Today at 15:47
Jonathan Fink was the guest of Henry Keen today where he shared his experience with the Russians. “Putin will not make a deal unless he’s under serious pressure,” – Mr. Fink stated.
— My first question—I planned it like that so you will— is: You say in your article that it’s not a question anymore, absolutely. Trump is bad and mad and is clearly a danger for freedom, but he is legit, right? His presence is not as corrupted as and stolen as Putin’s is. So, what do we do about all that?
— That’s a difficult question. I think the same question can be posed about Yanukovich because, um, you know, technically you could say that, yes, you know, money was injected into Ukraine, influence was injected into Ukraine to sway people to vote a certain way, but ultimately if someone is elected, uh, democratically with a clear majority and a mandate, then at what point do they lose legitimacy? The challenge here, of course, is that Trump—he didn’t necessarily canvas on the idea that he was going to help Ukraine win or he was, you know, any of these things.
He said he was going to stop the war and he never said how, so as far as I can tell, he’s not broken any of his so-called, you know, mandate or any of the promises he explicitly made, and he won a majority. Um… in order to be something of a wrecking ball, this wasn’t accidental, this was by design. I think many Americans voted for a wrecking ball, voted for someone who’s going to tear things down, tear things up. Um, they don’t necessarily believe he’s the person, the ideal person, to build them back up again. Um, absolutely. I think a lot of Americans are smart enough to think that.
— Yeah, what the protest is in the core of the ballot was the core of the ballot, I believe so, because the Democrats were constantly—they were constantly losing, yielding ground, any ground in Ukraine or, or to almost any opposing force, not addressing the painful issues and because of… because we won’t talk about that. But now we have Trump. Trump is doing what Trump is doing. Let’s put it cowboy way, straight forward. Mineral deal. Trump needs that mineral deal so to show his constituency that—he is his constituency. That much that dares. I mean, he even dares to call Zelensky a dictator. Now even that is inside his reason. But yet he is ready to sign the deal with the dicks. So, should Zelensky anyway seal the deal, your thing or not?
— I think this is very risky because if we look at Putin, we can say absolutely that Putin does not stick to any deals or negotiations. He may sign unless they are backed up with, I would say, extreme force and the willingness to use it. So, he might sign a deal with Erdogan, for instance, knowing that if he broke the terms and conditions of those, he would get a slap, right? Which would hurt his interest. He may sign an agreement or a deal or have an informal relationship with China and he knows that if he reneges on the terms of those deals, they can and will hurt him. This is one of the difficulties of Putin signing a deal with the West. They’ve shown over and over again that even if they have the means to hurt him, they pull their punches and fail to do so, and that they are allergic to the idea of Putin losing. They’re allergic to the idea of Russia collapsing and would not do anything, even if it goes against their own self-interest, um, to force that as an issue. So, the idea of signing any agreement with Putin, I think, uh, from a western point of view, is a deep delusion.
— Can we say the same thing about Trump?
— Well, in business, time and time again it has been hinted at or alleged that he does not pay contracts. He does not necessarily stick to the terms of a deal if the party he signs that deal or contract with is smaller and cannot enforce it. From their point of view, he will only, uh, I would say, adhere to those terms with someone who can show force and willingness to use it. At this point in time, whether this reflects reality or not, it’s my belief that it does not. He thinks that Ukraine is weak. He thinks that Ukraine is losing. He thinks Ukraine is weaker than Russia and I don’t think he believes Ukraine can do anything for him. And, you know, you extend that to the figure of Zelenskyy.
We are still looking at this from a values point of view and partly a moral point of view and a point of view of the geopolitical order that existed after the second world war. Trump does not think in any of those terms. He is purely thinking, absolutely, is this a key character going to be useful to me or not? Um, if he’s seen as weak, um, then he will be of no use or interest to Trump, and we see that in his negotiating tactic. Um, he is quite happy to destroy Zelenskyy and his reputation, chew him up and spit him out, uh, if that serves Trump’s purpose. So, in Zelenskyy’s position, I’d be extremely wary of signing anything, because once that’s been done, I think Trump could easily turn around and try, with all of the means at his disposal, to destroy Zelenskyy, even with these security guarantees. If the security guarantees there—there’s no security guarantee. There’s none in the deal. There’s none that’s enforceable. There’s none that he will go along with.
You know, he may put some contractors there to protect us resources, um, but, you know, in any scenario where a full-scale war is relaunched by Russia—which I think is entirely possible within two to three years, if Russia is rearmed, if the sanctions are lifted, if the US helped them to actually rearm, which is entirely likely—then they’ll pull those contractors out in a moment and they’ll have gotten whatever they could. That’s why he said it at 500 billion. Even though the US has given, it’s estimated at 150 or so. Why did he set it at 500?
— Maybe, but what about Europe? I mean, I love Bernard Shaw and I love his, um, heartbreak house Fantasia in Russian Mana. And that Shaw family, I believe, is depicting… and he’s depicting it as a dysfunctional family, as a Europe that is not ready for World War I. I mean, 100 years passed since that. What changed?
— Uh, Europe clearly is not ready, and, uh, you know, I’ve been to many, many events where you’ll have quite a few military people who are still, um, speak about Russia’s military capability and fairly toize the returns. Yes, Russia has proved itself to be, um, you know, not the world’s second greatest army. It is even the second greatest army on the territory of Russia itself because it cannot dislodge Ukraine from Kyiv. So these things are definitely—there’s some validity there. Um, the trouble is, they do still have the call of numerous resources, and, again, this is a belief. I’m not a geopolitical expert, but, you know, I have studied, uh, Russia and the Russian mindset for more than 30 years and spent time there.
My concern is that if the guns fall silent, uh, well, one, they won’t fall silent. Uh, there’ll just be a downgrading of offensive, uh, you know, action back to maybe the level it was, you know, during the simmering war, long war, um, in Donbass and Crimea.
You might have, you know, rather than hundreds of casualties a day, you might have tens a week, something like that. But this is still an environment where Russia can play games. There’s still an environment where Russia can, uh, you know, generate the information it needs for its domestic population, for the kind of propaganda, the kind of, um, you know, agitprop war that we are seeing in Russia, you know, the cyber-war, the digital war. This is… this is going to continue. And, you know, Russia may come out of it winning. I don’t see a situation in which Russia collapses.
— And what if Putin falls?
— Yeah, the problem is there’s nothing to put in place. Even if Putin goes, I don’t see that the international community or Ukraine can actually have any significant advantage because the only way it could go in a better way is for Russia to reform itself from within and for the Russian people to do it. But I don’t think that’s going to happen.
