"A stinking confrontation swathed in a wrapper of peace".

John Helmer's excellent analysis

I posted this yesterday.

The commentary from Moscow-based Australian journalist, John Helmer, is so insightful that I am trying to bring a sense (not exactly a transcript) of what he said.

This comes close to how I perceive things - not Scott Ritter, and not Canadian Prepper, but very profound. He certainly has the Trump regime (as well as, no doubt, the Biden regime to a tee.

The following is as close as I can get with endless negotiations with Chat GPT to a transcription

N.A.: John, let me start with what’s happening in Russia. The new drone attack on one of the most important oil refineries in the south. Based on satellite photos, at least eight tanks were damaged, six completely destroyed, two partially. Do you think that, as time goes by and Donald Trump shows signs he’s not interested in the war at least, but Europeans push for continuation, and Ukraine does everything to continue the conflict — throwing everything at Russia — do you think Russia will respond rashly?

J.H.: That’s a lot to unpack, so let’s take it piece by piece. There have been two major Ukrainian drone attacks: one in Saratov in the south, and another in Luga, near St. Petersburg, at the Novatek gas liquefaction plant.

The importance of these attacks is, first, exactly as you said: it’s an attempt by Ukrainians, Europeans, and Americans supplying intelligence — satellites, drone targeting, fixed-wing intelligence — to make it appear that Russia is losing. That there are game-changing weapons capable of destroying the Russian offensive. It’s about the appearance of escalation control, escalation dominance.

The Novatek attack came from the Baltic Sea, not overland from Ukrainian territory — a distance of more than 900 kilometers. This suggests involvement from Germany, Estonia, maybe Latvia, definitely Finland, maybe Sweden. That’s a significant escalation. Finland is acting as an active combatant state, not just showing up in meetings.

Both attacks have no real strategic or operational significance; they’re intended to make it appear that Russia can be defeated, that the Russian offensive along the line — in Zaprozhye region, around Sumi — is failing. But maps of operations show Russia is winning.

Now, the “Oreshnik moment” — a decisive attack to force the Ukrainians to capitulate — is not really present. Russia is playing for time. Putin’s meetings in Alaska were about verifying, without ambiguity, whether Trump understands Russia’s war strategy and negotiating terms. Can an end to the war be negotiated with Trump based on indivisible security — meaning Ukraine cannot be a platform for future war?

Lavrov’s NBC interview made this clear. Russia has indisputable escalation control. If Trump doesn’t understand this now, he never will. The question is, how long until Russia calculates that what America says is actually the reverse of reality? Lavrov described the West putting capital into factories to produce weapons against Russia — American, Hungarian, anyone’s capital — and called it imperialism.

This shows Russia understands the war as long-term, imperialist. Attempts to decapitate or end it quickly are illusions. Negotiations can happen, but the war is an empire war — it will last. Trump can be nudged toward understanding that he must avoid losing, that “peace” in his terms is really about avoiding defeat.

N.A.: The Korean president’s visit to Washington shows the same logic. Trump threatened, the president paid — $30 billion purchase from Boeing. The commission is paid, the problem solved. Canada tried to resist, failed. Russia watches this. Every Baltic state will try similar strategies, but it doesn’t alter Russia’s strategy. Lavrov has said clearly: bases, drones, attacks near Russia will be struck, Article 5 protections won’t apply.

J.H.: Meanwhile, Trump talks about “denuclearisation,” and people think he’s talking globally, but he’s only thinking about North Korea. He can’t manage strategic nuclear talks with China and Russia. He latches onto slogans: ceasefire, security guarantees, now denuclearisation. Russia doesn’t operate on slogans.

N.A.: Yes. Istanbul set up three working groups: military, diplomatic, humanitarian. Putin will meet Zelensky, but only after preparation. No preparation yet. The West spins propaganda: Ukraine has miracle weapons, long-range drones. Russia dismisses it — escalation control is maintained. Propaganda doesn’t match the reality on the ground.

J.H.: Wars of empire take decades. Politicians can’t ask citizens to sacrifice for that long. Normal instinct is to resolve conflicts quickly. Russia believes Trump can be deterred from losing, given PR wins or bribes. South Korea paid; Canada resisted. Every Baltic state will try similar tactics. Russia’s stance is consistent: any drone base, any attack platform near its borders will eventually be struck.

N.A.: Donald Trump’s “denuclearisation” comments are misunderstood. He’s talking North Korea. Russia requires indivisible denuclearisation — all players act for mutual security. American slogans are empty. Russia will not insult Trump but will guide him to avoid another loss.

J.H.: Right. And the extortion and bribe logic applies elsewhere. The Americans may take bribes but often don’t deliver. Russia knows this from experience — Hillary Clinton took bribes but reneged on deals. Russia’s approach is stricter: ensure delivery. Korea invests money to appease Trump; Russia wants enforceable actions, not hopes.

N.A.: Trump floated renaming the Pentagon the Department of War. Symbolism matters. These offices are beautiful, historic, and war lovers — people who profit from war — love them. It’s about celebrating war, the cushy positions, the prestige.

J.H.: Back to Ukraine: Russia has effectively neutralised the Ukraine platform as a future attack base. They’ve shown they can destroy any weapon fielded by the U.S. or NATO. Propaganda wars continue — West says “we’re winning,” Russia says “we’re winning.” Reality: force counts, money counts. Propaganda doesn’t. Russia maintains escalation control, but cannot win the propaganda war.

N.A.: North Korea matters strategically. Russia sees it as a balancing nuclear state. Trump’s “denuclearisation” slogan ignores Europe, ignores reality. Russia supports guiding Trump along a path of fear of losing another war. Real conflicts — nuclear powers, Israel-Iran — are what matter. Words are empty; actions count.

J.H.: The Americans lie, bribe, extort, and repeat slogans. Russians have learned to ensure delivery. Korea pays; U.S. may not deliver. Russia must manage this carefully. Wars of empire are long, the stakes enormous. Offices, symbols, bribes, and slogans all play into the reality of power and war.

N.A.: And the Pentagon? Renaming it celebrates war. War is profitable for those in power, in comfort, in history-laden offices. Trump’s symbolistic moves signal understanding of war as a stage for power, prestige, and profit.

J.H.: That’s the reality. Conflict will continue. Propaganda spins in all directions. But Russia has shown capability and control, while the West spins words and slogans. The war is long. Force counts. Money counts. Words often mean the opposite of reality. And for Russia, that is the operational truth.

This was so unsatisfactory that I went back to editing highlights from what John Helmer said

What Russia has at the moment is indisputable escalation control. What it understands from the Alaskan meetings with Trump is that if Trump doesn't understand what he heard this time, the man will never understand. Never. Now the question is how long will it take for the Russian side to calculate that Trump when Trump says peace, he means war. when Trump says, "I'm going to change the name of the Defense Department to the Department of War." When Mrs. Trump presents a letter to President Putin describing the abduction, the crime of abducting children, not exactly, she didn't say it in the letter, but it was intended to say the Russian side is abducting children from the Ukraine. when love of children on the part of the Trump family is actually means pedophilia throughout the higher circles of the US and of Israel. We can come back to that too.

The words are always reversed. At what point does the Russian strategy acknowledge that what the American side says is a lie? I it means the reverse. …

….Now um the foreign minister, Lavrov said something very interesting. He said the following which is very interesting. She asked him, "Why are you if you're really interested in peace, why are you bombing the daylights out of out of civilians in the Ukraine and out of an American factory in the Ukraine?" talking about a factory allegedly on the Hungarian border of the Ukraine

Lavrov said, “ If you believe that there is that if there is American capital in an enterprise which is used to produce weapons to kill Russians and you believe that, be it American, be it Hungarian, be it anybody's capital, that this gives impunity to those who build weapons to kill us I don't think so. I don't think this is fair this is a kind of I would say imperialism”

Now I in listening to Mr. Lavrov for many years I haven't heard him say imperialism to an American for a very long time if at all. Now what does he mean? He means that, if any of them, the United States, the other NATO allies, which we've just mentioned, Estonia in the Baltic Sea, Finland in the Baltic Sea, Finland in the Gulf of Finland, and so on, if the British in the Black Sea, and and so on and on and on, if any of them think that putting capital, putting factories, putting weapons into the Ukraine for the killing of Russians in the future is permissible, is negotiable. It's wrong.

That tells you there is a genuine understanding not often talked about in TASS or in RIA Novosti, and certainly not in RT, that the Russians running this war understand it's a long war not a short one an imperialist war against Russia and this is its present stage.

Many of your colleagues, and I entirely agree, we date the beginning of the imperial war against Russia slightly differently. Well, some of our colleagues put it back in ‘91. I put it back into 1930s. The attempt to destroy the Soviet Union has always been US policy.

It's an empire war.

Now, you can't fight the empire quickly. There's no Oreshnik moment where you fire one weapon that can decapitate the empire. Not possible. It's an illusion. So to go back to Lavrov, the foreign minister of Russia, articulating very well to an American network what the Russian objectives are, what the Russian negotiating positions are. Lavrov calls the war imperialism and warns he doesn’t think that you can have security guarantees, the buildup of a defence establishment ,the creation of drone factories to kill Russians for in for the future future. Don't think you could have more war later on the basis of a ceasefire and a meeting with Zelensky now. Impossible.

But if this is an imperialist war, how can there be an end to it? . The US empire is not about to to fold under an Oreshnik. What the Russian side then understands is how to negotiate with the president. The opportunity is that Trump can be made to understand not that he can win the war in the Ukraine but that he can be protected from not losing the war.

This is a man who when he says peace means war. When he says Department of Defense, he's now about to rename it the Department of War. He means not to lose this war.

That would be politically disastrous for him psychologically as well as politically for the time being. He can run with this pseudo - peace policy, and it's making virtually no difference to his polls. It's not winning him votes. It's not losing him votes. But if he lost the Ukraine, that would be serious.

So he's come up with a clever formula. As empires go this is nothing original. The Romans had it. The Greeks had it. There's nothing original. Byzantines had it. Everyone's tried this.

You get the people you protect to pay you to protect them. It's a shakedown, an extortion. It's criminal. It involves bribery and force to produce your make your friends pay you to protect them from you. And Trump has simply brought with people like Wirkoff, Lutnik, Bessent, and all their family, along with them, in the background the biggest multi-billion dollar shakedown that's ever been attempted, just in terms of dollars.

First bribery, then various kinds of extortion.

This is the way they don't care whether they win or lose the war. so that they will pay the Ukrainians through the Germans and the Europeans to keep the war going.

So to come back to your last question, these are attacks to show capability for long-term war making which will enrich the Trump family and their associates will keep the war going and will be called peace without it being a defeat of the Russians. Now, as Lavrov said, how do we fight that?

You asked the question, can you fight it by firing an Oreshnik or several Oreshniks? Well, that's a decapitation weapon. It It's a very unusual one. It ought to deter the Germans, everyone within range, certainly the Finns, the Estonians, the Latvians, the Germans, and so on. If it doesn't deter them, there's not much point in firing it.

Now second, all the targets that are part of the Ukrainian American war machine, drone manufacturer, and so forth, are capable of being struck and destroyed by existing Russian weapons which are cheaper. And that's what's being used. So, the issue of decapitation doesn't arise yet. …

… You can't shake down people who are no longer afraid of you. If a combination of Russian, Indian, and Chinese, Iranian, and Yemen air defence proved that it was far more capable at a cheaper price than the so-called Patriot system, on which Israel and the United States rely endlessly.

Trump broadcasts how valuable the Patriot is, who will buy it. An empire can't extort from people except from fear. That's how it works. And for the time being, Trump appears to think and be persuaded he's a success at this extortion. And he uh and his sidekicks at extortion, his collectors, his conciliary in mafia gang terms, Witkoff and Lutnik and Bessent. These people have been very busy and they are lying their heads off as to their success.

But that's what you do if you're a bribe collector. You say “we extracted big concessions from Putin. We didn't fail. We didn't lose. We're not losing this war. We're winning”.

Well, what they mean is our back pockets winning…..

…Empire war takes a very long time and politicians, our leaders, even those we trust, and there aren't too many of those, let's say understand and can't readily ask a country to sacrifice for such long-term future you the normal thing is to say we will handle that conflict we will tie off that conflict and from a Russian point of view there's still this underlying view that Trump can be deterred from losing and if he can understand he can be given some PR wins in order to exchange them from for for bribes.

Now look why is the Russian view on that very at all different from the Western one? We've just seen the the Korean president, Lee Jung, just was in the White House this week. It was a marvelous exercise of bribery. I mean there he go he go this is a relatively new president who who faces a Trumpian extortion threat from in tweet just before he arrives. And what does he announce? He announces a $30 billion, if I'm not mistaken, purchase from Korean Air to Boeing. Okay. Normal commission of the Witkoff kind, the Luttnik kind - 3%, on 30 billion, is 1 billion, if my arithmetic is right. That’s a hell of a lot of money the Koreans just laid out for the Americans. And it's all to make Trump happy with not losing.

So if the Koreans can do it, why shouldn't everybody can do it? Well, the answer is the Russians can do it, but the Canadians can't. Mark Carney, the prime minister who fought an election, won a party, won an election, won power in Canada and is fighting for Canadian sovereignty against Trump, folds on every issue. The man's a liar. The man proves that some vassal states don't learn the Korean lesson. Okay, what can what can Carney bribe the United States with? He drops retaliatory tra tariffs and and the Canadian get paid back by Trump who says “I like Mr. Carney”.

This is this is really very limited displays of different countries reaching different views about how to cope with Trump level shakedown and extortion.

Each one of these Baltic states is going to do the same thing, some more successful than others. So, does it make a difference to Russian strategy? No, not really. Because we've heard from Lavrov, we're facing the empire. He says, "If you think you can put a drone uh a Ukrainian drone factory or a drone base on a Finnish shore, an Estonian shore, and then launch them against us, you we'll come after you sooner or later. We will hit you, and your article 5 NATO protection won't be there when we do."

But you you can't say that. I mean, it's easy on a podcast - we say it. The Russians don't have to say it. Donald Trump was talking about denuclearisation and he's bringing in Russia and China. I don't know in the current situation that we're in, the United States would be able to even talk about this these things. They're fighting literally against China, India, Brazil, name it, everybody. And they're fighting a war against Russia in Ukraine. And he's talking about denuclearisation….

… Okay, look, I hope everybody can see what this man is capable of, what he's not capable of. A few weeks ago, he had ceasefire in his head, then he came to the notion after Alaska of security guarantees and a peace agreement better than a ceasefire - a peace agreement with security guarantees.He got that phrase in his head. Then he met Merz who kept saying “ceasefire, ceasefire, ceasefire”. And, Zelensky, who insisted, “you got to meet me. Putin's got to meet me”. So, Trump says there's got to be a meeting between Putin and Zelensky, and maybe I'll come if they want me to because I'm needed. So he's got that in his head.

This man's capable of one phrase, one slogan at a time.

Now, what he meant in the South Korean president meeting was denuclearisation of North Korea. It's okay. He's not talking about denuclearisation of the United States forces in Japan, South Korea, and surrounding China. and he's not really ready for uh uh uh nuclear disarmament talks of a strategic kind with China and with Russia. There's nothing on the table.

"Let's go back to what Lavrov said to NBC." You say, he said, "You want President Putin to meet Mr. Zelensky, the de facto ruler of the regime in okay we've said that's terrific we'll do that but two qualifications. One is got to have some clear understanding of what we're going to agree. We know Mr. Zelensky is a good actor. We know he likes plays. You know he can jump around with various organs on pianos, but we've got to prepare.

So Lavrov reminds that at the last Istanbul round it was agreed three working groups. Lavrov repeated with Rubio, military, diplomatic, humanitarian. And day before yesterday, he reminded NBC, not that that woman's capable of remembering that, there hasn't been any agreement on working groups to finalise the terms of agreement that the two presidents can can have. So, there's nothing moving there.

Let me read you what the most serious Asian policy maker, the most serious, clearest one had to say from the DPRK, the North Korea. This is Kim Yo-jong. That's the sister of the of the leader of North Korea. She's the toughest, clearest articulation of Korean policy. She said, “Lee Jang is not the sort of man who will change the course of history”. She called South Korea a faithful dog of Washington”.

She accused Lee of speaking gibberish, and said his government maintains ”a stinking confrontational nature swathed in a rapper of peace”. Now she didn't say that about Trump, but the meaning applies. The denuclearisation slogan that you heard Trump say in front of the South Korean president is the slogan he got in his head for the basis of making peace he thinks between South Korea and North Korea, only it's not on not on. It's a stinking confrontational nature swayed in a rapper of peace. That just about describes everything.

Who in our audience doesn't agree that describes everything Trump offers on all of those warfare fronts? Does anyone out there think it's not a stinking confrontation in a rapper of peace? ….

The the question really is there was a ceasefire as a tripwire. The Europeans and Zelensky expected Russia to say no, for the rather obvious reasons. They said we can only discuss in preparation for agreement on terms. There can't be a ceasefire without agreement on a on a peace agreement. Even Trump got that message. So the tripwire that was created to keep the war going but make it look as if Putin is responsible for for blocking was ceasefire.

That's gone even though Merz kept trying it last Monday. Um now the the the idea of a meeting with Zelensky has been agreed to by Putin so long as it's prepared. But there's no sign of any preparation or even agreement on preparation. Which brings us back into the circle of what are the terms the 22 terms that General Kellogg agreed with the European states and the 33 points the Russian side agreed in Istanbul or tabled and then they've been broken down and shortened and and and uh and and made simpler and put in a sequence. All of these things make the tripwire no longer trip anything. So then you get to the question you ask, what's JD Vance mean by a war that continues for 6 months and what's he going to do about it if it continues? Well, we've heard Trump say, “look, two or three weeks here, two or three weeks there and then it then we get serious”. This is back to the threats of the Lindsey Graham’s stone crushing stone age sanctions against China, India and the United States and so on and so on….

… I'm not at loss for words. I'm simply saying they are lost for words. They keep repeating formulas in order to keep the war going in so that no one is seen to lose the war and those running the war keep making a profit. The people who lose the war are the the Ukrainians who lose their lives, the Russians who lose their lives. They're the losers of this war.

But let's go back to another problem and that's why we're here making a podcast. We think the evidence says Russia has won the war, that the Ukraine platform has been destroyed as a future platform for attacking Russia, that Russia has finally after the 2014 coup, after the civil war in the Ukraine destroyed more than 18,000 Donbas lives, and so forth. After all of that, Russia has finally using a the formula of a special military operation destroyed that capability in the process showed it can destroy any weapon US and NATO can field.

All right, that that's what we think we've arrived at. But the other side daily tells its constituents they're winning the war. And that's where we came in, isn't it? We came in with a Saratov drone attack and an and an Novatek drone attack. The other side keeps saying we've got a game changer. The Ukrainians can build the their Flamingo. The Russians have contempt, serious contempt, professional contempt for what the Ukrainians call their Flamingo, their 2,000 km drone attack. So the Russian side is confident it can maintain escalation control and but they can't win a propaganda war. So here we are trying to deal with the other side says we're winning. We say you're losing. The facts on the ground show that the other side says there are new facts on the ground. Then the other side says President Trump is really going to pull uh the final pressure on Putin to force concessions and so on and on we go. This doesn't make happy podcasting. It doesn't make happy audiences. It's simply a way of us saying when words mean the reverse of the facts and the reverse of the facts are political politically not unanimous in the NATO countries. Who doesn't believe Novichok is an evil Russian chemical warfare weapon that was used against poor Navalny and poor Skripal and poor Dawn Sturgess in England.

Who doesn't believe that? Well, there are about a dozen of us who spent all these years proving it didn't happen, but we don't count. The word Novichok means Putin kills. It's not a shame. It's not a political failure for the Russian side, the Chinese side, the Indian side, the uh Brazilian, South African, the alliance with Iran and DPRK. It's not our failure that the world doesn't believe us. It's that world doesn't count. It can't inflict its warfare any longer. That's what the Russian war shows….

…It seems to me a long-established Russian policy is to be concerned with nuclear conflicts on its borders because the radiation blows across the line. Russia has never been happy with the proliferation of nuclear weapons in India and Pakistan. It's not happy with the proliferation of Israeli nuclear weapons approaching Iran. It's therefore taken a more protective view of Iran, that there might be a basis for maintaining an Iranian nuclear program without nuclear weapons. That's been Putin's line, and we can argue about it, but maybe now isn't the time….

… From a Russian point of view, denuclearisation can only be indivisible — everybody or nobody at all. Everyone in these balances has to act toward each other so that mutual security is assured. The Americans have no intention of reaching a genuine accommodation between South Korea and North Korea. Denuclearisation is just a new slogan in Trump's head.

Therefore, the Russian attitude is not to insult Trump or show disrespect, but to edge him along toward being afraid of losing another war. If he wants to claim credit for phoney peace agreements between Thailand and Cambodia or Congo and Rwanda, let him — because it's fake. What is not fake is the conflict between nuclear-armed powers like Israel and Iran….

….We should accept that words have lost their meaning. The president often does not understand the meaning of the words he uses. And if you accompany that with accomplished criminals and extortion artists like Steven Witkoff and Howard Lutnik, these are bribe takers who lie constantly.

N.A.: Suppose you bribe them, as Pakistan has. That's the job of Kirill Dmitriev, the special emissary for economic relations with the United States. His job is to manage bribes, much as the South Korean president hung a bribe through Boeing. The Russian side comes up with something similar. The problem with the Americans is they take bribes but do not deliver. The Russian side knew that about Hillary Clinton. She took multi-million-dollar bribes to ensure GM would sell Opel to a combination of Germany and Russia, and then reneged on the deal.

You can bribe Americans, but they do not deliver. How do you make them deliver?…

…If the Koreans invest more, build ships, buy planes, or invest hundreds of millions of dollars in the United States, they are sticking their money in American hands and hoping for the best. The Chinese, Indians, and Russians are not in a position to hope for the best. Hoping is not an approach you take with an empire fighting a war….

We began with Trump floating the idea of renaming the Pentagon. Why does that matter? I used to work in the old executive office building next to the White House, a beautiful 19th-century wedding cake-style building, once the Department of War. That's where the original US empire expanded in the Caribbean and the Philippines. It has beautiful offices at each corner, which incoming officials fight over because they are so grand. I've also been in the old Ministry of War in London, now the Royal Automobile Club, which fought the British Boer War.

Beautiful buildings matter. People love war. They want to profit from war. They want to decorate with gold and enjoy the views. When you rename something — the Department of Defense to the Department of War — you are celebrating war. Serious war lovers want to make money, not die.

The Pentagon should be called the Department of War, not Defense. Why? Because the US intends to win all future wars.

These people love war and their cushy armchairs in those offices.