Is there any connection between the timing of the release of the Epstein files, Gaza “peace plan”, Crown Prince MBS’s visit to the WH and Trump not being listed on those files?

In other words, is Epstein used by the Masters of the Universe to force Trump to switch sides and abandon Netanyahu and possibly Putin?

The only thing that the Masters abhor is the notion of sovereignty. And that includes Israel’s sovereignty.

This is BIG! It explains Trump’s erratic changes, why no meeting with Putin in Budapest, why Dmitriev is in panic trip to the US, why Netanyahu is under pressure by Trump, etc., etc.

Fear of Vote on Releasing Epstein Files is Keeping the U.S. Government Shut Down!

Mike Johnson and Melania Trump Sued Over Epstein Scandal!

Updates from the week on the Epstein Scandal. The one issue Donald Trump wishes would go away, but is picking up steam. Follow the link below.

 

Don’t Miss Telegrams Channel:
“This is a different kind of occupation”

Charlie Kirk stated he was “leaving the pro-Israel cause” just 48 hours before his assassination

By John Helmer, Moscow
@bears_with

President Donald Trump (*) isn’t making the major domestic or foreign policy decisions of his administration.

Stephen Miller, the deputy chief of staff at the White House, is directing the militarization of domestic policymaking and propaganda; the Central Intelligence Agency and Pentagon are executing the foreign operations against Russia, China, Iran, Palestine, Yemen, Venezuela; Howard Lutnick and Scott Bessent, the Commerce and Treasury Secretaries, are directing the trade war schemes. Trump’s tweets, some directly authored by Miller, follow their action, stamping presidential approval after the event. Trump’s press remarks — staged in small bursts in front of media prompters — create the appearance that Trump is running the show. The show, yes; the operations, no.

To patch over the gap between what Trump’s men are doing and what Trump says he is doing, the president repeats catchwords, slogans, jingles: “I am disappointed in Putin”; “if Russia’s not selling oil, they have no choice but to settle”; “if Europe did something with respect to China, I think China would probably maybe force an end to the war”; “the United States has been a sucker long enough in the world in terms of trade. Now, we’re doing unbelievably well, and we’re making more money than we’ve ever made”; “I actually said, Charlie [Kirk], someday I think you have a good chance of being president. I think you will be president, maybe”; “the King of Saudi Arabia, a great gentleman — great gentleman, you all know him. He said, sir, your country was dead one year ago and now you have the hottest country anywhere in the world and it’s true.”

Pressed to agree with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on warfighting strategy against Russia, Trump was unable to say what he wants from President Vladimir Putin, what terms he expects Putin to accept, and what he will do if he won’t: “he’s let me down, he’s really let me down… He has let me down. I mean, he’s killing many people and he’s losing more people than he’s killing. I mean, frankly, the Russian soldiers are being killed at a higher rate than the Ukrainian soldiers. But, yeah, he’s let me down, I don’t like to see — it’s death. You know, it doesn’t affect the United States;” and then “Very simply, if the price of oil comes down, Putin’s going to drop out, he’s going to have no choice. He’s going to drop out of that war.”

As Trump flew back to Washington from the UK, a prompted reporter asked: “is it time for a ceasefire to come?” Trump didn’t know what he will do next. Instead, he replied: “Doesn’t feel like it. But at the right time, if I have to do it, it’ll be harsh.” The operation will follow; Trump’s posturing will come after.

Since Trump’s men understand this is how Trump is deciding policy retroactively, and both the NATO allies and the Kremlin understand the same thing, it is everybody’s calculation to compel Trump’s acquiescence by forcing the action pre-emptively leaving him no alternative, and presenting the successful outcome of their operations in picture-book briefings which combine shock and flattery. Trump is the first president in US history to sign written decision memoranda after the options have been pre-empted. He cannot remember what they were because he hasn’t read the papers.

[*] Trump’s facial disfigurement first became obvious with the droop on the right side of his face during his appearance at the Pentagon on September 11. A week later, when Trump was in the UK, the symptom continued to appear but it is evidently under greater control. Cosmetologists and medical experts are sure the symptom is not of a botox failure. The most likely cause, the sources believe, is Bell’s Palsy. This is a non-fatal neurological condition of uncertain cause. There is no record in Trump’s White House Physician reports that he has suffered Bell’s Palsy episodes in the past. The standard medical treatment for Bell’s Palsy symptoms as pronounced as Trump’s on September 11 is a combination of corticosteroids, such as prednisone, and antivirals like valacylcovir. If Trump has been taking corticosteroids, the side effects which may be anticipated to appear include the fluid retention which has been reported in July as caused by “chronic venous insufficiency”. The cognitive, mood, and psychological side effects of corticosteroid treatment have been reported in the scientific literature to include “euphoria and hypomania”, as well as “difficulty to maintain concentration and poor memory”.

For up-to-date world events please follow our Telegram channel. We select only information that we deem significant for understanding the fluid drama. We all are watching history in the making and we are doing our best to focus on facts which make a difference on how we perceive and interpret the propaganda noise.

Russia CANNOT accept European ‘peacekeepers’ in Ukraine

US Department of State
May 8, 2025
Russia Travel Advisory

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by John Helmer, Moscow
@bears_with

Ragpicking is a serious women’s business, extracting value from rubbish. Cheerleading is the unserious business of girls waving pompoms at football games.

There are those who claim the Kazan Declaration is today’s equivalent of the Bretton Woods Final Act (1944) and Bandung Declaration (1955), or “a huge manifesto”, or “victory for all decent freedom-loving people on Earth”.

To help decide if these aren’t pompoms, here’s a pick through the 33 pages, 131 paragraphs of the terms the BRICS member states were able to agree and agree to disagree on, particularly the three most powerful states – China, India, Russia (alphabetical).

As Russia has been the chairman of BRICS for 2024, host of the summit meeting in Kazan this week, and led in the plenaries by President Vladimir Putin, the Kremlin release of this English version of the Declaration should be considered authoritative.

Paragraphs 6 and 8: “…we reaffirm our commitment to multilateralism and upholding the international law, including the Purposes and Principles enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations (UN) as its indispensable cornerstone, and the central role of the UN in the international system…We further emphasize the urgent need to achieve equitable and inclusive geographical representation in the staff composition of the Secretariat of the United Nations and other international organizations in a timely manner…we reaffirm our support for a comprehensive reform of the United Nations, including its Security Council, with a view to making it more democratic, representative, effective and efficient, and to increase the representation of developing countries in the Council’s memberships so that it can adequately respond to prevailing global challenges and support the legitimate aspirations of emerging and developing countries from Africa, Asia and Latin America, including BRICS countries, to play a greater role in international affairs, in particular in the United Nations, including its Security Council.”

Reorganizing the Anglo-American and French domination of the national staff quotas at the UN in New York, especially to rebalance the way in which the current UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has acted prejudicially, is much less than the reform of the membership of the UN Security Council because India, Brazil, and South Africa do not agree with Russia and China. Improving the UN staff quotas for BRICS member state nationals is tokenism without policy impact. Score for pompoms.

Left: https://johnhelmer.net/did-un-secretary-general-guterres-commit-a-war-crime-at-azovstal/ Right: https://johnhelmer.net/the-food-war-the-grain-deal-and-the-real-deal/

Paragraph 10: “We are deeply concerned about the disruptive effect of unlawful unilateral coercive measures, including illegal sanctions, on the world economy, international trade, and the achievement of the sustainable development goals. Such measures undermine the UN Charter, the multilateral trading system, the sustainable development and environmental agreements. They also negatively impact economic growth, energy, health and food security exacerbating poverty and environmental challenges.”

Economic sanctions against Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia and Syria are forms of US warfare with the objective of regime change. “Deep concern” is less than a commitment to economic self-defence, including the right to support alternative trade and sanctions-busting measures in which all five of the targeted states are engaged, with tacit support from the nine BRICS member states as well as the thirteen newly confirmed partner states. Score for pompoms.

Paragraphs 11-12. “We reaffirm our commitment to maintaining a strong and effective Global Financial Safety Net with a quota-based and adequately resourced IMF at its center… We recognise the crucial role of BRICS in the process of improving the international monetary and financial system (IMFS), with a view to making it more responsive to the needs of all countries…We encourage our Finance Ministers and Central /National Bank Governors to continue this work.”

The IMF is not now and never has been, certainly not in Russia and the Ukraine, a financial safety net. It remains a tool of US economic warfare and regime change against target states in which the Yeltsin Administration was complicit. The BRICS consensus, led by President Putin and his Central Bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina, aims to preserve the IMF as a bank with Yeltsin-era objectives. Score for ragpicking by the oligarch faction in Moscow.

Paragraph 14: “We underscore the key role of the G20 as the premier global forum for multilateral economic and financial cooperation that provides a platform for dialogue of both developed and emerging economies on an equal and mutually beneficial footing for jointly seeking shared solutions to global challenges. We recognise the importance of the continued and productive functioning of the G20, based on consensus with a focus on result-oriented outcomes.”

This is an application by the BRICS members and partners to enjoy consensus with the US and the NATO and AUKUS members of the G20. This is an impossibility — a falsification of the politico-economic realities. Score for pompoms.

Paragraph 22: “We reiterate that the unilateral coercive measures, inter-alia in the form of unilateral economic sanctions and secondary sanctions that are contrary to international law, have far-reaching implications for the human rights, including the right to development, of the general population of targeted states, disproportionally affecting the poor and people in vulnerable situations. Therefore, we call for their elimination.”

See Paragraph 10 above – pompoms score again.

Paragraphs 29-30: “We call for urgent measures, in accordance with international law, to ensure the protection of lives. We reiterate our grave concern at the deterioration of the situation and humanitarian crisis in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, in particular the unprecedented escalation of violence in the Gaza Strip and in West Bank as a result of the Israeli military offensive, which led to mass killing and injury of civilians, forced displacement and widespread destruction of civilian infrastructure. We stress the urgent need for an immediate, comprehensive and permanent ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages and detainees from both sides who are being illegally held captive and the unhindered sustainable and at scale supply of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip, and cessation of all aggressive actions. We denounce the Israeli attacks… We acknowledge the provisional measures of the International Court of Justice in the legal proceedings instituted by South Africa against Israel.”

This is a strong attack on Israel and the closest the BRICS consensus comes to calling Israel to account for genocide as ruled by the International Court of Justice in January. It implies there was an international law right of self-defence on the part of Hamas in the offensive of October 7, 2023, and no right for Israel to conduct the Gaza genocide and the mass imprisonment of Palestinians on the West Bank. In his statements at the summit – in impromptu remarks after the plenary speech of Mahmoud Abbas and in his later press conference — Putin contradicted the BRICS consensus and the meaning of these paragraphs, telling the plenum that Israel’s genocide in Palestine is a “special situation”, then telling the press “we need to work with Israel, which, admittedly, still faced a terrorist attack last October… we must analyze the situation very calmly.” BRICS ragpickers score against Russian pompoms.

Paragraphs 32 and 34: “We express our concern over the increasing incidents of terrorist attacks linked with ICT capabilities. In this regard, we condemn the premeditated terrorist act of detonating handheld communication devices in Beirut on 17 September 2024…We stress that Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity must be strictly observed. We condemn illegal foreign military presence that lead to increasing risks of a large-scale conflict in the region. We emphasize that illegal unilateral sanctions seriously exacerbate the suffering of the Syrian people.”

The Russian Foreign Ministry avoided blaming Israel directly for the Beirut attack on September 17, instead quoting the Lebanese authorities and Hezbollah as saying so. “A comprehensive investigation of this crime is in order,” the Russian official statement said. “All those responsible must be held accountable. It is essential that this new act of terrorism is not swept under the carpet, as Western countries have been trying to do with regard to the Nord Stream gas pipeline explosions. We call on all parties involved to exercise restraint and refrain from steps that threaten further destabilisation of the military and political situation in the Middle East.” This Russian position of September 17 appears to have been diluted in the Declaration of October 24. Pompoms score.

Russian anti-missile defences have not been used to defend Syria from Israeli attacks, including a bomb and missile attack close to the Russian airbase at Khmeimim on October 3. It is unclear whether Russian air defence batteries intercepted Israeli missiles fired at Tartus on October 8; if they did, this would be the first time. Ragpickers may have scored over pompoms.

Paragraph 36: “We recall national positions concerning the situation in and around Ukraine as expressed in the appropriate fora, including the UNSC and the UNGA. We emphasize that all states should act consistently with the Purposes and Principles of the UN Charter in their entirety and interrelation. We note with appreciation relevant proposals of mediation and good offices, aimed at a peaceful resolution of the conflict through dialogue and diplomacy.”

This is the only reference to the US-led alliance war against Russia in the Ukraine. It is an agreement by Russia to agree to disagree with the “national positions” of other BRICS members who were unwilling to agree to the stronger language the Russians had sought. Score pompoms.

Paragraphs 65-67: “We reiterate our commitment to enhancing financial cooperation within BRICS. We recognise the widespread benefits of faster, low cost, more efficient, transparent, safe and inclusive cross-border payment instruments built upon the principle of minimizing trade barriers and non-discriminatory access. We welcome the use of local currencies in financial transactions between BRICS countries and their trading partners. We encourage strengthening of correspondent banking networks within BRICS and enabling settlements in local currencies in line with BRICS Cross-Border Payments Initiative (BCBPI), which is voluntary and nonbinding, and look forward to further discussions in this area, including in the BRICS Payment Task Force. We acknowledge the importance of exploring the feasibility of connecting BRICS countries’ financial markets infrastructure. We agree to discuss and study the feasibility of establishment of an independent cross-border settlement and depositary infrastructure, BRICS Clear, an initiative to complement the existing financial market infrastructure, as well as BRICS independent reinsurance capacity, including BRICS (Re)Insurance Company, with participation on a voluntary basis. We task our Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors, as appropriate, to continue consideration of the issue of local currencies, payment instruments and platforms and report back to us by the next Presidency.”

This is an acknowledgement that there remains little agreement to date among the BRICS members, especially China and India with Russia, on the means for replacing the SWIFT and other payment systems which the US is manipulating to wage direct and indirect economic war. The Declaration buries especially sharp concerns in India over the rupee-rouble trade. The Chinese have now almost cancelled yuan payments with Russia; they deal in US dollars. The Indians are more accommodating but the Russians less so. In Kazan the Indians and Chinese have made it clear that BRICS is nowhere near being an alternative to the Bretton Woods institutions.

A source in New Delhi adds: “as usual pro-Russia commentators in the West are gung-ho because they do not understand the nuance. They don’t need to. They will be right in a few years. The Financial Times and Wall Street Journal understand the nuance and know these issues will be resolved and in five years from now a full alternative to the US dollar will be in play. A new settlement system in which Africans and South Americans can sell their resources to markets ( BRICS plus), earn corrupt kickbacks ( Dubai), draw investment (China), technology ( India), and arms (Russia), and still send their children to Oxford and Cambridge is in the making.”

Agreement to continue negotiations is a score for the ragpickers over the cheerleaders.

Paragraph 83: “We reject unilateral, punitive and discriminatory protectionist measures, that are not in line with international law, under the pretext of environmental concerns…We also oppose unilateral protectionist measures, which deliberately disrupt the global supply and production chains and distort competition.”

This is a strike against the US, especially the former Trump and promised Trump administrations. Ragpickers score.

Paragraph 89: “ Recognising that environmental problems are posing increasing threat, causing huge damage to the economy and affecting the quality of life of our citizens…we encourage more active involvement of young people in environmental activities believing it is critical to increase environmental culture and knowledge among the population, primarily young people.”

Pompoms.

Paragraph 91: “We support the Kimberley Process as the sole global intergovernmental certification scheme, regulating trade in rough diamonds emphasising our commitment to preventing conflict diamonds from entering the markets and acknowledge the launch of the Informal BRICS Cooperation Platform with the participation of African diamond-mining nations to ensure free trade in rough diamonds and the sustainable development of the global diamond industry. We welcome the UAE’s efforts as chair of the Kimberly Process for 2024.”

This is a strike by India, Russia, South Africa, and the UAE as major diamond producers and processors against the efforts of the US, UK, and Belgium to destroy the Russian diamond trade. Ragpickers score.

Paragraphs 123 and 124: “We emphasize that all BRICS countries have rich traditional sport culture and agree to support each other in the promotion of traditional and indigenous sports among BRICS countries and around the world. We strongly oppose any form of discrimination on grounds of age, sex, disability, race, ethnicity, origin, religion, economic or other status of athletes. We recognise the importance of joint BRICS sports events, meetings, conferences, seminars in the field of sports science and sports medicine. We attach great importance to the role of BRICS in developing sports ties among BRICS countries, including mass, youth, school and student sports, high priority sports, parasport, national and traditional sports. In this regard we highly appreciate Russia’s Chairship for hosting the BRICS Games in Kazan in June, which brought together participants in 27 sports disciplines.”

This is a strike against the politicization of the Olympic Games and of the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA) and the sanctions and boycotts which have resulted. Ragpickers score over pompoms.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping in a photo op before the start of the BRICS plenary session in Kazan on October 23.

There are five references to “national sovereignty and territorial integrity” in the Declaration: they refer to Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, and Afghanistan; they do not refer to the protracted conflict between China and India on the Himalayan frontier. A well-informed Indian source acknowledges that he views the direct talks in Kazan between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Xi Jinping, with Putin as mediator, will turn out to have “positive” results. “Putin has without doubt played the diplomat in this. No question. Modi and Xi fully trust him not to betray them. There is reluctance now to admit this, at least not for a while, but the timing suggests Putin played a role.”

The three-way talks at Kazan did not touch concretely on the demarcation of the Himalayan border. “The Indians and Chinese have held 21 rounds of talks at the level of military corps commanders, the most recent of them last February 24. Thus, it’s been delegated to the military to negotiate, confirm incursions and terms of conflict reduction. The foreign ministries then follow up with precise language. This year we have seen several high-level changes in the Chinese defense establishment which have perplexed the Indians. Evidently, some of it was internal Chinese power struggles. That seems to have played out now, and Xi is fully in control. He seems to have asserted his dominance. At the military and diplomatic levels, the two sides seem to have agreed to calm things down and return to the pre-2022 status quo ante.”

Source: https://chinaglobalsouth.com

Source: https://www.indiatoday.in/

The Indian source continued: “No detailed talk on the Himalayan border issue would have taken place between Xi and Modi. Inch on inch, there will be issues but that’s how it will be for a thousand years. You can’t resolve an undemarcated 3,800 km border fully and completely.”

“The Indian side should also understand that the Chinese were right to feel a threat that if Indians move into Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK) that would cut off the Karakoram Highway and the Chinese gateway to Gwadar and Arabian Sea. Indians will give no reassurance that they won’t hit Pakistan. If anything, the chances they will [move on the POK] are at an all-time high. But will the Indians take territory and choke off the highway? Perhaps assurance has been given that they won’t. If both have returned to frontier patrolling without guns, then it’s a huge achievement. By the way, no shots have been fired by either side in the past three years.”

by Agathe Demarais, a columnist at Foreign Policy and a senior policy fellow on geoeconomics at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

Moscow is depleting its rainy-day savings to plug its war-induced fiscal deficit while preserving social stability.

Strange things are happening in Russia these days. In early October, the country inked a deal to sell chickpeas to Pakistan in exchange for mandarin oranges. A few weeks later, the Russian government advised international participants traveling to the southwestern city of Kazan for the BRICS summit to bring cash in U.S. dollars or euros, as major credit card companies such as Visa and Mastercard have suspended operations on Russian soil since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in 2022.

During the BRICS summit, a Chinese official mentioned that Russia is facing “serious difficulties” with paying its membership fees to the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation; the official blamed Western sanctions. As if this were not enough, the comment came on the same day that the Kremlin had to cancel bond auctions to issue nearly 600 billion Russian rubles (around $6 billion) in sovereign debt for lack of buyers.

These examples might sound trivial, but taken together, they highlight how all might not be going hunky-dory for the Russian economy—contrary to the Kremlin’s claims that Western sanctions are ineffective and Russian GDP growth is booming. Like a cash-strapped household pretending that all is well while quietly burning through emergency savings, Moscow is trying to project economic normalcy by tapping into its vast financial buffers.

This is not a sustainable strategy: Without fresh inflows of cash, even the largest of savings only last for a while. Russia could soon struggle to preserve costly social stability at home while waging its expensive war against Ukraine.

To understand Russia’s economic troubles, looking at inflation is a good starting point. Official statistics are fishy, but even without consulting them, it’s easy to see that price growth is an issue in Russia. First, the ruble has lost one-third of its value against the U.S. dollar since early 2022, inflating the price of imports and therefore fueling inflation.

Second, Russian firms are struggling to hire because of the combined impact of a shrinking population; a high death toll from the COVID-19 pandemic; and the war in Ukraine, which has killed or seriously wounded 2 percent of Russian men between the ages of 20 and 50, and is causing an exodus of highly skilled workers. To attract workers, Russian companies are raising wages, again fueling inflation. Third, the Kremlin believes that it can buy social stability by showering people with generous handouts—another inflationary factor.

Central bankers like to raise interest rates when inflation is high, seeking to tame price growth by weighing on demand. The Central Bank of Russia has applied these principles to the letter; since mid-2023, it has gradually increased its key rate to a whopping 21 percent. Russian companies are feeling the pinch. This week, Sergei Chemezov, the CEO of state-owned defense conglomerate Rostec, declared that high interest rates are eating into profits so much that most Russian industrial firms could soon go bankrupt. But there is a catch: Because of its obsession with social stability, Moscow is working to negate the impact of high interest rates on the population.

A recent scheme for subsidized loans provides an example of this. Since 2020, millions of Russians have signed up for real estate loans at a cheap rate of 8 percent, while the government has reimbursed banks for the difference between that face rate and the 20 percent or more that higher central bank rates should command. That policy might well boost economic growth in the short term, but it comes with high costs: Home prices in Russia have tripled since 2020, suggesting a real estate bubble that could soon burst. The scheme also comes with a roughly $5 billion price tag for the Kremlin.

Russia’s bigger fiscal picture looks dire. On the expenses side, war is costly, and defense spending keeps rising to record highs: Military expenses will make up 40 percent of Russia’s public spending in 2025, for an eye-popping $142 billion. (National security and “classified” expenses will absorb another 30 percent of Russia’s federal budget.) Russia is also splurging to preserve social stability. In the next six years, the Kremlin plans to spend $431 billion on all sorts of social projects, including sending children to summer camps in occupied Crimea, building brand-new student campuses across Russia, and raising the minimum wage by no less than 10 percent per year.

The revenue side of the fiscal balance does not look any better. Excluding dividends, Russia’s state-owned gas giant Gazprom used to provide around 10 percent of the Kremlin’s fiscal revenues. Such largesse is over: After losing access to the European market, Gazprom recorded a $6.8 billion loss in 2023, making it impossible for the company to transfer money to state coffers. (Gazprom sent $40 billion to the Russian Ministry of Finance in 2022.)

Things could soon get even worse. In a few weeks, a deal allowing the transit of Russian gas to Europe via Ukraine will expire, cutting down Moscow’s remaining gas exports to the European Union by half and Russian total gas sales by one-third—for an expected loss of $6.5 billion per year for Gazprom.

Russia only has a few options to find new income streams. Sustained economic growth would raise fiscal revenues through higher taxes, but labor shortages mean that this is not a credible plan. A few weeks ago, the deputy governor of Russia’s central bank acknowledged that “available production capacity is depleted.” With social stability a constraining factor, Moscow can only apply fiscal Band-Aids.

Current plans include imposing higher taxes on wealthy households—for a mere $1.5 billion a year, or less than 3 percent of total income tax receipts—and raising tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles. It is not clear what Beijing will think of these protectionist measures in light of the supposedly unlimited friendship that binds Russia and China; Russian President Vladimir Putin has previously called U.S. tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles “unfair.”

With ever-rising expenses and dwindling revenues, Russia is now posting an annual fiscal deficit of nearly 2 percent of its GDP. For most economies, this is not an issue. Such a small shortfall can typically easily be financed through debt issuance. But Western sanctions have turned Russia into a pariah on the global financial scene, making it impossible for it to tap global debt markets. Moscow’s plan B was to tap domestic bond markets, but things are not going well on this front, either. Despite having to cancel auctions this month for lack of buyers, the Kremlin has penciled in issuing $25 billion in domestic bonds by the end of the year. So far, it is not getting anywhere.

With debt issuance out of the equation, Russia is now forced to turn to plan C: tapping into its savings. On paper, such a strategy could work for a while thanks to the vast holdings that Moscow accumulated in its National Wealth Fund (NWF) in the 2010s. However, these savings are now drying up: The liquid part of the fund has shrunk by more than half since the start of the war in Ukraine, to just $54 billion in September. Last year, the government stopped saving money in its NWF. Moscow is now resorting to selling the portion of its NWF reserves that it holds in gold; the fund’s gold reserves have shrunk by around half, or about 262 tons of gold, since early 2022.

Russia is depleting its rainy-day holdings, and this cannot last forever. Even assuming high global oil prices, the Kremlin’s 2024 budget includes a further $13 billion drop in NWF holdings this year, or about a quarter of the fund’s liquid reserves. Looking ahead, the NWF’s liquid reserves cover just around a year and a half of budget deficit. This assessment might prove optimistic: It assumes that official fiscal data is trustworthy—some experts believe that Russia’s fiscal deficit could be closer to 5 percent of its GDP—and that the global economy won’t suffer from major shocks. If global growth were to tank, the Central Bank of Russia estimates that the NWF’s liquid reserves could vanish in less than a year.

In September, Kyrylo Budanov, Ukraine’s defense intelligence chief, told attendees at a conference in Kyiv that Russia will try to force an end to the war in 2025, when the Kremlin could start facing genuine economic problems. This analysis might not be too far from the truth—and it will be useful to keep it in mind as calls for negotiations between Kyiv and Moscow grow louder every day.

Photo: Harris and Philip Gordon

Kamala Harris is unlikely to keep the current crop of national security officials, should she win the US presidential election in November, according to sources quoted by the Wall Street Journal.

President Joe Biden dropped out of the re-election race on Sunday, endorsing his vice-president for the top of the ticket. While the Democrats still need to officially confirm Harris as their nominee, media speculation about her presidency is already rampant.

“Key Biden appointees, including national security adviser Jake Sullivan, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin wouldn’t likely be extended in their current roles,” the Journal claimed late on Monday, citing anonymous current and former US officials.

While Harris “hasn’t had an opportunity to define her own brand of foreign policy,” the Journal claimed that she “might ultimately align herself more closely with the progressive elements” of the Democrats and put some conditions on US support for Israel.

The Journal described Harris as the current administration’s “most ardent senior-level advocate of securing a cease-fire in Gaza,” citing a passage from her speech in Selma, Alabama in March when she criticized the “inhumane conditions” in the Palestinian enclave.

Arab American Institute founder Jim Zogby told the outlet that he spoke with Harris by phone last October and believed that she has shown “far greater empathy” for Palestinians than Biden or the rest of the White House.

According to NBC News, Harris is “widely expected to continue” Biden’s foreign policy if elected, but “appears more willing to publicly criticize” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and “express empathy for the plight of Palestinian civilians” in Gaza.

Having Harris run might help the Democrats with Arab-Americans, younger voters and progressives, an anonymous source told NBC, as she is not associated with Biden’s support for Israel.

Biden picked Harris as his running mate in August 2020, reportedly as part of a deal to secure the nomination. She had dropped out of the race for nomination herself in late 2019, before the primaries even started.

Blinken was Biden’s long-time foreign policy and national security adviser before his current appointment as head of the State Department. Sullivan spent three years advising Biden during the administration of Barack Obama, before joining Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. Austin reportedly struck up a friendship with Biden’s son Beau, who had served in Iraq as his staff officer in 2008-2009, and later briefed Biden as the head of US Central Command.

A “central role” in a Harris administration would be played by Philip Gordon, who is currently her national security adviser, the Journal said. He is a veteran of the Clinton and Obama administrations, who worked at both the National Security Council and the State Department, notably as Victoria Nuland’s predecessor at European and Eurasian Affairs. He has also been a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a senior adviser at Albright Stonebridge Group.