witkoff had telephoned Zelensky the day before, telling him the new deadline for an agreement on the term sheet is “by Christmas”,  Trump repeated the know-nothing claim in an interview on December 8.  “Well, he’s gotta read the proposal. He hadn’t re … really, he hasn’t read it yet. [Question: The most recent draft?] That’s as of yesterday. Maybe he’s read it over the night. It would be nice if he would read it. You know, a lot of people are dying. So it would be really good if he’d read it. His people loved the proposal. They really liked it. His lieutenants, his top people, they liked it, but they said he hasn’t read it yet. I think he should find time to read it.”  

As this negotiation spills into public view, there is no Russian, American, European,  or Ukrainian record that Kushner has said anything.  

However, since he returned from the Kremlin talks to the US, Kushner and his father-in-law, the President, have been busy in a multi-billion dollar bidding takeover of a Hollywood film production company,  Warner Brothers Discovery (WBD). When WBD rejected the Kushner alliance bid of $41 billion in equity, $54 billion in bank loans, for a lowball offer of $83 billion from Netflix,  Trump announced he might veto the deal on monopoly grounds. “That’s got to go through a process and we’ll see what happens,” Trump announced. “Uh, Netflix is a great company… But it’s a, it’s a lot of market share so we’ll have to see what happens.”  

The next day,  Kushner, with the Trump campaign financiers the Ellison family, and the Saudi, Abu Dhabi and Qatari state investment funds proposed a hostile takeover bid of $108 billion for WBD,  all cash, no debt, to defeat Netflix.   Trump, the US government and the press have been more transparent on the term sheets for ending the war for WBD than they have for the Ukraine war.

Outwitting Trump was the objective of the summit meeting in Delhi of President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Narendra Modi on December 4-5.  But because the Trump White House and their media camp followers have been preoccupied with their money shot at Hollywood, the reality has been accelerating in an altogether different direction.

Here is the story in the new Dialogue Works podcast with Nima Alkhorshid.  

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by Editor - Wednesday, December 10th, 2025
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

It was Black Tuesday, December 2, in Moscow, when Russian leaders negotiated the crucial  questions of war and peace with their chief enemy the US, and chief allies China and India. To understand what has happened, Chris Cook, editor-in-chief of the leading (last) independent radio for news analysis in Canada, asks five big questions:

Question (1): Who is claiming victory in the Ukraine now? (2) Why did Putin give an audience to the two underlings of President Donald Trump? (3) How to explain why Trump is negotiating battlefield armistice with the Kremlin with money men, not with army generals? (4) Why is Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney sending a fresh C$200 million to the Ukraine on top of more than C$22 billion already spent  – is he Trump’s patsy to pick up the tab for the defeat? (5) To stave off this defeat, are we, the Europeans and Canadians, ready for an even bigger war with Russia?  

Answer: the Europeans (and Canadians) are ready to lie for the war against Russia, but not to fight themselves, and emphatically not to lose the war through their proxies — yesterday it was the Chechens and Georgians; today it’s the Ukrainians; tomorrow it will be the Poles, Balts, Finns.

Translation: lies, deceit, cant – the thesaurus lists eighteen synonyms in English for the way in which Trump, Carney,  and other leaders of the war alliance against Russia speak. The Gorilla Radio interviews have documented the full eighteen coming out of the mouth of Prime Minister Carney once he believed he was secure in the prime ministry. President Trump has a more limited range by contrast.

In response to the Gorilla’s questions, Trump remained silent for more than 48 hours.

He then answered White House reporters by acknowledging he doesn’t know the answers, repeating himself with pecksniffery: “I don’t know what the Kremlin is doing. I can tell you that they had a reasonably good meeting with President Putin. We’re going to find out. It’s a war that should have never been started…It’s a war if I were president — we had a rigged election. If I were president that war would have never happened. It’s a terrible thing. But I thought they had a very good meeting yesterday with President Putin. We’ll see what happens. President Putin had a very good meeting yesterday with Jared Kushner and with Steve Witkoff. What comes out of that meeting I can’t tell you because it does take two to tango. You know, Ukraine — I think we have something pretty well worked out with them…[Putin] would like to end the war. That’s what they — that was their impression. Now, whether or not — that was their impression. You know, their impression was that he would like to see the war ended. I think he’d like to get back to a more normal life. I think he’d like to be trading with the United States of America, frankly, instead of losing thousands of soldiers a week. But their impression was very strongly that he’d like to make a deal. We’ll see what happens.”  

Listen now to anticipate what will happen next.

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by Editor - Sunday, December 7th, 2025
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

In a single day of this week, Tuesday December 2, Russian officials admitted that negotiations of an end-of-war settlement with the US are failing for lack of American specificity on the territorial and demilitarization issues and of “genuineness” and “sincerity” on ending the sanctions war;  that there are serious, unresolved, and unexplained differences with strategic ally China; and that in response to questions from strategic ally India, the Kremlin is unready to say what side President Vladimir Putin will take if fighting breaks out again between Indian and Chinese forces along their Himalayan frontier.

The hegemonic media of the western alliance against Russia have missed all three. But so too have the Americanocentric alt-media and the Yankocentric podcasters. An exception is Jamarl Thomas in today’s 78-minute podcast, Click to view:  starting at Min 1:33:06.

In their afternoon walk in the centre of Old Moscow (lead image), and then in their five-hour conversation at the Kremlin, President Donald Trump’s negotiator Steven Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner appeared to be pointing in the wrong direction to save Trump from losing his Ukraine war to the advancing Russian military.

“Not an easy situation, let me tell you,” Trump told a Cabinet meeting in front of reporters as  Witkoff and Kushner were halfway through their meeting at the Kremlin, before they reported back to Trump. “What a mess. It’s a war that never would have happened if I were president.” Asked if he had an “update”, Trump replied: “No update, because I’ve been spending too much time with you. I mean, we’re spending a lot of time in here. We wanted to do this very — you talk about being open and transparent. This has to be the most transparent administration in history. No, I don’t — I will have after I leave here. ”  

That was noon time in Washington. The Kremlin meeting ended two hours later. Witkoff and Kushner then went to the US Embassy to telephone the White House. They have said nothing in public, not even to their favourite megaphone, Fox News. Its headline was “diplomatic deadlock”, relying entirely on the detailed readout of the negotiations from Yury Ushakov, Putin’s foreign affairs adviser.  

Trump has remained uncharacteristically silent through the day and night which have followed. He has answered no reporter question on the Kremlin meeting; published no tweet.  

Instead, he agreed that Marco Rubio, his National Security Advisor and Secretary of State,   should speak to Fox on Trump’s behalf. Up went the smokescreen.

“At the end of the day, it’s not up to us.  It’s not our war,” Rubio claimed. “We’re not fighting it.”  Rubio was conceding that Trump’s effort to withdraw from the war with a peace agreement was also weakening. “If there is a way to bridge the divide between the two sides, we’re the only ones in the world that can do it, and that’s what we’re trying to do.”

Rubio claimed also that the Ukrainians are winning territory, not losing it. “What people forget, Sean [Hannity, Fox], is that at some point in this war, Russia controlled substantially more territory in Ukraine than they do now.  The Ukrainians – if you look at what that map looked like in March or April after the invasion, or May, three months after the invasion, and what it looks like now, the Ukrainians have pushed the Russians way back from where they were.  So they’ve already achieved tremendous things.”   

The blame to come, Rubio concluded, would not be Trump’s but Putin’s.

“Ultimately it’s going to be up to them.  If they decide they don’t want to end the war, then the war will continue…It’s hard to tell about confidence level on it, because ultimately the decisions have to be made, in the case of Russia, by Putin alone, not his advisors.   Putin – only Putin can end this war on the Russian side…I think we’ve made some progress.  We’ve gotten closer, but we’re still not there.  We’re still not close enough.  But that could change.  I hope it changes.”  

Trump and his officials weren’t pointing in the wrong direction, Rubio was saying. Ushakov’s catalogue of the differences Putin had just elaborated to Witkoff and Kushner was, Rubio insisted, Putin’s mistake. For the silent Trump Rubio was refusing to get the Russian message. Instead, Trump and his men weren’t giving up on Kiev. “What we have tried to do – and I think have made some progress – is figure out what could the Ukrainians live with that gives them security guarantees for the future they’re never going to be invaded again, allows them not just to rebuild their economy but to prosper as a country, be a country that has an economy that grows.  Theoretically, doing the right things, in 10 years Ukraine’s GDP could be larger than Russia’s.”  

If Witkoff had told Putin otherwise – there is no evidence that Kushner opened his mouth to say anything in Moscow – the Trump line is now as clearly negative towards Russia’s terms as the Europeans and the Zelensky regime in Kiev.

But it is the Europeans, Putin has insisted publicly, who have “abandoned peace talks and are now impeding President Trump…they have no peace agenda; they are on the side of war. Even when they ostensibly attempt to introduce amendments to Trump’s proposals, we see this clearly – all their amendments are directed towards one single aim: to completely obstruct this entire peace process, to put forward demands that are utterly unacceptable to Russia (they understand this), and thereby subsequently to place the blame for the collapse of the peace process upon Russia. That is their objective. We see this plainly.”

After Rubio has spoken for Trump, tidying up after Witkoff and Kushner, what exactly can be seen plainly now?

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by Editor - Wednesday, December 3rd, 2025
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

The war to end all wars is a refrain which began with the British in 1914.  It was a domestic political ploy to convince those who should pay and then die.  

They paid, they died, and though the line was discredited within a decade, they still pay. Nowadays, the British (not only them) are persuaded that if they pay, the Russians will die.

When the Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov announced on Tuesday morning that the terms on which the Russian Army will stop advancing across the Ukraine must be “for many generations to come”, he was talking to the Russians, not to the Americans, Europeans or Ukrainians. “We highly appreciate the efforts of US President Trump and his administration,” Peskov added, “and we want to solve our security problems for many generations to come.”  

Putin had explained the night before in Moscow. The Europeans (he included the British) “have no peace agenda; they are on the side of war. Even when they ostensibly attempt to introduce amendments to Trump’s proposals, we see this clearly – all their amendments are directed towards one single aim: to completely obstruct this entire peace process, to put forward demands that are utterly unacceptable to Russia (they understand this), and thereby subsequently to place the blame for the collapse of the peace process upon Russia. That is their objective. We see this plainly.”  

The conclusion for Russians is obvious, Putin added. “If Europe wants to wage a war against us and suddenly starts a war with us, we are ready. There should be no doubt about that. The only question is if Europe suddenly starts a war against us, I think very quickly…Europe is not Ukraine. In Ukraine, we are acting with surgical precision. You see my point, don’t you? It is not a war in the direct, modern sense of the word. If Europe suddenly decides to go to war against us and actually follows through with it, then a situation may arise very quickly where we will be left with no one to negotiate with.”  

Putin was making the same point for President Donald Trump and his generals to hear. The warning is nuclear war,  or the Oreshnik,  or both.

In point of fact, according to the latest opinion polls, Russians believe the US to be the far greater enemy to Russia than the European alliance; the Ukraine trails in third place. Also, the opinion polls reveal, public trust in the decision-making of President Vladimir Putin, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, the government and the parliament has begun to turn downwards. This is a caution that a temporary deal with the US, on terms paying cash rewards to the Trump family and to the Russian oligarchs, but do not end the economic warfare at once and restart the fighting within five years, will be unacceptable.

The picture of Steven Witkoff and Jared Kushner smiling across the table at Putin, Yury Ushakov and Kirill Dmitriev on Tuesday afternoon is understood by Russian voters to show the enemy’s money is doing the talking. The absence from the Kremlin table of the Russian generals with whom Putin was talking at their command post on Monday  is not the reassurance Peskov intended to give.

Click to view the new discussion with Nima Alkhorshid of the precedents for peace-making and for continuing the war against Russia,  which were first set at the Versailles conference after World War I,  and then in the capitulation documents for the defeated Germans and Japanese in 1945. It is by these standards, and what we recognise of their failure to solve Russia’s “security problems for many generations to come”, that Russians are judging the latest round of table talks.

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by Editor - Wednesday, December 3rd, 2025
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

When the Americans were fighting the British, it was Benjamin Franklin who reportedly told Thomas Jefferson at a strategy session: “We must all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.” President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Narendra Modi will shortly be sitting down in Modi’s study to discuss this predicament, and Franklin’s advice, as they face end of war, pause of war terms dictated earlier in the week by President Donald Trump.

In this new podcast from Delhi with Joyeeta Basu, Editor of the Sunday Guardian, we begin with the genocide against the Russians, aka the Clinton-Yeltsin plan of 1991-96, and fast-forward to the Miami plan, the Geneva plan, and the Abu Dhabi plan of Trump, Steven Witkoff, Jared Kushner and Daniel Driscoll, which are being carried to the Kremlin in the coming week. We discuss the terms Putin will explain to Modi that he has accepted from the Americans, those he has postponed for later, and those he has rejected.

What the terms mean for the Troika, for Russia’s relations with India, and also with China, comes at the climax of the podcast. Click to view: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIi2saIwftU 

by Editor - Sunday, November 30th, 2025
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

For this week, ahead of President Vladimir Putin’s arrival in India on December 6, I am in meetings in Delhi. Here is our first conversation with Sandeep Unnithan and Chakra News: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHh0aXP1SA4 

by Editor - Sunday, November 30th, 2025
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

In today’s podcast, we go step-wise through the Florida plan of Steven Witkoff and Kirill Dmitriev (28 points); the Geneva plan of Daniel Driscoll and the US Army generals (19 points); and the Abu Dhabi plan of Driscoll, the US Army Generals, Dmitriev and a secret Russian business representative, excluding the Foreign Ministry, the General Staff and the intelligence services (19 points minus 19). Then we reach the conclusion that the Americans are promoting a scheme which has nothing in common with the understandings President Vladimir Putin believes he reached in Anchorage, Alaska, on August 16 with President Donald Trump. In short, a plan of points that are pointless. Click to view.

by Editor - Sunday, November 30th, 2025
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

Start with the condition of President Donald Trump’s brain, according to his mouth.  

“Question: Mr. President, could you tell us why you needed to get an MRI? I, I understand that the results were good, but what was it for?

Donald Trump: Because it’s part of my physical. Getting an MRI is very standard. Well, you think I shouldn’t have it? Other people got it. I had an MRI. Here’s what you s- — serious. I had an MRI. The doctor said it was the best result he has ever seen as a doctor. That’s it. But I had an MRI as part of my standard yearly or every w- — I think they do it every two years, but I have the physical every year. And the result was outstanding.

Question: Is it your brain or —

Donald Trump: Uh, I have no idea what they analyzed, but whatever they analyzed, they analyzed it well. And they said that I had as good a result as they’ve ever seen. Now the other thing I took is I took as you know, a, uh, advanced, very advanced test on mental acuity. Because I think a president should have to do that. And as you probably heard, I aced it. I got a perfect score. I got the highest one, I got a perfect score. And the only reason I tell you that is it’s one subject, unlike Biden and others, that you can take off your plan.”  

Now measure the distance which Trump’s legs have been running from his warmaking fronts against Russia in the Ukraine, Germany, India, and Venezuela – and in the latest debate over Gaza peace terms in the United Nations Security Council. Listen to the new podcast with Nima Alkhorshid.   

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by Editor - Thursday, November 20th, 2025
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

It is just five weeks since President Donald Trump failed to win the Nobel peace prize. The armed resistance of Iran and Venezuela has already forced him to postpone his Plan A – that’s  for regime change by what Trump likes to call his “obliteration force”.  Trump’s Plan B is for regime change by covert operations.  In Kiev, Berlin, Tallinn, Ottawa, and Delhi these are turning out to be just as noisy and as dirty.   

To clean up behind Trump, this news-breaking podcast from Dimitri Lascaris, aired from Montreal on Sunday morning, is double-length, four-ply, and forest-friendly.

Part I, the first 65 minutes, focuses on US plotting to replace Vladimir Zelensky and replace him with others equally bent on continuing the war against Russia; on German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s scheme for making his political party and the German army great again by continuing the war against Russia; and on the media battle for Canadian votes as Prime Minister Mark Carney continues the war against Russia.

Part II, for 30 minutes, opens with the terrorist bombing in Delhi last Monday, the Pakistan directions, the Trump connections, and India’s military options for the days ahead,  as they will be discussed in Moscow on Monday when Russia’s allies gather together in the Shanghai Cooperation Council meeting.

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by Editor - Monday, November 17th, 2025
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

Estonian politics are being turned upside down because of a leaked report into the diversion of defence spending.

The timing is not an unlucky coincidence. It is the result of the country’s leaders claiming kudos for leading the NATO alliance in lifting the military proportion of their Gross Domestic Product (GDP) from 3.4% to 5.4%.

This increase was enacted in April when the Estonian government and parliament approved a four-year €2.8 billion additional defence funding bill in order to meet the NATO target dictated by President Donald Trump. The increased spending will lift Estonia from the 19^th rank of the global defence/GDP ratio, four ranks behind Poland (4.15% as of 2024  ) and one rank behind the US (3.42%), to lead the NATO member states.  

“I really, from this podium, in this building, want to applaud your leadership on meeting the five percent defense spending target, not years down the road but in all of your countries in 2026,” US Defense Secretary Peter Hegseth announced at a Pentagon meeting with Hanno Pevkur, the Estonian defense minister on July 25; beside Pevkur were his Latvian and Lithuanian counterparts. “It underscores your dedication to the Alliance’s security and sets a very clear example for others to follow.”  

Pevkur replied: “Our meeting today is a testimony to the strong and trusted partnership between the Baltic States and the United States…We stand up for one another and we defend each other when it’s needed. This is what brotherhood in arms truly means.”  

In the Estonian language, that last sentence of Pevkur’s means brother’s hands in each other’s pockets.  

According to official announcements in Tallinn late last month, Pevkur has agreed to spend $4.73 billion on new US HIMARS artillery systems and ammunition.   More than €10 billion ($12 billion) in defence spending is now planned for the four-year period, 2026-2029.  The Estonian media report that “procurement accounts for 37 percent of the budget, ammunition for 25 percent, personnel costs for 14 percent, operating expenses for 13 percent, intelligence and early warning for 3 percent, support for the Defense League [citizen mobilisation] for 3 percent and infrastructure investments for 5 percent.”   

More than half of this total is expected to go directly to the US military-industrial complex and a Ukraine-sized percentage of 10% to 15% return to Estonian middlemen as commissions. US and European military companies are also being invited to invest in new production of weapons and security technology in Estonia itself. “Estonia also plans,” the government says, “to invest €50 million in defence industry and innovation, including the establishment of a Future Capabilities and Innovation Command and a new defence industry park in Pärnu County.”   The list of Russia warfighting allies to supply – sell to Tallin — was published in this Estonian government report, issued before the Trump increase was implemented.     

This is the greatest boondoggle in the history of Estonia since the country pinned its hopes on Adolf Hitler and German military investment between 1941 and 1944.

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by Editor - Friday, November 14th, 2025
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