Podcast | Pensées 121

I’ve been occupied with the 28-point plan all week and this saga. A lot of what I’ve written is about that. Basically, the first intimation I had of the capitulation plan was on the 11th of November, when a journalist wrote in the Kyiv Post that the United States was attempting to remove the reference to territorial integrity from the annual UN resolution condemning russia’s occupation, invasion and aggression against Ukraine. That was an ominous sign. The moment I saw this capitulation plan, I thought of that report.

I first wrote about it on the 21st of November: “Russia’s Escalations in Europe — Scenarios and How Witkoff’s Capitulation Plan Will Backfire.” One: attempt by hitting Ukraine’s allies to intimidate them into even subtle changes of behaviour towards Ukraine. Two: desperately trying to goad a NATO country into attacking russia back. Like a dead cat on a table, this could be russia’s only forlorn hope to somehow get something positive out of its current predicament.

I was wondering, as many of us have been, what russia hopes to achieve by attacking NATO countries and sending drones in. I do have this sense that the unwillingness of Poland, Romania, Bulgaria and other countries to respond aggressively is partly a function of the lack of American support under both the former and current president for NATO. But I also have a strong intuition that they are allowing russia to exhaust itself, to create these kinetic attacks — and that the purpose of this lack of response, which frustrates all of us and especially Ukrainians, is to allow russia, in the way you might a toddler, to just play out its aggression. Meanwhile, the main game is arming Ukraine. I saw this week that Norway’s response to the 28-point capitulation plan was to front-load a billion euros in planned arms deliveries to Ukraine.

I’m leaning towards this idea that desperately trying to goad a NATO country into attacking russia back is what russia is up to. Like a dead cat on the table, russia wants to distract us — as it did after Crimea by occupying parts of Luhansk and Donetsk, trying to spur revolts around the rest of Ukraine, then escalating in Syria. We’ve seen this pattern again and again. When russia hit that LNG carrier on the Danube, that was a big sign — and nothing really seemed to happen in response.

I then wrote: “Donald’s Russian mafia controllers’ latest attempt to goad Ukraine into surrender, at a moment when there are 15 dead Russian soldiers for every Ukrainian casualty in Pokrovsk. Likely it will backfire. It will help bolster President Zelensky when he says no for the nth time since 2019 to Russia’s attempt to troll the West into forcing Ukraine’s capitulation. Meanwhile, the project to dissolve Russia into four to five sovereign states continues.”

I noticed, as some of us might have, this kind of briefing against Umerov, the former defence minister and head of the security council. This journalist who wasn’t on my radar — a lot of people seem to rate her — Kathleen Dombos, extraordinary name. She was briefing about Umerov and Yermak. It struck me that just because we support Ukraine doesn’t mean every journalist covering it understands what’s happening. If one thing we’ve seen this week, it’s that a lot of journalists I’ve never heard of are part of the White House press room and are probably very esteemed in their professions, but that doesn’t mean they know anything about Ukraine or have any understanding of what all of us have been monitoring so closely since the 24th of February 2022 — and which many of us have been monitoring since February 2014, when russia first invaded.

This kind of breathless reporting of things which you and I, having followed this very closely and having listened to Mokrushyna or Will or Wendy or others each day, understand is just a new cycle of the same old stuff — that’s a phenomenon I’ve noticed. It seemed to me that someone, probably a faction within the American administration, was trying to weaken Ukraine by getting rid of Umerov and Yermak. Yermak in particular has been on this rodeo since November 2019 and is the best person for the role. Because of Rubio’s status as national security advisor, Yermak can meet him directly as his interlocutor, which is very helpful.

I just noticed that undercurrent. I think all of us on Volya Radio do our best not to intervene in Ukrainian internal politics, because just because we support Ukraine 100% doesn’t mean we’ve earned the right to intervene in whatever’s happening internally. But I’ll be watching the campaign against Umerov and Yermak quite closely.

Donald is at his weakest. He can still choose to go all in on Ukraine. He lost the Epstein files vote, with his own party turning against him for the first time this presidency. Then this month’s election defeats — the NYC mayor, Virginia, across the board wins for the Democrat Party, Pennsylvania school boards — mark the beginning of the end for a physically depleting Donald.

Since then, we’ve seen him announce he was going to introduce a bill to restore parts of Obamacare. But Congress members, as soon as they heard, threatened mass resignation. The bill was pulled. The reason they threatened mass resignation — something we haven’t seen over the cutting of USAID or ICE or anything else — was because they hadn’t been consulted and they’re sick of being treated like slaves. The White House handling of Congress has weakened Donald considerably. Because of this weakness, he’s allowed russia to come out with this ridiculousness of the 28-point plan.

Then there’s the fact that russia’s central bank printed 1.65% of russia’s GDP equivalent in new rubles last week — the Bank of russia is the source for that. To put it in context, the United States printed about 20% of GDP during COVID and an equivalent amount during the financial crisis. russia is at 1.65% of GDP — and of course that GDP denominator is probably a lie from 2023, so the real figure is likely higher. We’ve got a little way to go, but the trajectory is clear. I think that’s what explains this haste with the plan.

I was quite happy with this one: “Donald’s Thanksgiving Turkey.” Americans are mad at Donald for two and a half thousand appearances in the Epstein files. Ukraine needs to give Donald a Thanksgiving turkey. Crazy reasoning from Donald’s people. Thankfully, nothing is going to happen over Thanksgiving. This is the same pattern we’ve seen again and again.

I thought Marjorie Taylor Greene’s resignation was a significant bellwether. Now these threats by Congress members en masse to resign their seats and give the Democrats a majority underpin my immediate reaction to her resignation: she is archetyping herself for a run for the presidency. She and Steve Bannon — who I believe is her controller, her puppeteer, the person who gives her her lines — he clearly sees her as a vehicle to propel him to the presidency. According to Michael Wolff, Epstein’s biographer, Steve Bannon sees himself as presidential material. Maybe he sees MTG as a better vehicle. But in any case, that was a harbinger for what we’ve subsequently seen with the other Congress members.

All of this feeds into interpreting what Donald is up to. His chances of success in forcing Ukraine into surrender or withholding intelligence support are in proportion to his power fading.

A lot of people are questioning what’s going on inside the administration. When I was studying intellectual history at Georgetown University as a postgraduate, I had this amazing teacher, Hisham Sharabi — one of the great Arab intellectuals, Palestinian intellectuals of the twentieth century. He ran the full gamut from helping the PLO in the armed struggle, to teaching Bill Clinton at Georgetown, to being celebrated at the time of the Oslo Accords and given credit for helping Clinton put that deal together. By the end of his life, Sharabi was against the Oslo Accords. He taught me intellectual history and was a great scholar and writer.

The gender aspe…

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