Willem de Kooning Door to the river 1960
Jim Kunstler this week suggests that Russia is closer to the US way of thinking than any of its European allies: “..Russia is actually doing what it can to preserve Western Civ, including Christianity, literature, music, philosophy, and domestic civility..”
Not many westerners will share this view. We see ourselves as the protectors and keepers of civilization. Certainly not the Russians. Or Donald Trump. Many people today see Minneapolis (not unlike Ukraine), as a place where civilization is under threat from Trump and all those who support him, and where it’s being protected by “the other side”.
Thing is, it is quite questionable whether you can preserve your civilization at the same moment that you allow in 10-20 million new people with different customs, language and well, civilization, than those who have lived on “your” land before that moment.
Because by doing that, you change the population as well as the civilization. And before you do something so drastic, you must ask the “original” population what they think of that. This actually happened in this case: the 2024 presidential elections were to a large extent contested over Immigration, and Trump won by a large majority.
It would appear that the discussion about the topic is settled. But the Democatic Party will not acknowledge its loss. And so we have Minneapolis. It’s not just the Soros millions that power the anti-Trump rally, the Democrats have organized around their power game in a very serious fashion that hasn’t been tried before.
Is this how US civilization will be organized from now on? Will we see it drag itself from riot to riot in the streets, for which some arm of government, like police or ICE or you name it, will be blamed? Until so many illegal aliens -on paper- have been made Americans that there will never be a conservative government again?
Me, I’m still playing around with ideas in my head, amd I’m stuck with something Kunstler wrote: that the Russians want to preserve literature and music and philosophy. While our political leaders claim that Russia wants to conquer all of Europe. Physically. Though they seem to have no way of running, let alone controlling it.
Russia seems to have enough land. They don’t appear to have any need for Ukrainian land either. Moreover, Putin has said often that he sees Ukrainians as a sister- or brother people. A view that has undoubtedly influenced the military operaion too. Things don’t always seem to be what they seem to be.
I’ll end this with a piece by John Helmer, to get you up to date with where the Ukraine “war” is today. Helmer has been living in Moscow for 35+ years, he should know something. Something the multiple and neverending bans of RT tell us we are not supposed to know.
• At What Point, Capitulation Of The Kiev Regime? Can President Trump And General Grynkewich Save It?
For the first time since the negotiations to end the Ukraine war began, President Vladimir Putin has sent as the chief Russian negotiator a General Staff officer and military intelligence chief, Admiral Igor Kostyukov. The two Russians who have been closest to Putin, Vladimir Medinsky and Kirill Dmitriev, are not at the table. Neither is the Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov.
In Abu Dhabi on Friday (January 23), Kostyukov faced the Americans Steven Witkoff, Jared Kushner, Daniel Driscoll, and General Alexus Grynkewich. Driscoll is the Secretary of the Army, in the running to replace Peter Hegseth at the Pentagon, and a protégé of Vice President JD Vance. Grynkewich has been in charge of the losses on the Ukrainian battlefield since May 2024 when he was head of operations at the Pentagon and then as chief of the European Command (EUCOM) from July 2025.
At Abu Dhabi each of the Americans displayed open-neck, casual clothing. This dress-down Friday costume was a calculated insult to both the Ukrainian delegation – Rustem Umerov in uniform and Kirill Budanov in suit and tie—and to the Russians, Kostyukov and his second at the table, General Alexander Fomin. Kostyukov wore a dark civilian suit and a white collared shirt buttoned at the neck. But Kostyukov’s tie wasn’t tightly drawn. Was he sending the Russian Army’s message that it hasn’t reached the point of strangulation for the other side, yet?
The American signal was that they are dictating terms; that they retain escalation control over the Russians and they must capitulate, along with the NATO allies and the Zelensky regime. This is not the “coordinating” role which, after the two-day meetings concluded, Witkoff announced. “On Friday and Saturday, the United States coordinated a trilateral meeting alongside Ukraine and Russia, graciously hosted by the United Arab Emirates. Talks were very constructive, and plans were made to continue conversations next week in Abu Dhabi. President Trump and his entire team are dedicated to bringing peace to this war.”
Russian sources believe Witkoff’s stop to “this war” is no stop to the continuation of the war against Russia which the US, with the NATO allies, continues to escalate on land northward to Finland and Greenland; in the nuclear arms race in space; and at sea on all of Russia’s trade routes – the Baltic Sea through the Danish Straits, the Northern (Arctic) Route through the Bering Strait, the Black Sea through the Dardanelles, the Mediterranean, Caribbean, and the Indian Ocean.
This larger peace is what Putin claims Trump agreed in the “understandings of Anchorage, Alaska” – the terms the two presidents discussed last August before Trump cut their meeting short and flew home. “Naturally, we do not want to publicly go into the details of the provisions that are being discussed. And therefore, I cannot and will not tell you exactly what formula is meant by the Anchorage formula ,” Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, announced on Friday.
“There is a high dynamic. The Americans, as intermediaries, are rushing against time. They are in a hurry. They can be understood. This is not a quick process,” Peskov told a reporter on Sunday. “And now, in fact, the essence of the situation is that a certain formula for resolving the territorial issue was developed in Anchorage and on the eve of Anchorage. And now it is very important to implement it.”
Peskov was not asked, and the Kremlin is not yet acknowledging, that the US side has changed Putin’s “Anchorage formula” by introducing two new conditions for “resolving the territorial issue”. They were tabled at Putin’s meeting with Witkoff, Kushner and Joshua Gruenbaum, the Chabad devotee who has joined the negotiations for Putin’s agreement to the US takeover of Gaza through Trump’s Board of Peace (BOP). The second new Trump demand to add to the “Anchorage formula” is Putin’s acceptance of the US takeover of Greenland, which Yury Ushakov acknowledged in his read-out from the Kremlin meeting.
“During the meeting in the Kremlin, we also discussed Donald Trump’s idea of a Board of Peace, a host of regional matters and the Greenland issue,” Ushakov admitted. Putin’s new concessions in this three-way swap have stimulated dissent in Moscow. The Kremlin has replied with an editorial on Friday in Vzglyad, the semi-official security analysis platform, headlined: “Moscow [Putin] has made an elegant diplomatic move in a subtle game with the United States”.
“By supporting Washington’s initiatives, the Kremlin is showing how productive an equal Russian-American dialogue can be for the whole world, and especially for its hottest regions. And how useless and counterproductive Europe is in this sense…But why should Russia indiscriminately reject this proposal? Trump is quite sincerely striving for a Ukrainian settlement, so why not assume that he is pursuing the same goals in the case of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict?…
Rejecting such initiatives means cutting off opportunities for ourselves in advance, blocking one of the zones for playing on the world chessboard, and even publicly refusing to interact with the leading Western power. Moreover, the Peace Council does not currently touch upon or discuss any of Russia’s interests related, for example, to its own…It is logical that Trump, within the framework of his own dealmaking logic, considers this hint – and will be at least additionally motivated to take a respectful step in return, which is important for Russia’s interests.”
There is no consensus among the senior policymakers on the Security Council that there is anything “respectful” in Trump’s tactics or anything to be relied upon as he continues to change his “Anchorage formula” by upping the ante.
For the Security Council, Dmitry Medvedev has announced that time is running out for Trump to accept the year-long extension of time for negotiation of new strategic arms limitation terms when the START Treaty expires in a week’s time – on February 5. There has been “a shift in the right direction but the movement is still very weak,” Medvedev said in a lengthy interview published today.
“Donald Trump is initially unstable in political guidelines… We must make sure that Washington is really ready not in words, but in practice to respect our indigenous security interests. And able to work on an equal footing on a common reduction in conflict potential.”
“Unequal footing” — that was the signal from the dress-down US delegation in Abu Dhabi. Strategic arms limitations “must be mutual and parallel. And this position remains in force if no clarifications follow in the US approach by February 5,” Sergei Ryabkov, the first deputy foreign minister said over the weekend. He also conceded that there has been no follow-up on the Anchorage formula from Trump’s agencies. “It is counterproductive to hold high-level events that are later deemed fruitless.”
The Russian Foreign Ministry has also had belatedly to acknowledge that Trump has not released the Russian crew members of the Marinera, as had been announced with thanks by the Ministry spokesman, Maria Zakharova, on January 9. Worse, the British Government is refusing Russian consular access to the jailed crew.
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