Andrew Korybko
Andrew Korybko's Newsletter

The planned AI data center is meant to solidify the US’ new sphere of influence by leading the region into the “Fourth Industrial Revolution”, weaponize local data to fine-tune propaganda for helping the ruling party ahead of summer’s next elections, and function as an AI-assisted regional spy hub.

The US approved Nvidia’s sale of advanced chips to Armenia late last month as part of a $500 million AI data center that’ll see 20% of its capacity reserved for Armenian companies and the remaining 80% sold to US-based firms doing business in the region according to Bloomberg. These ambitious tech plans build upon Armenia’s rich Soviet-era technological legacy, early tech education for children, and impending national high tech strategy, but there’s actually much more to them than a simple business opportunity.

This move comes shortly after the US “poached” Armenia from Russia’s sphere of influence by replacing its role in the Armenian-Azerbaijani peace process, which took the form of brokering August’s peace declaration between the two.

Armenia also agreed to the creation of the US-controlled “Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity” (TRIPP) along its southern border. TRIPP is expected to lead to the Turkish-led injection of Western influence across the South Caucasus and into Central Asia.

Walter Gelles

[Walter wrote to me and said he was recently diagnosed with end-stage kidney failure, out of the blue, and that he was supposed to be dead a few months ago. He's now taking Ayurvedic medicines and changed his diet so that may be helping. Please pray for him!]

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"And they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore." -- Book of Isaiah (Hebrew Bible) 2:4

Before I die, I'd like to see a world with no nuclear weapons, insane bombs that threaten the human species' existence.

I'd like to see a world free from standing armies—so much energy and resources wasted on people destroying each other. A world where tanks, missiles, drones, artillery, fighter jets, battleships, bombs, and machine guns sit in glass cases in museums for people to wonder at.

I'd like to see a world where no person goes hungry, no stunted growth, no malnutrition, no starvation. no famine.

I'd like to see a world where the 70 or so richest individuals do NOT own more than the bottom half of all humanity combined (as is currently the case). Today the wealthiest 1% of all individuals are worth far more than the remaining 99% of all people on this Earth combined, and that must change. Give me a world where some kind of redistribution lifts all boats and benefits the common good...a set-up neither "socialist" nor "capitalist" but based on fairness and goodwill rather than greed and power.

Mizan Online
mizanonline.ir

S. Shilov
Witnesses of Bayraktar

The reputation of a reliable custodian of capital has been stolen

Europe has taken on a debt that it will not repay. It hesitated, but ultimately decided to freeze Russian assets worth €210 billion indefinitely.

The head of the European Council said that the reserves will be frozen until Russia pays Ukraine “material damages.” In other words, they are talking about reparations. Which Moscow, of course, will not pay.

What happened in a nutshell? Once upon a time, in peacetime, Moscow lent them money, and now they are writing it off through war. Just like in the old feudal times. They are simply showing the whole world that “the emperor has no clothes.”

All these modern schemes, loans, financial papers — it's all nonsense.

The point is this: European countries could not repay this debt without consequences — they have plenty of economic problems. This could lead to the collapse of these political regimes, whose ratings are already poor.

The EU effectively rejected Trump's plan to divide the assets among several parties and invest them in post-war projects. But Europe would still have to pay for these debt securities as the end user. That's the whole point. And they don't want to. They spent that money long ago.

Constantin von Hoffmeister
Eurosiberia (Substack)

The rise of heritage worlds

The doctrine of White supremacism draws power from an ancient desire for hierarchy, a longing for clarity when societies face turbulence. Advocates speak of sacred blood, heroic sagas, and monumental destinies, crafting visions of firm order in a world filled with shifting values. They gather around flags, runes, and historical myths, viewing these symbols as anchors during storms of uncertainty. During economic stagnation or political confusion, these grand visions offer emotional refuge, for people search for a sense of direction. This longing creates a current of energy that carries individuals towards movements promising a radiant lineage and a grand path through history.

Throughout the centuries, this ideology sought form through various political and militant structures. The Confederacy aimed to build an agrarian kingdom shaped by rigid caste rules, embedding hierarchy into law and land. The Ku Klux Klan staged fiery ceremonies, cloaked gatherings, and secret oaths, seeking cohesion through fear, theatrical intimidation, and brutal displays of retribution that included lynchings carried out in the night as warnings to entire communities.

Strategic Culture Foundation Editorial
Strategic Culture Foundation

The criminal, irresponsible Euro elites like von der Leyen, Kallas, Merz, Macron, and NATO’s Rutte, are tethering the EU financially to a sinking ship.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is pushing ahead with a reckless plan to confiscate over €200 billion in Russia’s sovereign wealth for the purpose of propping up the corrupt NeoNazi Kiev regime and prolonging a futile proxy war.

It is hard to imagine a crasser course of action. Yet the so-called European leadership around Von der Leyen is zealously steering towards disaster. At least the hapless captain of the Titanic tried to avert a collision with an iceberg. The Euro captains are heading full steam ahead.

Von der Leyen’s proposed scheme is fancifully called a “reparations loan” and pretends, through legalistic rhetoric, not to be a confiscation of Russia’s assets. But it boils down to theft. Theft to continue the bloodiest war in Europe since the Second World War, which marked the defeat of Nazi Germany.

Von der Leyen, a former German defense minister, is supported by other obsessively Russophobic Euro elites. The EU’s foreign minister, Kaja Kallas, a former Estonian prime minister, asserts that the seizure of Russian money and pumping it into the Kiev regime is aimed at forcing Moscow to negotiate a peaceful end to the nearly four-year conflict. Such twisted logic is an Orwellian distortion of reality.

Belgium and other European states are extremely wary of the unprecedented and audacious move. Belgium, which holds the majority of frozen Russian wealth – some €185 bn – in its Euroclear depository, is anxious that it will be financially ruined if Moscow holds the EU liable for illegal seizure of wealth. Other EU members, like Hungary and Slovakia, are concerned that the Russophobic leadership is undermining any diplomatic initiatives by the U.S. Trump administration and the Kremlin to negotiate a peace settlement.

Robert Von Sachsen Bellony
Linked IN

The British Empire didn’t disappear. It just learned a new trick. It realized it no longer needed soldiers, gunboats, or stolen continents. It discovered a far cleaner form of plunder, one wrapped in contracts, trusts, and tax codes, executed not with muskets but with Montblanc pens.

The trick was elegant: Why rule people when you can rule their money? Why occupy land when you can occupy trillions of tbr world’s balance sheets?

Where old empires looted gold, this one loots revenue. Where old empires planted flags, this one plants shell companies.

Where old empires ruled through force, this one rules through loopholes. The uniforms changed. The extraction didn’t.

The 2025 Corporate Tax Haven Index isn’t merely a report. It is a confession, a glimpse of the operating manual and scale for the last functioning empire of piracy on Earth.

Seven of the world’s worst corporate tax abuse enablers are British or British-wired:

Andrew Korybko
Andrew Korybko's Newsletter

Fältmarskalk Baron Carl Gustaf E. Mannerheim

Medvedev’s article shows that Russia is prepared to tackle all Finnish-emanating threats from NATO

Former Russian President and incumbent Deputy Secretary of the Security Council Dmitry Medvedev published a scathing article at TASS in early September about in which he excoriated Finland for its former alliance with the Nazis and warned about new threats from it: “The New Finnish Doctrine: Stupidity, Lies, Ingratitude.” (awip)

This follows reports in May that Russia has been beefing up its defenses along the Finnish frontier, which was analyzed here and includes links to several briefings on this subject.

Much of Medvedev’s article is devoted to the WWII-era period, with special attention drawn to what the Supreme Court of Karelia (an autonomous republic in Russia bordering Finland) recognized last year as the Finnish Genocide of the Soviet People during that time.

This focus is meant to remind Russians that Finland was once their country’s enemy even though Moscow showed mercy upon it after WWII in order to create a neutral buffer zone that formally remained in effect till Finland joined NATO in 2023. Medvedev’s motive is to rally Russians in support of their country’s more muscular policy towards Finland in response to its new hostile policies since joining that bloc.

These include compliance with Western sanctions and agreeing to let the US possibly use up to 15 military facilities. Moreover, NATO “is now intensively mastering all five operational environments of Suomi (how Finns refer to their country) - land, sea, air, space and cyberspace”, according to Medvedev. The threats are therefore multiplying.

The Islander
The Islander (Twitter/X)

European leaders fear peace more than war because peace forces accountability

The fall of Andriy Yermak – Zelensky’s fixer, enforcer, gatekeeper, and indispensable ally, isn’t a “corruption scandal.” It’s Washington slapping the table. NABU, the U.S.-trained attack dog of Ukrainian politics, didn’t raid the Presidential Office by accident. It raided to remind Zelensky that the war isn’t his to command, the peace process isn’t his to veto, and the leash around Bankova Street is held in Washington, not Kiev and certainly not European chihuahuas.

Because the real story isn’t Yermak’s resignation. The real story is the West turning on itself over how to end a war Russia has already won.

The fall of Andriy Yermak, Zelensky’s most loyal ally and the de facto power manager of Ukraine, is not a scandal. It is a strike from above. NABU, the U.S.-funded, U.S.-trained anti-corruption bureau, didn’t raid the home and office of Ukraine’s most powerful unelected official by coincidence. And in any other country, his resignation after a corruption raid would be a political scandal. In Ukraine, it’s a geopolitical detonation.

Yermak wasn’t just a chief of staff, he was the shadow architect of the regime, the man through whom every appointment, every oligarchic negotiation, every Western request, and every wartime decision had to pass. And the speed of his resignation makes clear this was less about corruption, and more about pressure — engineered, timed, and executed by the one actor that can pull such a lever, Washington.

For months, the U.S. has been split between the neocons clinging to fantasies of a battlefield reversal, and the rising bloc of realists (JD Vance et. al) who have finally accepted what the frontlines have shown for over a year, Russia has already won. Ukraine’s army is shattered, NATO’s ammunition reserves are exhausted, and American voters are done with a war that offers no victory and no strategy. The realists now want a controlled, face-saving diplomatic exit, that locks in territorial losses quietly while Washington claims it “secured peace.” Zelensky has resisted every inch of this pivot because peace ends his power. And Yermak was the immovable pillar of that resistance, insulating Zelensky from any pressure to negotiate, the filter preventing unwanted messages from reaching the president. By purging him through a NABU raid, the U.S. has isolated Zelensky.

Dr Vernon Coleman MB ChB DSc
VernonColeman.com

The basic principle of collectivism is that everything that is mine is mine and everything that was yours is also mine.

The unprincipled proponents of collectivism have successfully created a new, modern form of slavery whereby the mass of people are used, controlled and oppressed in a way which is no different to slavery. Collectivism is so closely related to communism and statism that there is no discernible difference. Collectivism is thoroughly elitist and oppressive and supported by commercial organisations and lobby groups such as the intellectually and emotionally barren World Economic Forum, whose members seem to regard themselves as being superior to the `masses’ and entitled to rule, and secretive conspiracy groups such as the Bilderbergers.

The basic principle of collectivism is that we should all work together as a team (this is why there are so many organisations and television programmes which promote the principles of team work).

Karl Marx believed that collectivism would provide citizens with freedom from oppression but he was completely wrong for collectivism has been adapted to give total power to the elite.

Ayn Rand realised that by using compliance and blind obedience as weapons the elite would take complete control over people’s lives. And that is exactly what has happened. The basic principle is that the individual must be sacrificed to the needs of the greatest number; the rights of the individual must be suppressed in order to protect and promote the rights of `the people’ and the State.

Constantin von Hoffmeister
Eurosiberia (Substack)

A splice of empire and Pacific power

The dog moves its body through the tail, the tail vibrates through the dog—an ancient metaphysical exchange of dominance, the primal grammar of power that every empire tattoos into its nerves. Trump’s voice slithered across the Pacific circuitry, an electric whisper to Takaichi Sanae, the new priestess-premier of Japan’s nationalist dreamworld. In this phone-call-as-ritual, he reminded her of the old Eurasian law: no tail declares war on the dragon unless the dog signals the hunt.

Before that, the American president had drifted, dripped, dissolved into conversation with Xi Jinping, whose words arrive like coded telegrams from a dynastic machine older than all Western ideologies. Beijing’s message, crystalline and metallic, thundered: Taiwan is sacred territory, an internal biome, a space where foreign militaristic hiccups from Tokyo shimmer like errors in a dying program. Takaichi, fierce in her revivalist vision, had proclaimed that Japan would leap into the Taiwan theater at the slightest flash of violence. Beijing heard this as a Conservative-Revolutionary ghost—the kind that speaks of lost empires and resurrected armadas. And Beijing answered in kind: fire in the tone, a dragon coiling around the old law of sovereignty.

International law, that fragile architecture inherited from shattered centuries, speaks the same: Taiwan is a matter of the inner kingdom, the core, the primal cell. No foreigner should touch it. The threat alone vibrates in Beijing’s sensors as an unwanted rupture.

Alexey Muratov
PolitNavigator

It all began with England, which only united with other kingdoms to form Great Britain in 1707. But England's own state power had always been weak. The state emerged in close symbiosis with what we consider deep power. And this power was stronger than the state. In addition, England was regularly flooded with waves of immigrants from the continent, who constantly changed the rules of the game. The Venetians, who often disrupted the order established in England, shaped the English crown to suit their own needs.

The English nobility's system of earning money since ancient times consisted of robbing the local population, much as described in the novel about Robin Hood. Therefore, it is quite obvious that when the nobility went to sea, robbery took on an international character. And a system of robbery will never cease to be robbery if that is how it originated. It is like Cain's mark on all Anglo-Saxons. Such is their historical tradition.

They are merchants and robbers who continue to engage in one form of robbery in Ukraine.

Andrew Korybko
Andrew Korybko's Newsletter

Zelensky might be next after Yermak was just taken down unless he complies with Trump’s demands for peace, in which case it’s not unforeseeable that he too could be formally implicated in this scandal as the catalyst for a US-backed regime change carried out in collusion with his domestic allies.

Zelensky’s warmongering grey cardinal Andrey Yermak, who formally serves as his Chief of Staff, submitted his resignation after his apartment was raided as part of the investigation into Ukraine’s $100 million energy graft scandal. Russian Ambassador-at-Large Rodion Miroshnik believes that he was fired, however, to protect Zelensky as the walls close in on him amidst this investigation. Whatever the truth may be, Miroshnik might be onto something, which will be elaborated on throughout this analysis.

It was earlier assessed that “Ukraine’s Corruption Scandal Might Pave The Way For Peace If It Takes Yermak Down” since “his downfall could undo the already shaky alliance between the armed forces, the oligarchs, the secret police, and parliament that keeps Zelensky in power.” Zelensky held off on getting rid of him for that reason, which emboldened Yermak to declare on his behalf that Ukraine won’t cede any territory to Russia, thus spoiling one of the main proposals in the US’ draft peace framework.

Shortly thereafter, Yermak’s apartment was raided with the participation of the two US-funded entities leading this graft investigation, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and the Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO). Had Zelensky accepted the principles contained in the aforesaid framework, particularly the 26th one about how “all parties involved in this conflict will receive amnesty for their actions during the war”, Yermak might have been able to ride off into the sunset.

Andrew Korybko
Andrew Korybko's Newsletter

The British might be egging this on to provoke a crisis for ruining the renascent Russian-US “New Détente”, but even if this fails, Continental Europe would still be weakened if the US stands down when Russian retaliates and this could advance their interests too.

It was assessed in October that “NATO’s Three-Pronged Response To The Latest Russian Scare Raises The Risk Of A Larger War”. The bloc was by that point considering arming surveillance drones, streamlining the rules of engagement for fighter pilots, and holding NATO exercises right on the Russian border. All three are still in the cards, but recent reports from Politico and the Financial Times suggest that a hitherto unthinkable policy is now being discussed, which could be much more dangerous than them.

The first reported that “Allies from Denmark to the Czech Republic already allow offensive cyber operations” against Russia by their national security services, which set the backdrop against which Latvia’s Foreign Minister and interestingly Italy’s Defense Minister are agitating for more “proactiveness”. The second then quoted Chair of the NATO Military Committee Giuseppe Cavo Dragone as arguing that hypothetical “pre-emptive (cyber) strike[s]” could be considered a “defensive action” by the bloc.

Dragone clarified, however, that “It is further away from our normal way of thinking and behaviour.” Nevertheless, the importance of these recent reports is that they suggest that some NATO members might either unilaterally launch such “pre-emptive strikes” against Russia or do so in a new ‘coalition of the willing’, either of which would spike the risk of Russian retaliation that could catalyze a new potentially uncontrollable escalation cycle. It’s therefore best for them not to do this at all.

Andrew Korybko
Andrew Korybko's Newsletter

Indians are among the most Russian-friendly people in the world as proven by credible surveys, and unlike Central Asian Muslims, they harbor no historical grievances (whether objectively existing or subjectively perceived) that could be manipulated by foreign forces to weaponize them against Russia.

Putin will visit India late next week to meet with Modi for their annual summit, the first time that the Russian leader will travel to India since the special operation began, his last one being in December 2021. Aleksei Zakharov, a Fellow at India’s esteemed Observer Research Foundation, published a detailed article about how “Key Policy Outcomes Expected at the India-Russia Summit”. It’s an excellent read, but it omits mention of their large-scale labor migration talks, which might lead to a deal next week.

Air Marshal Anil Chopra (Retired), the former Director-General of the Center for Air Power Studies in New Delhi, published an intriguing piece about this at RT in early November. He noted how both countries representatives “discussed potential collaboration on social and labor issues”, contextualizing their conversation by adding that Russia “plans to recruit up to 1 million foreign workers – including from India. The Russian Labor Ministry estimates the shortfall could expand to 3.1 million workers by 2030.”

He makes a lot of compelling arguments about how India could help resolve this dimension of “Russia’s demography problem”, but what’s left out is how its labor migrants pose less of a security risk than Russia’s traditional ones from Central Asia. Conor Gallagher touched upon this in early November in his extensively detailed analysis about the US’ evolving strategy towards that region. From this point here near the end for the next several paragraphs, he describes Russia’s new approach towards migration.

Not only is Russia “getting rid of 700,000-plus migrants, mostly Central Asians, a process which was jumpstarted by the terrorist attack on Crocus City Hall in outer Moscow in March 2024”, but “the Concept of State Migration Policy for 2026-2030…focuses not on increasing the population through Central Asian citizens, but on strengthening control, digitalization, and the task of attracting only those migrants who share the ‘traditional spiritual and moral values’ of Russian society.”

Andrey Rezchikov
Political Kaleidoscope

Several incidents involving tankers have occurred near the Turkish coast over the past day. On Saturday, the Virat vessel was attacked again by a drone, and the day before, the Kairos tanker caught fire as a result of an emergency. It was heading to Novorossiysk, where one of the remote berths at the CPC marine terminal was destroyed by a drone strike. Experts say Ukraine is behind the attacks. What does the expansion of its targets from military ships to civilian vessels mean?

On Saturday morning, the Gambian-flagged tanker Virat was attacked again by a drone off the coast of Turkey. On Friday evening, a fire broke out on the ship, which was 35 miles off the coast of Turkey, after an attack by an unmanned aerial vehicle. Rescue teams were sent to the scene. According to the maritime administration, all 20 crew members were safe, although there was heavy smoke in the engine room.

According to Turkish Transport Minister Abdülkadir Uraloğlu, the ship's captain reported the attack on Saturday when contacting the coast guard. There was no fire this time, and the crew did not request evacuation, but Coast Guard boats were sent to the ship. The minister said the causes of the incident are currently under investigation, and once the consequences of the attack are addressed, the tanker will likely be towed to the nearest port.

The day before, the Turkish Maritime Administration reported a fire on the tanker Kairos, which was sailing under the Gambian flag from Egypt to Novorossiysk. According to the Turkish Maritime Directorate, the ship caught fire 28 miles from the coast due to external factors.

Michelle Ellner
Venezuelanalysis

Until Washington abandons the idea that it owns the hemisphere, Latin America will never be safe. Not from Abrams, not from coups, not from CIA programs, not from blockades, and not from the Monroe Doctrine.

Elliott Abrams has resurfaced with familiar instructions on how to “fix” Venezuela, a country he neither understands nor respects, yet feels entitled to rearrange like a piece of furniture in Washington’s living room. His new proposal is drenched in the same Cold War fever and colonial mindset that shaped his work in the 1980s, when U.S. foreign policy turned Central America into a graveyard.

My childhood in Venezuela was shaped by stories from our region that the world rarely sees: stories of displacement, of death squads, of villages erased from maps, of governments toppled for daring to act outside Washington’s orbit. And I know exactly who Elliott Abrams is, not from think-tank biographies, but from the grief woven into Central America’s landscape.

Abrams writes with the confidence of someone who has never lived inside the countries his policies have destabilized. His newest argument rests on the most dangerous assumption of all: that the United States has the authority, by virtue of power alone, to decide who governs Venezuela. This is the original sin of U.S. policy in the hemisphere, the one that justifies everything else: the sanctions, the blockades, the covert operations, the warships in the Caribbean. The assumption that the hemisphere is still an extension of U.S. strategic space rather than a region with its own political will.

Thierry Meyssan
Voltaire Network

On October 26, Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Chief of Staff, Valery Gerasimov, announced the completion of a project to miniaturize a nuclear reactor and install it on a missile. They reported conducting a test launch of the 9M730 Burevestnik missile over a distance of 14,000 kilometers. The unique feature of this nuclear-powered weapon (and therefore its range is virtually unlimited) is its ability to be guided in such a way as to bypass interceptor sites. This, according to Russian authorities, makes it an unstoppable missile.

On October 29, President Putin tested a Status-6 Poseidon torpedo, a nuclear-powered torpedo. Throughout the Soviet Union, Eurasian military researchers believed that underwater nuclear explosions could trigger massive tsunamis. To achieve this, they needed to be able to launch torpedoes much farther than was possible at the time, in order to avoid the cataclysms they intended to unleash. This has now been accomplished. Mega-tsunamis could devastate cities like Washington or New York, or even naval groups like those of the US aircraft carriers. However, the Poseidon torpedo is much longer than others: 21 meters. It therefore cannot be launched from operational submarines and required its own dedicated vessel for launch. The fact that it can operate underwater almost indefinitely more than compensates for this limitation. In any case, this torpedo ensures that Russia can launch a second strike in the event of a US attack. Until now, the first to launch a nuclear strike was guaranteed to deprive its enemy of its main means of retaliation.

Andrew Korybko
Andrew Korybko's Newsletter

The geostrategic context of newfound pressure upon each, their increased bilateral tensions, and rising fears that false flag provocations in Europe could manipulate them into war with one another make it likely that their planned Budapest Summit will be more successful than the Anchorage one.

[This was written on Oct 17, 2025 -Editor AWIP] The next Putin-Trump meeting will soon take place in Budapest. Prior to their last one in Anchorage, the vision that they were working towards was a resource-centric strategic partnership that could then become a steppingstone towards a more comprehensive one in the future.

For that to happen, either Putin had to freeze the frontlines or Trump had to coerce Zelensky into withdrawing from Donbass, but neither could agree to what was requested of them so their New Détente went nowhere.

Even worse, the Europeans then became serious obstacles to peace, even going as far as teaming up with the Brits and Zelensky to propose dangerous “security guarantees” that riled Russia. Trump ramped up his rhetoric against Putin afterwards, arguably due to him being manipulated by Lindsey Graham and Zelensky, thus culminating in the latest talk about sending Tomahawks to Ukraine. It was within this tense context that they talked again, right before Zelensky’s trip to DC, and agreed to meet in Budapest.

Each side is also coming under a lot of newfound pressure nowadays that conceivably influenced their latest call and plans to meet. From Russia’s side, the new TRIPP corridor will inject Western influence along Russia’s southern flank via NATO member Turkiye (despite Russia’s thaw with Azerbaijan), Poland is reviving its long-lost Great Power status along Russia’s western flank, and Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) revealed last month that French and UK troops are already in Ukraine’s Odessa Region.

Andrew Korybko
Andrew Korybko's Newsletter

Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service warned earlier the same day as Bloomberg’s report that the Brits are hellbent on discrediting Trump in order to undermine his latest peace efforts for resolving the conflict from which they profit.

Bloomberg shared what it claimed to be the transcripts of calls between Trump’s Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Putin’s top foreign policy aide Yury Ushakov as well as between Ushakov and Putin’s other advisor Kirill Dmitriev about the Ukrainian peace process. The gist of the Witkoff-Ushakov call was Witkoff’s proposal to have Putin suggest a Gaza-like 20-point peace deal for Ukraine during an upcoming call with Trump while the Ushakov-Dmitriev one implied that the leaked draft was Russian-influenced.

Ushakov declined to comment on his talks with Witkoff but said that “Somebody tapped, somebody leaked, but not us” whereas Dmitriev flat-out described his purported call with Ushakov as “fake”. For his part, Trump defended Witkoff’s alleged “coaching” of Ushakov on how Putin should deal with him by reminding everyone “That’s what a dealmaker does. You got to say, ‘Look, they want this – you got to convince them with this.’ That’s a very standard form of negotiations.”

As regards the possibility that the draft framework was Russian-influenced, the notion of which has been pushed by the legacy media to discredit the proposed mutual compromises therein, that was already debunked. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who also serves as National Security Advisor, said that...

Therefore, neither transcript is scandalous even if their contents were accurately reported, yet the question arises of who might have tapped and leaked these calls.