Ed. Notes: This article by traitor Gilbert Doctorow is meant to paint a parallel scenario to Israel’s genocide in Gaza, only that is addressed to the Western European leaders. Submit to our demands or we will turn you to dust. This is the peace loving Russia, the country occupying a people who don’t want to be occupied. Notice the words “the population should be warned to evacuate the city ahead of Russia’s bombing them flat”. Although this is not a war (sarc).
The question of the value of using Russian state television as a means of divining which way the Kremlin is headed on key foreign policy issues has been highly contentious in the Alternative Media community. Some peers mock the idea, saying that the talking heads are irrelevant and that their own personal contacts with some Russian General or presidential advisor in retirement is the real way to understand what is going on behind the closed doors of Vladimir Putin’s offices. Others think they get in from the source from having a private audience with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
Then among the trolls who send in Comments to the Russian-dubbed versions of ‘Judging Freedom’ or the Glenn Diesen channel you see claims that state television no longer is watched by the majority of the population, especially the young, who get their news from social media. That may be noteworthy if the purpose of any given broadcast is to influence the broad public, but it entirely misses the point if the purpose of the broadcast is to send a message to Washington.
To all these dissenters on the proper methodology to be used by Russia watchers, I submit that the proof is in the pudding. Last night’s news in The Financial Times, backed up by coverage in this morning’s BBC provides irrefutable evidence that Mr. Solovyov’s program is backed by the Putin government not only as a safety valve for Opposition criticism but at times as an unofficial channel for setting out the strident nationalist positions that the President himself will not say publicly.
“Trump urged Zelensky to accept Putin’s terms or ‘be destroyed.’ This article in the FT explains in detail how in their closed-door meeting in the White House President Trump raged at Zelensky, insisting that his country’s survival depends on submitting to Vladimir Putin’s terms for peace, beginning with the surrender of all of the Donbas, including the territory not yet overrun by Russian troops.
I call special attention to the words ‘be destroyed.’
I quote from the article: “According to a European official with knowledge of the meeting, Trump told Zelensky that Putin had told him the conflict was a ‘special operation, not even a war, adding that the Ukrainian leader needed to cut a deal or face destruction.”
This is precisely what Solovyov was saying on air in his program of 14 October, three days before the Trump-Zelensky meeting. Per Solovyov, Russia should stop pussy-footing and face the reality that it was at war with Ukraine, that the Ukrainians were doing all in their power to inflict harm on the Russian Federation and Russia should now respond in kind, raising Ukrainian cities to the ground. Humane solicitude for the Ukrainian population could be shown only after Russian military and political victory was completed.
In parallel, we may assume that a similar message was being delivered directly to Team Trump via the backchannels that Russian diplomat to the UN Dmitry Polyansky told Glenn Diesen in an interview a couple of days ago, are working just fine.
Solovyov went on to say that in Kiev and other cities, the population should be warned to evacuate the city ahead of Russia’s bombing them flat. He also extended the same advice to the populations of cities in Western Europe, like Brussels, where there are factories manufacturing weapons and munitions that are being supplied to Ukraine. So far, that additional warning appears not to have been passed to European leaders, though here in Brussels I am told by a Flemish insider journalist that Prime Minister Bart De Wever is shaking in his boots.
The role of the Solovyov show as communicator of Kremlin thinking does not end there, as was evident on last night’s show. In a discussion with a frequent guest panelist on the show, Lt. General Yevgeny Buzhinsky, Solovyov listened to the general’s account of how in the last week Russian drone, missile and glide bomb attacks all across Ukraine had reached the highest level of intensity in the Special Military Operation to date, destroying vast swathes of the Ukrainian electricity infrastructure. Solovyov then asked him wouldn’t it make more sense to concentrate this firepower on a very limited geographical space like the urban centers Kramatorsk and Slavyansk, heavily fortified centers in the middle of Donetsk oblast that stand in the way of a Russian army sweep across the plain to the Dnieper River? Wouldn’t it make more sense to heavily bomb central Kiev, after which the greater part of the population would flee the city, creating total chaos for the Zelensky regime and for the Western countries where these unwelcome refugees would arrive?
Buzhinsky is a professional Russian officer who feels very uncomfortable agreeing to ideas like these which contain a sharp reprimand to the General Staff and to the Supreme Commander (Putin), but nevertheless he agreed with Solovyov. It can be easily imagined that this kind of change in execution of the SMO was communicated to Team Trump in the past week ahead of the Trump-Zelensky meeting in the White House.
For all of these reasons, there is reason to hope for a productive summit in Budapest and for an end to the war on Russia’s terms in the near future.
A corollary to all the foregoing is that President Putin himself has cardinally changed his position on how to deal with Trump and with the Europeans. Yes, as my peers will say, this was arrived at in a collegial way. BUT the point is not collegiality in decision making. It is that discontent in the political establishment outside the Kremlin with the go-slow, softly-softly approach to the war of President Putin and its prospects for dragging on for years while Europe reindustrialized and rearmed had reached a critical point threatening the stability of the Putin presidency.
©Gilbert Doctorow, 2025
