Kirill Dmitriev likes it.
Likes Donald Trump’s decision to suspend the implementation of triple-digit tariffs on countries that buy large amounts of Russian oil and gas, I mean.
The levies, which drew criticism from Beijing and New Delhi, were set to take effect next week along with even steeper duties on US imports of Russian energy.
The trade taxes are part of the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026, which Trump signed into law this time last month.
Fortunately for The Kremlin, the legislation contained a proviso that allows the president (of the United States, not Russia, but some might argue that’s a distinction without a difference in this context), to issue indefinite waivers simply by notifying Congress that doing so “is in the national interest.” Trump delivered such a notification on Friday.
Plainly, taxing Russian energy imports at 500% (the rate prescribed by the Graham Act) runs counter to Trump’s farcical diesel deal with Vladimir Putin. Ostensibly, that’s the rationale for the waiver, which the above-mentioned Dmitriev gleefully called “an important and truly historic moment,” playing to Trump’s vanity.
A Kyiv-born, Harvard-trained Goldman alumnus, Dmitriev knows a thing or two about US sanctions. As the head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, he’s sanctioned himself, and not just by the US: By the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand too.
Despite being blacklisted by OFAC and its counterparts around the developed world, Dmitriev serves as a crucial go-between for Putin with Trump. As one expert put it a year ago, Dmitriev understands that “Trump Americans [are] business-oriented people who think in terms of profits.”
I’m no fan of the late Lindsey Graham, despite being an on-again, off-again South Carolina resident. He was an unapologetic foreign policy hawk who manifested the interventionist tendencies which led directly and indirectly to the deaths of thousands of US servicemembers deployed around the world, to say nothing of the millions of innocents killed in a succession of American military misadventures.
So there’s that. And here’s this: I’m not convinced the cost to Ukraine of keeping this fight up is worth it assuming (note the emphasis) the territorial concessions needed to end the war are confined to areas where the separatist constituency was already substantial.
To say Ukraine proved its point would be a good candidate for understatement of the decade, right along with “The world was insufficiently prepared for a pandemic.” Even if the Russian military secured a breakthrough that resulted in the fall of Kyiv, Putin’s “special operation” would stand as one of modern history’s worst military miscalculations.
We’re coming up on the fifth anniversary of a war Putin thought he could win in the space of weeks, if not days or even hours. The critical point is that he’s not fighting an insurgency. He’s still fighting the Ukrainian regular army. Imagine Saddam Hussein’s army holding out against the 2003 US invasion until 2008. Or the Taliban never surrendering Kabul in the first place. That’s what this is. Strategically I mean. And it’s not a good look for Moscow.
With that in mind, a part of me sympathizes with Trump on the Ukraine war, just not with whatever ulterior motives he may have for coddling a murderous tyrant. This war isn’t winnable for either side. That much is as plain as the blood on Putin’s hands. Also plain is Putin’s capacity and willingness to perpetuate the bloodshed until his dying days, come hell or high sanctions and regardless of the Russian side’s death toll.
NATO can’t intervene directly to drive Putin out without risking a nuclear confrontation, so much as it pains me to say this from a post-World War II “principles” standpoint, the correct course of action for the US from a humanitarian perspective may in fact be to force Volodymyr Zelensky into a deal.
Would that set a terrible precedent? Yes. Is there a meaningful chance it’d embolden Putin? Well, sure. Obviously. But I don’t believe for a second that his next move would be to invade a NATO country. Hell, who says he even wants a NATO country? Not him, if that counts for anything!
Setting aside some covetous allusions to Estonia, Putin’s tortured historiography doesn’t include direct, explicit references to conquering the whole of Europe. The narrative out of Brussels often makes it sound as though it’s Kyiv today, Warsaw tomorrow, Berlin next week and London in a month. If the question is “What might Putin do next in the presence of appeasement?” the answer’s almost surely “Not that.” Anyone who says otherwise hasn’t actually read his absurdist, imperial mythologizing.
As for the — completely legitimate, well-supported, self-evident — notion that US appeasement vis-à-vis Russia’s claims on the Donbas amounts to a historic triumph for a man (Putin) whose raison d’être is orchestrating the de facto breakup of NATO, I’d regrettably tell you that ship’s already sailed.
Trump’s never made any bones about his disdain for NATO, which was shaken to its very core when Trump subjected Zelensky to a televised dressing down at The White House early last year, a spectacle many viewed as the de facto end of the alliance, despite Ukraine not being a member state. Let’s not forget: Only one world leader has explicitly threatened to invade NATO territory, and that leader is Trump.
Whether what I’ll now call “Ukraine realism” (and yes, that sort of thinking runs counter to my prior published warnings about the perils of what I once dubbed “Ukraine fatalism“) means the US should be openly contradicting itself by, in this case, effectively reversing legislation that was passed just a month ago, is debatable. As is the “right” way to go about changing tack.
Most importantly, facilitating an end to the war doesn’t have to, and almost surely shouldn’t, mean “bringing Putin in from the cold” on the geopolitical stage, let alone inking any sort of arrangements with Russia that might directly jeopardize US national security. And that brings us neatly full circle.
In the course of celebrating Trump’s decision to waive the Graham Act tariffs, Dmitriev said that in addition to the widely-criticized diesel arrangement, Russia and the US “are discussing joint projects in the field of data centers, including with the use of small-scale nuclear power plants.” (Russia having a pristine nuclear power plant track record and all.)
“Naturally, progress is quite difficult and there is resistance from various quarters,” Dmitriev went on, in the same remarks. “Yet, as the diesel example demonstrates, the ice has, in fact, begun to break.”
Oh, and, um, there’s this.
The US and Russian administrations have certainly taken up the mantle of western civilization. The only problem is that it’s the pre-Enlightenment version.
My latest theory based on nothing is that Natalie Harp is the actual Russian asset whispering sweet nothings into Trump’s ear about a Russian/American bromance.
How long before we start shipping military aid to Russia.
I don’t see it . Throughout history have not territorial concessions shown to not bring lasting peace.? They create temporary, unstable ceasefire lines which Russia transforms into militarized enclaves to exploit in future escalation.
I look at this older photo of Trump lecturing Zelensky and all I can see is bone spurs and inexperience with reality. How many times is the Lord mayor Tiny Don going to continue spewing his crap at this poor man. I’m amazed the Ukraine’s head of state has not yet stuck both fingers straight into Trump’s eyes.
With the right negotiators there might have been a long shot chance of a peace agreement, although I’m so suspicious of the Trump Putin relationship I’m 75% convinced that our president is compromised. It is certainly possible that the peepee tapes were a Putin KGB strategy to hide the Trump organization’s real crime of money laundering. In the early 2000’s Trump went from the king of debt to ‘I only pay cash’ when he started buying golf courses. If I’m not mistaken Don Jr even bragged about it. It’s speculation, but I’ve heard of nothing else that even comes close to explaining why an American president would grovel in front of an authoritarian war criminal who provides targeting intelligence to our enemies.
If you want to write a story about Ukraine it likely should be about how the US should be impeaching Trump for treason for deviously selling out a supposed ally by lying about a cease fire and suddenly turning off the wifi thereby enabling death a destruction. Instead of enabling Putin, the conversation should be about solving the US’s and world’s biggest barrier to peace – Trump.
Translated: “If you want to write a story about Ukraine, it likely should be one that I agree with, because like everyone else here, I mistakenly believe that my subscription fee entitles me to an editorial veto, particularly when the article in question has anything to do with politics.”
DL, with all due respect, I tried unabashed all-day Trump criticism in 2019 when he was impeached over Ukraine the first time and guess what? It turns out almost no one’s interested in listening to me rehash all the reasons Trump should be impeached. I’ve been doing this for 10 years now and I can say, definitively, that penning breathless editorial after breathless editorial about Trump’s myriad transgressions is a guaranteed way to lose readers on net.
I’m not exaggerating when I say that for every one disaffected reader who can’t get over the fact that I was never the liberal superhero they thought I was in their own minds, there are 50 readers who’d sooner chop off their own thumb than listen to another saccharine lament for the loss of American democracy.
I mean Jesus Christ, folks, every American president’s responsible for “enabling death and destruction.” How many civilians did Obama’s drone program kill? W. had Iraq. I could go president by president by president, aaaaallllll the way back. This is a country, let us not forget, founded in forced labor and genocide for God’s sake. And you want to tell me, implicitly or otherwise, that Trump’s the worst president we’ve had when it comes to “enabling death and destruction?” GTFOH, as the kids say.
Trump’s the worst president we’ve ever had on one metric, and it’s a pretty important one: Respecting the basic principles of democratic government. He’s terrible at that, by which I mean he doesn’t believe in democracy at all.
But you know what? C’est la-fuckin’ vie. What can I do? Nothing. And I refuse to let Trump dominate my thought process or otherwise ruin my capacity to enjoy life. American democracy’s lost for now. I warned about this in 2017 and 2018, and I doubt anyone remembers this, but I said repeatedly at the time that when he became a real autocrat, I was going to accept it and go on about my business, because life’s too short. I don’t know about anybody else, but I’m just happy I can still carry on with my daily life unimpeded, because some folks (e.g., Ilhan Omar) can’t.
Maybe we’ll reclaim democracy eventually, but for right now, it’s suspended. We have a duplicitous, grifting, wannabe tyrant as president and he can’t be impeached because the Senate math will never, ever work. Get over it. Or don’t. It makes no difference to me what you do, but I’m pondering solutions that might actually have a chance of coming to fruition, not dei ex machina like, “Maybe the senate will impeach him for slowing down Volodymyr Zelensky’s modem.”
“ We have a duplicitous, grifting, wannabe tyrant as president and he can’t be impeached because the Senate math will never, ever work. ”
Agree 1000%.
Democracy in America died with Trump 1.0, and sadly everyone was (and still is) in denial that it’s happened. What we are seeing in Trump 2.0 is merely refining and expanding the grift. It’s truly amazing to behold the brazenness of it on every level.
Thank you for your service.
H, this is a fantastic post! I agree, 100%.
One should live one’s life based on how the world actually works, not based on how one wishes the world works (the same holds true for investing). This is exactly why I value The Heisenberg Report.
🙂
If Popgun Pete wants to transform his Department of War into the tough no holds barred global tough guy he salivates about, then he should start with the commander in chief who constantly shows Putin the other cheek.
Does Trump remember that he just signed the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act on September 18? Less than 30 days ago.
Walk away from Iranian control of the strait. Walk away from Ukraine/force them to capitulate.
At least you’re consistent.
Consistent, yes. And also honest.
Speaking of honest, ever notice how an article like this seems to show up when the volume of overall comments on the site slows down for a ~week? That’s not a coincidence. Gotta keep the engagement up somehow! And nothin’ gets this readership riled up quite like an opinion piece that challenges a neoliberal / neocon sacred cow. (And yes, neoliberal and neocon are functionally the same thing by now. Whatever practical differences still exist, they’re easily overshadowed by shared commitments.)
Chapeau!
Jerry! Jerry! Jerry!
It’s never a good idea to give ground to a bully, they just keep coming back for more.
Putin is Fred Trump. Donald craves recognition from either as a “great man and equal/superior,” and both look(ed) at him and just see a useful fool.
One man’s daddy complex is dragging the world through the mud.
H, I really dislike this piece. If this happens, I hope you are still writing when he (tries to) takes one or more of the baltic states. But of course, we can punt on those countries too. Maybe Montenegro too, maybe eastern Poland… Romania has oil. Maybe we can do a deal there.
“I really dislike this piece.”
I couldn’t give a shit. I don’t write for digital likes, emoji thumbs up or really even for money, although I’ll take the latter. I don’t need any of that. I write what I think is accurate at any given time, re: any given subject, and anyone who can’t suffer it knows where the door is. If you don’t (know where the door is), be sure to email me and I’ll point you to it.
And by the way: Anyone who wouldn’t respond as I just did there isn’t worth reading. Take it from someone (me) who spent 14 months writing for an outfit that became hostage to its readership: Any editor who isn’t ready, willing or even happy, to lose a couple of folks here and there, or to tell readers to piss off occasionally, isn’t an editor you can trust.
H you’ll probably never lose me as a reader. Been with you a long time. Love 95% of your posts. And know where the exit is if I need to leave.
How about a kiss or happy face emoji?
When the happy face emoji was a new phenomenon I loudly proclaimed that I was getting incredibly wealthy because I had invented the happy face it. And the Japanese version, shiwase na kao. Because of that, at first I was able to claim that I received .0001 every use of the emoji. Small change but I made it up with volume! Sadly, despite numerous copyrights filed in Singapore, imitators soon over whelmed the market so I had to slash my royalties schedule time and time again.
Oh, where were we here? Oh yeah, the Ukrainians should have helped dig up dirt on Hunter. This is what they get for that mistake.
If they had ‘helped’ it might have backfired and the entire situation would then be different today. We cannot quarter back from a Monday perspective.
“Too thin Rooster! Too thin!”
— Lucky Ned Pepper (True Grit, 1969)
I stand with Ukraine because it is right. I stand with Ukraine because it is better for our NATO allies. I stand with Ukraine because Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump are the only real enemies here. And I stand with Ukraine because I will always, always root for the underdog.
True to form, Trump always looks out for himself first, and then tries to flip over the Monopoly board whenever things don’t go his way. We have an election in about two-weeks. There is no need to make this overly complicated. Look for yourself and vote based on your conscience. In order to turn things around, we need to plant our foot in the ground and begin moving forward. If we can just maintain our moral compass, this too should pass.
Maybe there is nothing you can do alone about what’s happening to your country; but I take solace in the determined preteens in France that are in the street fighting for change in their country. To me, it seems like you need more of that spirit and drive in America.
What you are pointing to is the latest iteration of a long-term, heavily coordinated “astroturfing” campaign by Russia to destabilize Western Europe.
I had my fill off street fighting with spirit and drive watching the Jan 6 protests.
To quickfire’s point – it’s very important where and how you consume information. I can get more than enough from sources the love to hate Trump and sources love to love Trump for free. I pay for H because he’s doing more than reinforcing my views, and more than cultivating righteousness and rage at the “bad guys.”
You actually can do some things alone – vote, donate time and/or money, have a thoughtful and respectful conversation with someone who disagrees with you, keeping your own mind free from greed and hate…
Here here.
I just returned from Paris- the makeup of the protesters is not as presented in the media. I saw it with my own eyes.
Ukraine is a thug country, as is Russia. The best thing Ukraine has going for it is that “they are the enemy of our enemy”. If the EU wanted to give Ukraine enough money to end the war, they absolutely could.
Since the war started, EU has given Ukraine about $200B. They have given Russia about $230B for fossil fuels. The hypocrisy is off the charts.
Kind of like when Biden sanctioned Russia, but allowed Russian banks to continue to operate.
“Let’s not forget: Only one world leader has explicitly threatened to invade NATO territory, and that leader is Trump.”
Like everyone else I witnessed this happen through the media, yet somehow my brain didn’t process it this way. Well stated, H. It was a shock to read that sentence, maybe just that my brain compensates by minimizing so much of the damage that Trump has done in so many areas.
Meanwhile over in the Gulf, the president has set up a face-saving excuse to pull out: “If Israel has the wrong Leader, which would be anyone other than Bibi, America will have to do this work ourselves, and I am not inclined to do so.”
There’s a clue right there to the state of things. When all you can do is threaten, you’ve run out of ideas. Seems like every country is pissed at another. Maybe it’s the microplastics we all have in our brains or the fact that the planet is stewing in our pollution.
It’s the social media in our brains and the president is the social media mad hatter.
Obviously it’s been covered in the comments but I think Trump’s intervention with SpaceX in the middle of a Russian surprise attack is by far the most criminal thing this criminal president has done.
And I disagree on there is nothing Trump can do to end this. Since all options are on the table, give Ukraine a nuke, how would Putin feel about attacking a neighbor with the same threat as they have?
That would never happen because Trump is quite clearly a Russian asset but I bet it would win the war faster than trying to undermine Ukraine, who will absolutely never give up (see Vietnam), to help out his pal Vlad.
Interesting arguments, some of which make sense and some I would take issue with, but whole argument is based on a likely false assumption. Cede to Russia those territories “where the separatist constituency was already substantial”. I’m not aware of any reliable polling, but I suspect that is not much different than the February 2022 line. There is no F’ing way Putin is going to agree to withdraw to that position.
If that was really on the table I would agree that the Ukrainians would need to swallow their pride and accept it, especially if Ukraine also received some real guarantees of these new borders. An “associate member” of NATO with the Article 5 protection?
But Trump would never push for anything close.
Ukraine can’t be a NATO member. That ship’s sailed, nor do I think they should be in the EU. I’m sorry, but I agree with Le Pen on that: It’s a suicide mission.
And to SeaTurtle’s point above, Ukraine is famously, hopelessly corrupt. That doesn’t take anything away from the heroism on display by their army, nor is it a comment on Volodymyr Zelensky. It’s just a fact. Ukraine’s one of the most endemically corrupt places on Earth, and unlike Russia, it’s not organized, top-down corruption, it’s just rampant, “everywhere” corruption. Again: That doesn’t change the fact that their military is full of heroes and that the army’s defense of their territorial sovereignty will go down in history as a feat of almost superhuman proportions. But the corruption point stands.
Why does corruption figure into this equation? the United States is corrupt. Their corruption hasn’t stood in the way of Ukraine standing up to a superior foe and honoring democracy far more than any of their less corrupt European neighbors. Certainly far more so than the US does. Endemic corruption is not something to be solved overnight, but it does appear that they are making attempts to root it out, again far more than we can say we’re doing at this point.
NATO really needs to consider the stakes. At this point you’re facing down an alliance of Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, at times India, and now apparently also the United States. Can they really afford be that picky about a country that has proven to be resiliently democratic? Ukraine is the symbol of democracy in a waning democratic era, but they need to lose weight, so, pass?
I have no way of knowing how familiar you are with Ukraine, so I’m being completely sincere here when I say forgive me in advance if I’m wrong, but this comment suggests you don’t completely understand what I (and SeaTurtle) mean when we say Ukraine’s corruption problem is endemic. And yes, that corruption has absolutely “stood in the way of Ukraine standing up to a superior foe and honoring democracy.” Just ask all the people Zelensky’s had to fire, dismiss and otherwise apologize for over the past five years. I’m obviously stylizing here, which is to say there’s no way to quantify this, but generally speaking, if you give them $1, you’ll be lucky if 50 cents makes it onto the actual battlefield, and to my point about disorganized, rampant corruption, you wouldn’t be able to account for the entirety of the disappeared 50 cents even if you were in on the corruption. It’s a moving, Venn diagram of corruption. That’s why some folks argue that Ukraine’s a black hole for assistance packages. I dare say six out of 10 Ukraine aid critics would actually rather support Kyiv than not, but… well, let me put it this way: If you knew that $450 out of your annual $1,000 donation to the local animal shelter was getting skimmed by the shelter employees, would you still make the donation, comforted in the notion that even after the skim $550 is going to needy puppies?
I’m not intimately familiar with Ukraine but I have seen the constant humiliation they’ve had to endure at firing corrupt officials in the middle of an existential war, so I get your point. Given the landscape as it is evolving, and using your animal shelter euphemism, would you donate to that corrupt animal shelter knowing that at least some money was going towards saving puppies? Or watch the rest of the shelters turn into dog fighting rings? Because that’s the stakes, democracies are failing everywhere right now and I suspect we’re the next domino to fall. So if NATO is to survive, based on the assumption that democracy is key, you take what you can get. I’d rather a corrupt shelter that protects some puppies than watching the Western world slaughter them because they can’t afford groceries and Russian bots have become everyone’s best friend on social media.
I realize that NATO is off the table. That’s why I put “associate member” scare quotes. But if Ukraine is going to take any settlement that includes ceding vast amounts of territory they are going to want secure guarantees of the new border. If that is the only remaining issue I’m certain some smart people can come up with a solution that allows Putin to save face on NATO expansion but also communicates that if Russia violates the new borders it will be met with an Article 5 like response.
However, the real point of this reply is to note that you did not respond to my initial comment that it was my understanding that the only areas with a large separatist constituency were already under Russian occupation before the war started and a settlement on those borders is a non-starter for Putin. Am I wrong on the extent of Russian sympathies?
Further to an earlier point about giving up on stories about Trump’s madness, essentially due to reader fatigue – while that might be reasonable from the writer’s perspective, in some ways – it does not mean that its right for readers, or citizens generally, to simply give up, considering the scope of the damage he has wrought. Giving up is what he wants and too many have fallen into that trap already
Yeah, everyone’s free to let that man make them as miserable as they’re inclined to be. But that ain’t gonna be me. If I get hit by a bus tomorrow, I don’t want to think, as I lay dying in the street, “Gosh, I shouldn’t have spent so much time this past year worrying about Donald Trump.”
Last thought: I know what you mean. Saw it in friends. Trump doesn’t preoccupy my life by any stretch; however, If I see an opportunity to do my part to overturn his revolution, I’ll do my duty – especially when he does something as egregious as he recently did to Ukraine.