Douglas Murray: Putin’s playbook is the same a quarter-century later — peace talks are pointless

The New York Post ^ | May 29, 2025 | Douglas Murray

[tlozo]

President George W. Bush famously underestimated Vladimir Putin.

Asked about his impressions of the Russian president, the then-US president claimed that he had “looked into Putin’s eyes” and “saw his soul.”

His secretary of state, Colin Powell, said that he, too, had looked into Putin’s eyes “and I saw the KGB.”

Bush found out what was behind Putin’s eyes a little too late.

Toward the end of Bush’s second term, in 2008, Putin’s Russia invaded the neighboring country of Georgia...

Ever since Putin repeated his Georgian maneuver on a much grander scale in Ukraine in 2022, there are still people who like to pretend that Ukraine is all that Vladimir Putin wants.

Speaking to the Russian people, he can be explicit about the expansion he wants — including the reconstruction of the Soviet Empire.

To others he can play a subtler game, bamboozling ignorant foreign interviewers and running rings around them.

But it is by his actions that you can really know Putin.

And just consider his actions lately.

This week he ordered some of the largest aerial assaults to date on the people of Ukraine.

President Trump, who believed that he was in the middle of a cease-fire negotiation with the Russian president, finally seemed to have lost patience.

“Absolutely crazy” was among the things that Trump labeled Putin’s latest assault on his neighbor.

Putin’s spokesman responded by dismissing Trump’s comments as “emotional.”

But Trump is right to be angry about what Putin is doing.

Because at the same time as dragging out negotiations — postponing meetings, reneging on promises — he is deliberately dragging out the war that he started...

Putin knows that with a US which doesn’t threaten him, and a Europe that can’t get its act together, the cards are largely in his hands...

[DesertRhino]

“This week he ordered some of the largest aerial assaults to date on the people of Ukraine. President Trump, who believed that he was in the middle of a cease-fire negotiation with the Russian president, finally seemed to have lost patience.”

Conveniently ignoring 2000 Ukro-nazi drones fired at Russia the days before that.

[CatHerd]

Wanna play Wiki? Okay:

South Ossetia and Abkhazia are territories within Georgia that declared independence from Georgia and have been acting in a de facto independent capacity since the early 1990s. Neither state has been diplomatically recognised by any member of the United Nations. The conflict began on August 8, 2008, after Georgia claimed South Ossetian separatists had broken a ceasefire by attacking villages, although South Ossetian officials deny that they attacked villages. Georgia launched a military offensive to surround and capture the capital of South Ossetia, Tskhinvali.[43]

Russian military troops entered the war at the side of South Ossetia and won the conflict. Georgia launched the Georgia versus Russia (Hague court application, 2008) in the International Court of Justice.[44]

The war ended on Saturday August 16th, 2008.

https://simple.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russo-Georgian_War

[tlozo]

Conveniently ignoring 2000 Ukro-nazi drones fired at Russia the days before that.

Important difference between the attacks is Ukraine is targeting oil, military and military production sites.

Every night Russia is targeting civilians.

Kellog on May 25: This is Kyiv. The indiscriminate killing of women and children at night in their homes is a clear violation of the 1977 Geneva Peace Protocols designed to protect innocents. These attacks are shameful. Stop the killing. Ceasefire now.

At least 10 killed, 33 injured in Russian attacks across Ukraine overnight, officials say

A resident gestures as he stands near buildings damaged by Russian military strikes, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in the frontline town of Myrnohrad, Donetsk region, Ukraine May 29, 2025.

https://abcnews.go.com/International/10-killed-33-injured-russian-attacks-ukraine-overnight/story?id=122375968

[tlozo]

Wanna play Wiki? Okay:

Sure, and where exactly does it support your allegation that "The Georgians started it by firing on Russian peacekeepers"

[CatHerd]

The part that says “Georgia launched a military offensive”.

[Jumper]

Trump has been reduced to lashing out. Putin had nothing to lose letting Trump try to decieve the world playing peace maker. Trump is a US president for the second time. He is a continuation of US policies that started in 1990s with the fall of the USSR and Bill Clinton’s offensive use of NATO, illegally. NATO is not a defensive organization. It has become the Borg fueld by an appitite for color revolutions, coalations of the willing money makers to bomb and rebuild the nations in form of cottage industry model.

Putin is bad guy for his hands on work in the KGB in East Germany. He was an Iron Fist. As Americans found out during Iraq, we in America have our own Intelligence Bad Guys.

So Putin was KGB, so what. Long before him was George Bush senior, the former CIA director and Vice President for Reagan. Think back to the Bush I presidency and maybe it is a bad idea to have an Intelligence Agency Head running the United States - Bush I was exactly the time the CIA was captured by the DNC and Bill Clinton.

Back to Putin and the hatred in the West. After the fall of the USSR somehow Russian ended up with a total drunkard named Boris Yeltsin who the west loved as the western companies gobbled up Russian assets for pennies on the dollar in value. Russian citizens became alaramed, and Putin who was in the wings came to power. He immediately put an end to the Russian Tycoons selling Russia to the West. He ran off the Oligarchs like the 3 guys controlling Russia’s oil, one I talked with regularly in Israel over two years. He ended the western acquisition of Russian companies and resources - this is what the West hates Putin.

After the US and Western investment was ended in Russia, the West turned its attention to Ukraine. We formented a coup, and used the Uke Oligarchs’ friendly to the West, and as in all countries those with power survive wars but we somehow ended up with the Bandarites which made no quams about their Nazi heritage or current idealogy today. As the West always does in a coup or regime change, we find the most dispicable people shunned by the majority of the societies affected to run rough shot over them - we did this in Ukraine and more recently in Syria.

Western Banking compiles economic data. All the major insitutions quoted in the West are from the West. Enter sanctions which have basically been in place since 1947 against Russia - our embargoes were used before sanctions, and we controlled technologies allowed into various countries.

However, with Sanctions the Western financial calculations are all run thru banking or their officers in the intelligence communities who use the financial data. Once we cut a country off from SWIFT in The Netherlands/Brussels area, we lose control of the trade not made in USD. We had to make major changes to SWIFT to incorporate the PetroEURO for EU-use in 1999-2001.

Once you cut a contry off from the West using SWITF you have to impose sanctions. This means that the Italians, Germans and Frence have to find creative ways to send centrifuges to Iran and lie about it but Iran’s nuclear program was too financially important to the West not to actually supply it ourselves in competition with the Russians whom Iran is a proxy... like Ukraine... as an example.

Two-thirds of Russia Oil is still sold to the West. They are playing financial games with sanctions. They know darn well their economies would crash immediately if they cut off Russian energy.

Biden said so much as Putin was the target for regime change when Johnson blew up the Istanbul agreement. Ukraine’s army was 2-1 larger than Russia’s worldwide. Ukraine was bought up, and then we took the money back by selling arms, and this ownership in Ukraine makes it impossible for France and England to disengage or lose those assets in a war they never once thought they could lose. Now the impossible is happening and they are both faced with recession and the loss of 3T in investment. The US had just over 1.5T in Ukraine, but at least our State Dept USG partners investing in Ukraine were given the first 11 BTC ETFs to make amends for balance sheet write off’s as it became apparent in Jan 24 with the Advent of the Russian FABs that NATO Defensive Fortifications could not hold back Russia for long.

We are now full circle from tying to buy/control Russia ended with Putin, and fully engaged/invested in Ukraine and losing again... TO PUTIN.

This would be funny if it were not so serious. The West has already used some of the principle of the frozen Russian Assets and definitely used the interest. Some countries announced they were liquidating those frozen assets in late 2024 and a few more joined in 2025 in order to continue sending money to Ukraine. The EU is financially constrained.

There are two ways the 309B plus interest is settled with Russia. It can eventually be returned, or there has to be a spoils of war situation where the victory is not obligated to returning assets as the winner is allowed under GCs and other international agreements governing wars and their outcomes.

Brics is not going anywhere. Trump is trying to fight Brics by sanctioning Russia. Brics only gainned global approval and support because of the West’s idiotic stealing of Russian Assets...

Russia has not declared war on Ukraine. They choose a Sp Mil Op to intercede with 190,000 soldiers, more than a 1/3 of their total armed forces at the time. They send 7 battalions or about 3,500 men toward Kiev - does anyone seriously think they could capture a city this size? No, of course not, it was to overturn a coup or to negotiate Neturality and prevent Kiev from launching their attack with 500k soldiers into the Donbas which they were about to kick off. Of course we in the West believe we had superior everything and more of it than the Russias so we picked war. We have had Russia on the hook every since. Putin still has not declared war in part over the 309B in frozen assets.

War is coming. The West will lose too much not to have this war now. Our weapons and our woke generals have failed to Wonder toys and wonder boys. Maybe the Obama purges caused this braintrust to go haywire. When Obama and Co. used Vicky the Vampire Nuland to pass out cookies like a cookie monster during the Coup, we were the regarded as the World’s remaing superpower.

Today Vance, Putin, Rubio are talking about China, Russia and the US as the three Great Powers with each a Sphere of Influence. Trump has spoke of this often, in when speaking of the Artic, Panama, Canada, Greenland.... Ukraine and Taiwan are with Great Power Spheres of Influence - this requires a fundamental change in Washington and it means disengagement from EUrope and NATO. It asks for the will of the people rather than the governments to decide matters. Taiwan has moved thier Chip manufacturing to AZ so it goes. Ukraine is just a writeoff covered by the EXPLOSION OF BITCOINS VALUE.

Trump’s ace was burned just before May Victory Day celebrations when 14 months of western planning for a drone and missile campaign against Moscow finally failed this past week. Mertz blew his cool threatening to unleash his Tarus missiles against Moscow using our NATO proxy. Trump has lashed out. Germany is now warned they will be targeted by Russia in plain terms diplomatically much to their surprise.

Russia knows Trump cannot afford to have the US part of a missile exchange, but he would gamble Europe. Europe’s two Big Boy’s in France and England were warned they would be targeted during the Biden Missile debacles ending in Oct 24.

Trump was given some grace by Putin in negotiations and the benefit of a doubt about being different from Biden. Trump has burned thru that Benefit of Doubt and has proven to the Russians he is but an extension of American policy.

Trump will continue to bluster about negotiations. He has too try to save French and British Banking assets. He didn’t calculate, nor Biden, nor Obama that Russia could could talk the conventional beating and turn the military tables on us conventionally. This last drone offensive was thought to force Putin’s hand coupled with the negotiations which publically put Putin (in the West) in the spotlight as the negotiator, rather than the team of neogitators Russia was sending/sent/ will show up 2 June or Mondy in Istanbul.

Zelinski will get no legimitacy from sitting at the table with Putin. The ploy is wrecked. However, the US slipped into the Istanbul 2.0 on 2 June the French, Germans, British negotiators along with Zelinski and of course the USA. Trump blew the negotiations with this move. It went from 2 + 1 to 5 + 1. Putin sees the French, Germans, Brits & their Proxy Ukraine as an extension, rightfully so, of US Policy and that only Putin and Trump can work this out or Russia and the US, not Washington’s pack of proxies like the French, Brits, Germans, or Ukes.

The west has now reconciled themselves to a last attempt to threaten to excalate across all of Russia with attacks. They are gambling that they are too big for a military confrontation with Russia. Our now failed drone/missile campaign timed for Victory Day must be halted for 2 June negotiations to take place. Too much was invested and the west is lashing out.

Russia has not yet unleashed their stock of missiles. We took the shot and excalated; Putin has not returned fire.

June will be interesting.

[dennisw]

Putin’s playbook is invade and annex Ukraine to bring 41 million new Slavs into Russian Slav domination. To counteract the high Muslim birthrates in Russia. Other minorities fecundity too.

Putin likes to call Ukrainians little Russians. Putin is scum but he knows that demographics are destiny.

[SaxxonWoods]

Everybody has to mess with the Bear. Then they find out.

[silverleaf]

What, Russia invaded a country that was hosting brutal islamist terrorists attacking civilians in Russia? Like, who would ever DO that?

Sarc

[tlozo]

The part that says “Georgia launched a military offensive”.

Your article states "The conflict began on August 8, 2008, after Georgia claimed South Ossetian separatists had broken a ceasefire by attacking villages"

Does not support your claim "The Georgians started it by firing on Russian peacekeepers."

Also the Georgians launched their offensive against South Ossetian separatists not "Russian peacekeepers"

[tlozo]

Putin’s playbook is invade and annex Ukraine to bring 41 million new Slavs into Russian Slav domination.

In 2005, Russian President Vladimir Putin famously labeled the collapse of the Soviet Union “the biggest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.”

“It cannot be stressed enough that without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be an empire, but with Ukraine suborned and then subordinated, Russia automatically becomes an empire .”

― Zbigniew Brzeziński,

[aynrandfreak]

The colonies would have settled long before. They didn’t seek endless war with Britain. I’m against endless war for no purpose. Is the goal of NATO regime change in Russia, but we can’t say so out loud because we don’t want a nuclear exchange? That’s not a coherent policy.

[EBH]

Putin didn’t sign that, Boris Yeltsin did.

Where I think most of the world is misunderstanding Putin and it is a key turning point in his life, Dresden 1989 and Moscow’s silence at that time. Putin and his wife left Dresden and returned to St. Petersburg with almost nothing except a few dollars and an old washing machine.

Now, consider the impact of that moment in time for a patriotic KGB agent stationed in Dresden. Putin did something most of us in the West fail to understand. He laid the groundwork and apparently solid effort to do one thing that we best recognize from a failed USSR. To make Russia Great Again.

Much like President Trump, Putin is pushing aside treaties and trade deals that he believes harm the Russian people. When he was elevated to acting President...he promised Yeltsin’s pardon.

Putin’s playbook may very well be over a quarter century old, but so is Trump’s. The biggest differences between these two leaders is their pre-2000 life shaping experiences. One working politically from a failed nation and the other riding the wave of opportunity from that collapse.

If one were to really take a deep dive into Putin’s mid-life crisis of the fall of the Soviet Union, for Putin this is an unhealed life story wound. It is also what informs his decisions to this very day. To negotiate with Putin one needs to sit a while in those shoes the day the wall came down. Putin isn’t crazy, he’s misunderstood over and over again.

---

References thanks to Chatgpt:

https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-32066222

https://nypost.com/2022/02/26/to-understand-putin-look-to-the-fall-of-east-germany-and-the-ussr

https://www.newsweek.com/fact-check-did-vladimir-putin-smuggle-washing-machine-out-east-germany-1748445

https://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/37381

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jun/10/putin-compares-himself-to-peter-the-great-in-quest-to-take-back-russian-lands

https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2023-06-15/russia-putin-early-kgb-years-east-germany-helped-shape-him

https://fpa.org/putins-eurasianist-vision

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/trump-and-putin-a-love-story

[CatHerd]

Georgia “claimed” this, which the South Ossietans denied. Saakashvili had been planning to attack and “take back” South Ossieta for years. After the announcement about admitting Georgia to NATO, he had the bright idea he could get us to help him. But Bush knew the real story, so no dice.

Shortly after this debacle, it came out that Saakashvili had political prisoners tortured, and other nasty stuff. Then everybody shut up about it for awhile. Some time later, the neocons got busy rewriting history. And there you have it.

[tlozo]

Putin didn’t sign that, Boris Yeltsin did.

I only posted on this day the treaty was signed. Never said Putin signed that particular treaty.

Putin in 2003 did personally sign a treaty with Ukraine called the “Treaty Between the Russian Federation and Ukraine on the Russian–Ukrainian State Border”.

It recognized Ukraine’s borders as they were in 1991 & was lodged with the UN.

[Mariner]

Apparently Ukraine prefers a war of attrition to assimilation by Russia.

We’ll see how that works out.

[EBH]

I don’t think Trump can do it. The more I look into and relearn the life and times of Putin, the more I see a deeply wounded USSR citizen.

Trump the master negotiator, while have faced numerous challenges in his career...I don’t he is able to personally reach Putin. And that is something he has to do as a negotiator...understand the other parties needs/concerns.

Much of what is taking place now has roots deep in 1989 and the fall of the wall. It has to do with Putin’s own patriotism for Russia today. Until Trump and Zelensky can come to the table with that understanding (and I think this is the sticking point) a peace deal cannot be made.

Putin isn’t going to put down the guns of war until he reclaims what is his. In many ways Putin and Trump are two peas in a pod.

[MinorityRepublican]

Much of what is taking place now has roots deep in 1989 and the fall of the wall. It has to do with Putin’s own patriotism for Russia today.

Putin is not going to stop trying to take all of Ukraine.

[tlozo]

Georgia “claimed” this

Not just Georgia.

Multiple western countries supported the Georgian claim that South Ossetian forces initiated the shelling.

Jean-Rodrigue Paré (13 February 2009). "The Conflict Between Russia and Georgia". Parliament of Canada. Archived from the original on 2 January 2016. Retrieved 19 September 2014. "In July and during the first week of August 2008, a number of confrontations took place in South Ossetia after attacks by Ossetian separatists on Georgian positions."

[Mariner]

Are you a native born American?