[1]
By John Helmer, Moscow
@bears_with [2]
A week ago on September 23, President Donald Trump called President Vladimir Putin’s military power a “paper tiger”, and declared ”this is the time for Ukraine to act”.
By that he said [3] he meant “to take back their Country in its original form and, who knows, maybe even go further than that!”
Five days later, the successor president, Vice President J D Vance, explained that deployment on the Ukrainian battlefield by NATO-supplied Tomahawk cruise missiles [4], with a 2,500-km range, is the next step he and Trump are considering.
“Russia is really stalled,” Vance claimed [5], “The Russian economy is in shambles. The Russians are not gaining much on the battlefield… The Russians have refused to sit down in any bilateral meetings with the Ukrainians. They have refused to sit down in any trilateral meetings with the President…The Russians have got to wake up and accept reality here… About Tomahawks, it’s something the President is going to make the final determination on. What the President is going to do is what’s in the best interest of the United States of America. [6]”
The scheme, Vance intimated, is to allow NATO member states with Tomahawk batteries – at the moment this means the UK and Germany – to deliver them to Kiev, or for other European states to buy the missiles from the US and send them on. This means that the crews operating the Tomahawk systems in the Ukraine would be British, German, or other Europeans. “What we’re doing,” Vance said, “is asking the Europeans to buy that weaponry that shows some European skin in the game. I think that gets them really invested in both what’s happening in their own backyard, but also in the peace process that the president has been pushing for, for the last eight months,” Vance said [5].
The skins at risk of Russian counterattack, Vance meant but omitted to acknowledge, would be European, not American.
The Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, responded [7] with the obvious followed by a placebo.
“We have heard these statements. We are thoroughly analyzing them. Our military specialists are closely monitoring it.” “Even if it happens that the United States sends its Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine, currently there is no cure-all that could be a game changer on the front lines for the Kiev regime. No magical weapons exist, and Tomahawk or other missiles simply won’t be a game changer [8].”
Then Peskov muffled a warning [9]: “The question… is this: who can launch these missiles…? Can only Ukrainians launch them, or do American soldiers have to do that?” The answer is already obvious – Vance made it plain. The operators of the Tomahawks would be Europeans.
Peskov’s questions also avoided Vance’s and Trump’s strategic point. They are now aiming to intensify the domestic damage they can inflict deep inside Russian territory – Moscow and St. Petersburg if they can — in the belief this will trigger loss of Russian morale and voter opposition to Putin. “This war is terrible for their economy,” Vance repeated several times, as has Trump. The Russians, Vance declared, “have to ask themselves how many more people are they willing to lose…for very little military advantage.”
What is happening from the Russian point of view which isn’t public?
The US “understanding” from the Anchorage summit meeting on August 16 is no longer the Russian interpretation as Putin himself first explained [10] it. “Hopefully, the understanding [singular] we have reached will bring us closer to this goal and open up the road to peace in Ukraine,” Putin said at his brief press conference after meeting with Trump. “We see that the US President has a clear idea of what he wants to achieve, that he sincerely cares about his country’s prosperity while showing awareness of Russia’s national interests. I hope that today’s agreements [plural] will become a reference point, not only for resolving the Ukrainian problem but also for resuming the pragmatic business relations between Russia and the United States.”
Escalation to Tomahawk attacks on the Russia hinterland is also not the “understanding” with the US which the Russian Foreign Ministry announced [11] after Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov met at the United Nations with Secretary of State Marco Rubio: “The heads of the foreign offices exchanged opinions on the Ukraine crisis settlement as a follow up to the understandings [plural] reached at the Russia-US summit in Anchorage. The parties have reaffirmed mutual interest in the search for peaceful solutions. Sergey Lavrov emphasised our country’s readiness to adhere to the line developed by the Russian and US leaders in Alaska, including to coordinate efforts with the US side to remove the root causes of the Ukraine conflict. The minister stressed the unacceptability of the schemes intended to protract the conflict promoted by Kiev and some European countries. The parties compared their positions on the entire bilateral agenda including the prospects of restoring their socio-political contacts. They have reaffirmed the importance of using the impetus given by Russian and US presidents to the process of normalising bilateral relations.”
Speaking to Russian reporters, Lavrov then added [12]: “We operate on the premise that everything we have heard from our US colleagues at the top and other levels tells us that they want to help us end this conflict by addressing and eliminating its root causes. There are no other countries in the Western camp that abide by such a position. I have no doubt that the US President is genuinely interested in this outcome. Some people are trying to have influence on him, but that’s another matter… The 2022 borders are off the table today. What we are now discussing are the borders as enshrined in the Constitution of the Russian Federation.”
The “reality on the ground”, as Vance and Trump say they understand it on the battlefield, is plainly now not the reality on the ground as the Russian side sees it. The US is announcing that Russia the paper tiger has lost escalation dominance on the battlefield, and is vulnerable to even greater domestic insecurity than it faced three years ago, when the Special Military Operation began. If that was the “root cause” of the war, as Putin and Lavrov say they have explained to their US counterparts, Trump and Vance are now dismissing “root cause” as the basis for terms to end the war.
When Vance announced that the Tomahawk deployment will be decided “in the interests of the United States of America”, he meant to say that the Russian military and Putin have lost their power of deterrence.
A Moscow source in a position to know says the General Staff will convince the President on the measures required to prove the Americans wrong. “I believe the Russians will secure victory using the Oreshniki rather than a massive ground offensive. But there is also a build-up many of us can tell. That is why Americans and Europeans are getting very nervous, threatening Russians with a direct confrontation unless they back off.”
Listen to the escalation of the US threat to Russia [5]:
[13]Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTSgoeIkxRc [5]
And now Nima Alkhorshid leads the discussion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBosKQABl4U [14]
[15]Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBosKQABl4U [14]
The informed Moscow source observes: “we are at the clearest point of the war. Russia has to end it decisively or lose it.”
The source explains that in the Russian assessment of Trump now, “he is no peacemaker. He would have liked a Nobel for it but it is clear after Anchorage that he knows he will not be able to broker peace. The Americans think the Ukrainians are happy to die; the Europeans are happy to have them die; there is apparently little shortage of money. Europe can come up with what is needed from the seized Russian assets. So Trump is pointing out what we all know – Putin has not been able to win. He is pointing out what the war briefers have told him to be the cold hard truth – the Ukrainians have taken a very severe beating but they are standing and fighting; the Russians have not been able win and might not be able to. Hence the opportunity, he and Vance have been persuaded, that the US can turn the tide; get richly paid; and run no risk of losing American lives.”
“There is nothing new in this situation – except that the deals [Kirill] Dmitriev was looking for from [Steven] Witkoff have not happened. The Kremlin has not been able to bribe or buy any American favours. So it’s back to the battlefield – the Russians have to win it, seal it, and that will happen by next summer or by the summer of 2027. To the war faction in Moscow, this understanding is welcome.”