The Bulwark Podcast - Michael Weiss: Helsinki in Anchorage?

Episode Date: August 14, 2025

At the Alaska summit, Putin will likely be angling for a sequel of the Helsinki meeting, the infamous tête-à-tête in 2018 where Trump got rolled and cajoled. And because Trump refuses to accept that his charisma and imaginary friendship with Vladimir will never be enough to close a ceasefire deal, the best outcome for Ukraine is that Putin makes Trump mad by not helping him land his long-sought peace prize. Meanwhile, Russian intelligence has been busy recruiting assets to commit acts of terror and foment unrest in Western countries. Plus, the role of Europe in standing up to Trump, and a hurled sandwich becomes an act of resistance to the takeover of DC. Michael Weiss joins Tim Miller. show notes Tim and Bill on the wholesale inflation numbers and Trump's BLS pick Video of the sandwich thrower or on Instagram Double agent Kim Philby

Hello and welcome to the Bullwark podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. Before we get to the guest today, I just have a couple things. I just finished popping off a quick take on some pretty alarming PPI numbers with regards to inflation that came out this morning. And we also have some stories about the new commissioner of labor service. statistics, the weird mortician man, having a Nazi ship fetish. That's a shocker. And being there on January 6th. I talked about that with Bill Crystal over on the bulwark takes feed. Make sure you go check that out and check out the other stuff that we've been popping out over on

Bullwork Takes when there's rapid response news that we want to get to you. I also just want to say, I was blown away by the overwhelmingly positive feedback to yesterday's podcast. So I wanted to share a few of the rave reviews with you. Gina. Well, that one stuck with me. In fact, it made me wake up in the middle of the night. Sox dogs. It just made me want to go as far left as possible.

Chris Noak, listening to Jason Calicanus will awaken your inner Lenin, whether you think you have one or not. Pete Rabbit. Your last episode turned me into a full communist. So, you know, not exactly a lot. with the pod's stated mission there, but at least we're having an influence on you. Always appreciate your feedback. We'll see how today's podcast goes. He's the editor of the insider, a Russia-focused independent media outlet, and a contributing

editor at New Lines Magazine. He's the author of ISIS Inside the Army of Terror and a forthcoming book about the GRU, Russia's Intel Agency. It's Michael Weiss. Hey, man, what's happening? Welcome to my life in Portugal, where I have emigrated for the month. of August. Is it maybe potentially permanent? Are you testing that out, you know? Tempting, but not really possible. Too many commitments back home.

All right. Well, as of right now, your home in America has not been militarized, not the same for listeners in Washington, D.C. And so I want to obviously talk mostly about the Alaska summit or the Russia summit, whichever way you want to look at that. But just really quick on what's happening in D.C. There are images of, you know, checkpoints on 14th Street last night, people shouting at the military this morning, military vehicles on, you know, monitoring the people jogging on the mall, which is a very high crime area, you know, the national mall at 9 in the morning. What are you hearing from, like, what's your sense of alarm as far as parallels to other countries or you're hearing from your European friends over there in Portugal? What's your sense of the state of

play with that? I mean, I think a lot of people's expectations have been reset over not only the first eight months or whatever, this administration's second term, but the last decade, seeing the United States, opt for a guy like Trump, and then opt for him again, in spite of his attempt to foment an insurrection and the overthrow of a government that he led, including hanging his then vice president. I mean, this is very par for the course for Europeans who have a history of, I mean, I was in Spain in June, where there was a pretty vicious fractricidal war fought in the 1930s. There's a plaza. Orwell and Barcelona, which is the only like touristy thing I did when I was there because he famously

fought on the side of an anarchist brigade defending the Republic. Europe is no, is, is very accustomed to the rise of populist dictators and obviously, you know, world war and and things like that. But there was always this kind of prevailing assumption that that wouldn't happen in the U.S. You know, I used to be quite kind of pissy about Europeans who would say, well, you know, what's to choose in America, Democrat Republican, it's two sides of the same coin of reaction. And I said, yeah, but, you know, we don't have communism and fascism like you guys. You know, like that, that sort of mind-numbing centrism or that kind of, you know, sort of political equilibrium has served us pretty well, certainly since World War II. And now, obviously, that's no longer true. So, I mean,

I don't know. I'm not in D.C. I'm not walking the streets, you know, with, with the the National Guard on the hill or whatever. But for me, it's kind of strange because I feel a little bit desensitized to it in a bad way. You know, you forget that he also sent US military into Los Angeles, you know, a few weeks ago. It's like, wait, oh, that happened, right? And now we're redeploying to Washington. So what's next? I don't know. I mean, you know, he seems to be keen on interfering in the New York mayoral race. And maybe if that doesn't go the way he wants. If Mamdani becomes mayor, he's going to do something similar in Manhattan. And I mean, Tom Homan was saying yesterday, they seem to be indicating the DC situation is in

some ways unique because he can do this legally for 30 days, but they're already kind of indicating that that might want to go on longer. There has been a small, I guess, individual act of resistance. You know, you never know what individual act of resistance will resonate, you know, who threw the first brick at Stonewall, for example. This was a man that threw a sandwich, through a subway sandwich at ice. For the YouTubers, I'm going to put the video of this up because it's too funny. The ice guy, he threw the sandwich that probably worked at Subway, not like three hours ago. I actually went on the website to see what the requirements are for applying, because I saw the South Park bit.

And, you know, you assume that parity is always kind of a hyper-reality or an exaggeration. There's no exaggeration. I mean, no college degree, no high school diploma. Come on in. The water's fine, you know. I mean, I debated a former actor, a low, former low-level Superman actor who's 59 years old, who's joined ICE. Is that Dean Kane?

Yeah. That's Dean Kaine? I want to play just for you. I'm just trying to sensitize you. I'm trying to sensitize you. This is the United States Attorney from Washington, D.C., talking about the sandwich incident. And the president's message to the criminals was, if you spit, we hit. Well, we didn't quite do that the other night when an individual went up to one of the federal

law enforcement officers and started jumping up and down, screaming at him, berating him, yelling at him. And then he took a subway sandwich about this big and took it and threw it at the officer. He thought it was funny. Well, he doesn't think it's funny today because we charged it with a, felony assault on a police officer well i don't know i kind of want to where is uh where's shepherd fairy when you need it by the way subway sandwiches are notoriously soft and squishy they never use stale bread so like if you're going to throw something at a cop you know it's not like you're

throwing a burger king or a mcdonalds you know so anyway that's where we're at though that's what's happening back here are you sure you want to come back that was again i just want to reiterate that was the united states attorney top top prosecutor for Washington, slurring. Good to have your priorities. Seem to be slurring there on the sandwich toss. Okay, we'll move on. I want to get to the summit, which is why you're here tomorrow in Alaska.

There's a bunch of elements to this. Trump and Zonk in the EU had a virtual meeting yesterday. But before we get into like that, I just like the biggest picture, like what do you assess the sides of trying to get out of the meeting? Well, let's first assess the obvious, which is the Russians already gained an enormous symbolic victory here. Putin is an indicted war criminal according to the ICC, which we're not a party to, but still we made a big deal about it when he was indicted. We are welcoming him onto American soil, not just any strip of American soil, but Alaska, which the Russians controlled up until 1867, and the Russians like to sort of trollingly joke that they may one day yet. control it again. Also, I'm hearing from my friends in the State Department. Do you know how many

visas the Russians have asked for for their people? I have no idea, no. Tell me. Take a wild guess. Take a wild guess. Um, 12. 450. More than that, do you know what they've also done? They've requested State Department assistance in finding accommodations for their people, which include an enormous delegation of journalists. They have more journalists, quote unquote journalists. How many of them are FSB or GRU agents, I don't know, coming in. We can't really mock their journalists anymore. I don't know if you've been watching any of the United States press conferences that we've been having lately, but some strange, strange cow out in there. Their victory lap is taking the form of expecting our own foreign ministry to be like an expedia

for the Russians and find them hotel rooms in Anchorage. I mean, if Sarah Palin could see Russia before, she can really see Russia from her house now, man. I mean, it's... I mean, how many hotel rooms do we think there are an anchorage. I don't know, our Alaska listeners will be upset at me for, but it's not, you know, both of them. It's not a high, it's not a high convention town. You know, it's not a big convention. No, it's not a hoot in any town. But anyway, you know, the Russians are coming in very high on the hog about, well, Trump has mooted this idea. He's the one who wanted to meet with Putin, desperately seeking an audience. And as, as I think the White House press secretary said that Trump is, quote, honored to sit down with this war criminal. Now,

There's a lot being thrown around in the media about supposed deals that have already been struck or the kinds of things that may be struck. I mean, I'm trying not to get ahead of myself here because I've seen this movie before where a lot of people run out there with very authoritative claims that then sort of evaporate. Trump has not got Putin to agree to a ceasefire, much to his chagritte, much to his evident exasperation. This is a guy who said, the force of my charisma, he literally described him. himself the other day, he said, I was the apple of Putin's eye. He said this. He said that a

couple times. He said that a couple times, right? So the force of his charisma, you know, Putin sees Donald Trump as like, you know, Vladimir Jr., the apple of his eye. The force of his charisma and his warmth and affection was meant to get Putin to say, yeah, you know, that war of conquest I launched a few years ago to take an entire sovereign nation in Europe. Yeah, I'm going to undo all that because, you know, Donnie from Queens asked me nicely. So that didn't work out. out, now it's what can I put on the table? How can I better negotiate with Putin directly to bring this thing to a close? And you know, you don't have to be a Russia expert or a scholar or even particularly well versed in the vagaries of Russian foreign policy to realize, you know,

the Russians are not interested in ending the war. And Putin himself cannot end it because the entire economy revolves around fighting this thing, right? I mean, he has now invested so much of his own strategic imperative as the dictator of Russia. His very regime kind of depends on prosecuting this war, however it may go. That doesn't seem to have penetrated in the minds of Donald Trump. Steve Whitkoff, who I prefer to call Dim Filby, who I was told was taken off the Russia portfolio because the New York Post wrote a very withering piece about him where some unnamed official from Trump's first term said, you know, Steve Whitkoff, Nice guy, but a bumbling fucking idiot who should be nowhere near any of this stuff.

I was told he had been shunted off onto the Middle East portfolio where he was going to end the war with Hamas and bring the hostages home and all of that good stuff. And suddenly he comes back and he's negotiating with the Russians. With a medal. With a medal. The order of Lenin, which Putin evidently gave him to bestow on the CIA officer, who's deeply fucked up son, went off and fought with the Russians and got killed in Ukraine, right? So talk about the Russians kind of, you know, twerking the Americans here. I mean, trolling. Yeah, and Wickham didn't get it.

He didn't, no. He didn't understand. He thought it was nice. He thought it was like a legitimate bauble to be handed to an American intelligence officer. So, yeah, I mean, and he also created a diplomatic crisis by saying, well, the Russians want all of Danyetsk and Lugans, which they do not control in full, right? To take all of Danyetsk, the Ukrainians would have to withdraw. from two fortified cities, Slaviansk and Kramatorsk. If you go back to 2014, 2015, some of the most pitched battles against the so-called separatists at that time were fought for these

population centers. So for the Ukrainians to withdraw from there, I mean, that's a non-starter. But anyway, Whitkoff had originally suggested Russia wants Danyetsk in Lugansk, and Russia will withdraw from their controlled areas of Zaparijia and Herzl. Russians never, ever said that. Basically, all the Russians have done or intimated that they've done because they're playing a little close to the chest in terms of what's been discussed. They prefer to see us in our media kind of chase our tail figuring out what the Russians may have said. But all that they seem to have done is say, this is what we demand of Ukraine.

What we're prepared to do is not up for discussion, right? So, again, their starting position is they have annexed for Oblasts of Ukraine. They will not unannex them easily, certainly not. you know, for any kind of incentives that Trump might offer. Now, the one thing that's keeping me from suicidal ideation at the moment, even in the sunny climate of Portugal, where the wine is cheap, but also quite good, is there are certain... There are certain institutional bulwarks in place in the U.S. system, even now...

Ding. Yeah, ding. Even now under an increasingly autocratic government or presidency, that keep Trump from doing the worst he could possibly do. So what are these bulwarks? In his first term, there was something called Katsa, the Countering American Adversaries Through Sanctions Act. One of the architects of it, ironically, was Marco Rubia. What was Katsa? It was basically a way to keep the executive from signing all kinds of sanctions waivers and lifting sanctions unilaterally, especially on Russia, which at that point had been guilty of the first invasion of Ukraine. It was kind of like a matter. a congressional mannacle on White House authority. Since then, there have been all kinds of executive orders, all of them codified through Katza, a series of legislation passed that

basically does the same thing, right? It says that Congress gets oversight. You have to have a vote of Congress in order to lift some of the major sanctions on Russian oil and gas, on the Russian banking system. The second will work, I would say, which is not in the American system, is the European Union. So the EU has said not only not lifting any sanctions, we're going to pass new sanctions. And so you notice now Zelensky in anticipatory terror of what's about to commence in Alaska has been going, making the rounds with the European leadership, meeting with Merits, having calls with everybody, saying, you have to have my back because if Donald tries to throw me under the bus again, it's going to fall to you to basically keep

Ukraine afloat. Now, there are other things to, and again, I don't credit anything Trump says, I prefer to look at what he does or he does not do. But he has said, if you want to take this as a data point, that regardless of what happens in Alaska, he will continue to sell weapons to NATO allies for the express purpose of their donating those weapons to Ukraine. So there's something called Pearl Mechanism, which was recently cobbled together. That's P-U-R-L, whereby NATO is going to buy billions and billions and dollars in kit that can only be sourced here, or sorry, there where you are in the United States, and that Ukraine badly needs. Now, these include long-range air defense systems like the Patriot, rocket artillery like

Gimler's and Attachms used by Hi-Mars, and Howitzer, 155 millimeter shells. So as long as Europeans can buy stuff for Ukraine, Ukraine will be okay. It will not be completely forfeit in its warfighting capability. And that came out of yesterday's virtual summit, that was at least what was said by Trump or is kind of what the Americans are saying. I'm hearing some background reporting from various phone calls, including the one that Trump had with Zelensky, which went pretty well from what I've been told. But again, who knows what that means? And I wonder what the, you know, the margin of not so pretty well was in that discussion. But I mean, at the end of the day, there's things that he also cannot do unilaterally without factoring in the agency of other

parties here. I mean, Ukraine's constitution forbids Ukraine from giving away territory, right? I mean, you know, Donald Trump seems to think that war is the closing of escrow by other means. Like, it's all just a real estate, you know, negotiation. It's not. Population transfers, ethnic cleansing, you know, either de facto or do your recognition of occupied territory. These are things that, you know, don't just happen overnight and cannot happen with the stroke of a pen, at least not in, you know, the 21st century, much as he would like them to go that way. So I'm not losing it just yet, but again, we've already given this unnecessary gift to the Russians by legitimating Putin in this way and inviting him, you know, onto the U.S. homeland.

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Let's look at it from the perspective of, okay, so of at least taking what was reported that Trump said yesterday at this virtual summit, Zolensky and a lot of other European leaders and NATO leaders. and let's just take it at face value. Yeah. I mean, we'll see what happens tomorrow, but just as an exercise.

So if what he's saying is that, you know, that we'll still sport NATO with weapons, he's just trying to get Putin to have a ceasefire, he feels like he is uniquely suited to do it because of his great relationship with Latimer, et cetera. I guess war game, you're in Marco Rubio's chief of staff. What's the best case scenario tomorrow? I don't even understand what they're trying to achieve. I guess they're hoping that Putin just says, yeah, I'll take a ceasefire in exchange for you guys not sanctioning me?

He doesn't need to have gone to Alaska to do that. He's had ample opportunity to agree to that over the past three months. He's declined. I think basically what Putin wants is a replay of Helsinki in 2018. We all remember that. He has this one-on-one with Trump, very limited contingent in the room, translators. and, you know, Fiona Hill, I think, was in the room. Maybe she wasn't.

But anyway, she has the best recounting of that. Yeah. Tete tete, which was, I mean, Putin just, he rolled Trump. I mean, he flattered him. He cajoled him. He manipulated him. He convinced him that his own intelligence community was lying about Russia's election interference in 2016.

He may well try to do the same thing, you know. But what are the smart people, quote unquote, in his world? Like, what does Rubio think is a good option here? a good outcome for tomorrow. It's hard for me to sort of get inside the mind of Marco Rubio at this point. I do think he, or the dead in soul of Marco Rubio. Okay, how about this way then? Let's put it this way.

What would happen tomorrow that Michael Weiss would text me at the end of the day and be like, well, that went pretty well, actually. That went surprisingly well. So one constant in nature is the Russians, when it comes to dealing with the Americans, even when they win, they eventually lose because they ask for too much and they play it too rough, right? And my one hope is that Dim Filby made assurances to the American side, to Trump, the Russians are going to meet you here. Putin gets in there and says, no, I never said that. I'm not going to meet you here. So then Trump comes away angry at both Putin and Whitkoff.

That's the best case scenario. Trump gets really angry like he's been manipulated or misled or lied to. by his own Outer Borough real estate developer chum and by Vladimir, you know, who has not stopped bombing. And he's not going to get his peace prize. He's not going to get his peace prize, so he's mad on it. I mean, by the way, the Norwegians could do us a big favor just coming out and saying, you're never going to get it.

They really could. You're never going to get it. You're never going to get it. Like, I don't know. I mean, I guess maybe that violates the rules or whatever, but, you know. They really could. Yeah. All right.

So, yeah, I guess it turns out those are two different questions because, or maybe not. I mean, Marco Rubio cannot possibly be hoping for that, right, that he's just like a bank shot. Maybe boss gets mad. We're doing this. Maybe boss gets mad. It's just a legitimate question. Like, I generally can't fathom what they think they're going to get out of this. Like, I don't understand it. I don't see a fire sale of Ukrainian territory happening. It may be introduced. It's not going to go anywhere. The Ukrainians cannot do it. It's not just Zelensky, by the way. The entirety of the Ukrainian political class would be against that. The Ukrainian population is very keen to see the war end, and they're willing to negotiate with Russia

in a manner that they weren't even a few months ago, but there are certain red lines here, right? And the Europeans won't go for that as well. I would say, you know, at minimum, you may be looking at prisoner swaps, which was the only sort of tangible outcome of the Istanbul meetings between the Ukrainians and the Russians. You may see a ceasefire in the air, which is something that's also been mooted. you know, the Russians stop bombing and droning Ukrainian civilian infrastructure and population centers, and the Ukrainians agree not to go after Russian oil and gas refineries or military installations inside Russian Federation territory, right? Maybe you get that. I doubt it,

though. I don't see Putin wanting to pump the brakes at any point. And just this week, you know, everybody got into a bit of a frenzy in panic mode, which is understandable. But just this week, the Russians broke through Ukrainian defenses in the East. Hold on. I want to get to that next. Let's get to that. It's just one more thing on the deal, because there's a telegraph story on, like, the process. And I know you said you don't want to get ahead of what crazy stuff Trump could possibly offer, but I just think this is just worth putting on the table since it's out there. It said this Trump will arrive. They say, we'll see if they're reporting is accurate. I think you really probably shouldn't use the word

will with anything about what Donald Trump's going to do the next day because who the fuck knows. but armed with a number of money-making opportunities for Putin, including opening up Alaska's natural resources to Moscow. Now, again, I hear you, I'm not going to get ahead, but that just caught my eye because that's like, now, that kind of sounds like Donald, actually. Maybe that's the plan to go there and be like, well, enriching you. Maybe a crypto deal. I mean, look, you know, before the war, First of all, Russia has a GDP smaller than the state of California. If you're looking to make money, you're much better off going to Asia, which was, you know, we've had this sort of fantastical pivot to Asia over successive administrations. It never seems to be realized. But also dealing with the Europeans and the European Union, I mean, they are our largest trade partner. So it makes no economical or financial sense to say, we're going to do, you know, big business with Russia at the expense of our biggest trade partner, right? Like, you know, we can all be very cynical about Donald Trump, but he does seem to be very transactionally motivated here. And offering the Russians something that, A, they don't want, B, they don't need, and C, is not

going to get us what we need out of them. Eventually, he's going to have to realize that that's the way it is. It wasn't so long ago that one of the ways that the Ukrainians were seeking to curry favor with Trump and lock him into this alliance or strategic partnership with Ukraine was the minerals deal. We all remember that, the rare earth thing, which that was meant to be signed. in the Oval Office in February, and then they had their big two minutes of hate against Zelensky, both Trump and Vance, and it blew up, and then it was signed. Well, what happens to that, right, if the Russians continue to move forward in the East where a lot of these deposits are? Suddenly, the contract is invalidated. It's torn up, and we have to write a new one between

the United States and Russia because these mineral deposits become Russian-held assets. You know, it doesn't make any sense. You've just concluded one board and room negotiation, and sanctified, you know, what it was agreed on. And now you've basically forfeited by doing something else with a third party. At the end of the day, I still see a chance for Ukraine not to come away as successful as it should have come away, particularly in the last administration where I think we were a little bit too slow and too fearful of escalating with the Russians, and we gave them things too late, although they made ample use of them. I'm not in sort of end of the world mode yet.

We are still providing arms, however indirectly and for whatever cost. We have yet to lift sanctions. I don't expect Trump to impose new sanctions. Maybe he'll surprise everybody. Maybe he'll come out of this meeting, deeply aggrieved with the Russians and hit crippling tariffs on China and also escalate the sanctions regime against Russia. But even if he doesn't, it's not the end of the world, right? I mean, Europe gets a lot of grief. But I want to read you a few statistics here because I think they're quite telling.

In the last six to eight months, you have seen two parts of Europe step up significantly in terms of security assistance and also seeing the writing on the wall that the United States was in a kind of recessional, not only pulling out of Ukraine, but essentially trying to relitigate, if not completely abandon the transatlantic relationship. I mean, we all remember J.D. Vans and Elon Musk interfering in Germany's election on behalf of A.F.D., a far-right Nazi party that has seats in the Bundestag. But the two parts of Europe that have done really a great deal of good, and they don't get enough recognition, are the Nordic countries and the Baltic countries. Individually, perhaps small, but collectively kind of powerful. So I want to read you the following, just to give you a sense not only of what they're doing, but just how, in stark contrast, this is to the notion that Trump and his surrogates of peddle that, you know, the Europeans are a bunch of freeloading welfare queens who don't, you know, do their fair share here. Okay. Since January of 2022 and June 2025, Denmark has spent 2.9% of its GDP on Ukraine. Estonia, 2.8%, Lithuania 2.2, Latvia, 1.8, Sweden, 1.4, and Finland, 1.3. These are figures, these are percentages of GDP spent on a foreign country that are in excess of the percent of GDP. that some European countries, like Spain, spend on their own defense as part of NATO, right?

These are countries that are giving, emptying their stocks of all the weapon systems that they have but do not need right now and understand are much better used on the battlefields of Ukraine to destroy Russian armor and personnel there so that the Russians cannot turn around and invade another European country in future. There's a lot of kind of nays saying and, you know, I get it, like Mark Ruta, with his daddy comments, the way that the Europeans come across Didn't love that. Didn't love that. They come across awkwardly as too kind of deferential, if not slavishly devoted to keeping Trump in good odor. They're doing it for a reason, though, right? Which is, you know, decoupling from the United States or getting the kind of

security autonomy, as Macron has put it, in place. It's like wheeling a tanker around in the ocean. You can't just whip it around. You move it by degrees, right? And it takes time and it takes energy. So I have to give the Europeans some breathing space and some credit here. And again, the real test will be if Donald Trump puts a gun to their head and says, you know, you have to sell out Ukraine, even though he has repeatedly said, this is your war or this is in your neighborhood, you should, you should sustain this. You should be responsible for it. And they say, thank you, but fuck you. We're not lifting sanctions. We're only imposing more sanctions. And we will continue, so long as this NATO mechanism is in place, to buy American weaponry for the purposes

of giving it to Ukraine, that's a good thing. That's a good thing in many respects, right? Like, we are telling an autocratic and corrupt American government that we appreciate everything you've done for us for the last 80 years, but we'll take it from here, you know? And I've been advocating to the Europeans. You have to do this. You know, you absolutely have to do this. It's in your own interest, and it certainly is in Ukraine's interest. So I don't generally come across as overly optimistic on these things. I'm loving it. But I'm not, again, if you just look at sort of the data, things could be so much worse for

Ukraine than they are. They're not great. They're not rosy. Again, I mentioned that Russia had this kind of... They're worse than they were in January. But it's not catastrophic. And if you query intelligence officials, if you query military analysts, they'll tell you the same thing.

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Our listeners get 10% off their first month at betterhelp.com slash the bulwark. That's betterhelp, help.com slash the bulwark. Back to what you're saying earlier about what is actually happening on the ground, because I've seen some reports that there were additional Russian military advances. Those been happening this week. They got behind, you know, in certain areas. Talk about what's happening on the ground. It's complicated along the contact line.

And so the conventional wisdom has been that this sort of gray zone, which extends several kilometers on, you know, sort of a no man's land between where the Ukrainians and the Russians are, particularly in Donbos, is so chaka block with drones that it was preventing any kind of breakthrough on either side. So what the Russians have done characteristically in the last six months to even maybe a year is rather than try to push heavy armor through, they send in guys on motorbikes or buggies, you know, two men, rapid, you know, assault groups to try and probe and then penetrate gaps or weaknesses in the Ukrainian defenses. Well, they found one. Now, it's very unclear to me. I've seen a very credible source called Deep State, which is a Ukrainian mapping service that kind of plots points. They were claiming that basically the Russians cut a very narrow but lengthy sliver, possibly seven kilometers, more than seven kilometers, right through from the Prokros direction, which has been a very hot area on the battlefield.

Pokrosk is the one town that the Russians are seeking to capture. It's kind of the new Bakhmut. But I'm also seeing evidence, and the Wall Street Journal has reported that the Ukrainians believe that they have stabilized that situation. So it doesn't quite count as what you would call an operational breakthrough, but it was a penetration. I mean, sometimes when the enemy comes through like this. They come through in too few numbers. They don't have a supply chain or they don't have a logistics line behind them. And then the defenders can simply cut them off, right, and hit them in the rear and whatever. So that seems that something like that has happened. But optically, it was absolutely terrible, right? Because here we are, you know, on the eve of this

thing in Alaska. And it looks like the Ukrainians are suddenly now on the back foot. You know, this attritional war has now shifted to, oh, the Russians are moving forward. So that gives ballast, however illegitimate and however meritless, based on everything I've just told you, to the kind of MAGA argument you see, Ukraine cannot win, in spite of all the gazillions we've spent on supporting them, they're still losing, we have to do a deal. And Putin will have absolutely capitalized on this development, especially the way that the U.S. media has framed it going into this thing tomorrow. One other just I have under the umbrella of Russia shenanigans, because we haven't brought this up,

just a couple of other news items they're out this week. There's a Colombian national, I guess, acting on behalf of Russian intelligence that carried out two arson attacks in Poland last year, but they're just this week. They're finally indicted, and they said that this was, in fact, Russia. There's been a hack in the U.S. Investigators uncovered evidence that Russia is responsible for a hack of a computer system that manages federal court documents, including highly sensitive records. I guess that part of the Russia op gets lost a little bit.

And even myself, I'm kind of like, well, you know, they're distracted in Ukraine and some of this other stuff that they're doing, this other meddling, you know, they cannot possibly be focusing on as much. But that does not seem to be the case. Well, their army, their army is distracted in Ukraine, but their special services are, I mean, their raison d'et is to mess with the West and do exactly these kinds of things. I mean, the group responsible or the military intelligence service, the GRU, is behind these. sabotage operations. And what they would do in the past is they would send their well-trained operatives into European countries, such as the Czech Republic or Bulgaria. They would plant bombs in storage facilities where weapons and ammunition destined either for Ukraine or Georgia or in some cases the Syrian opposition were being stockpiled. And they would blow these things up. So committing acts of war, acts of state terror on EU-NATO soil, using officers of Russian military intelligence. A lot of those officers, though, got unmasked, including by my colleagues

at The Insider, for trying to poison Sergei and Julius Scripal, for doing these kinds of bombings that I've just described. So what have they done since the full-scale invasion in 2022? They've taken a leaf out of the ISIS and Al-Qaeda playbooks in that they're trying to remotely recruit assets in the West for money, paying them cryptocurrency, in some cases a couple hundred dollars, in other cases, thousands of dollars, communicating with them on telegram, and tasking them with going and throwing a petrol bomb into a museum in Riga that memorializes Soviet occupation, or arsoning an IKEA warehouse in Vilnius, or, you know, in the case of Germany, planting incendiary devices, trying to plant incendiary devices on DHL cargo planes

and sometimes smuggled in little trinkets and even sex toys, right? And they're finding willing assets or agents in the West who are desperate for money. They're not necessarily ideologically motivated in some cases they may be. But now what they've done, there's a department called Department E. And it's run by the GRU unit 29155, which did all of these kind of kinetic operations I've been alluding to. And Department E is kind of a combination of the GRU and the old Soviet common term, or communist international, and that they're looking for foreign nationals, not just in their own neck of the woods, but all over the world that they can recruit, bring to places where they can give them some modicum of training because they don't want to be complete amateur hour here,

right? Because with amateurs, you want to risk of things going sideways, blowing things up prematurely, a lot of collateral damage. You want to have people who know how to build a bomb and how to install a bomb and how to work a detonator. So we're hearing and we're seeing evidence at the insider where I work, they're recruiting Cubans, Venezuelans, South Americans, African, who, I mean, as you may know, the Kremlin, the Russian Ministry of Defense, has actually given contracts to, I mean, peasants in Africa telling them, come to Russia, and you'll be like putting shampoo in bottles. In fact, they're coming to Russia and they're building drones.

And they're using children who are blowing their hands off and blowing themselves up because they don't know what they're doing. So it's very cynical. And, you know, they're enlisting people to commit acts of criminality, acts of state terrorism. but, you know, desperate people will do incredible things, particularly with, you know, anonymities they meet on the internet. So this is a very kind of scary state of affairs. And, you know, one of the things I would be advocating if I were in the White House or, you know, working for the intelligence community in the United States is anything that gets discussed with the Russians, you know, the first order of business is

Russia needs to stop not only its war in Ukraine, but it's war against the West, which has been ongoing now for decades. We like to dress this up in euphemisms, hybrid war, gray zone conflict, asymmetrical. I just call it war. I mean, you know, Gary Kasparov is very Orwellian in the good way about the use of language here. These are acts of war. And we like to downplay them or kind of act as the sort of unlikely legal defense counsel for the Russians. Why? Because we're terrified of the consequences of admitting what's happening. Fear of escalation, right? What are we going to do the Russians in retaliation. So, yeah, I mean, there are over 500 cases, some of them verified and adjudicated by different jurisdictions in Europe, others just highly likely it's the Russians

behind them, but 500 cases in the last few years that have been exactly this, attempts to blow things up or to do provocations and acts of subversion on European soil. I'm curious, you know, when you're having these conversations with folks, particularly in Europe, like developing thoughts on Israel, Gaza, and it definitely feels like, I mean, the Europeans weren't exactly the biggest advocates of Israel's actions in the war initially, but it feels like there's even, you know, been a notable change in their posture over the last month or so, get with the humanitarian issues in Gaza and the journalists that have been droned. I'm just wondering if you are noticing any change and how that might impact things geopolitically.

Yeah, I mean, I think the biggest sort of bellwether to me recently was Germany saying it's not going to send weapons to Israel. I mean, Germany has been kind of the most pro-Israel country in Europe, I mean, to a fault, you know, doing things like disinviting authors and journalists who have been critical of Israeli occupation in the West Bank from giving talks in German government institutions and things like that. And, you know, we all, I think, understand why Germany. among other nations in Europe has taken this attitude. But if Mertz is now... You want to put a good foot forward if you're Germany. You know, you don't want to send any wrong signals there. But yeah, I hear you. Right, right. And now you have this sort of growing chorus, not just in Europe.

I mean, Australia, most recently, that they're going to recognize a state of Palestine. Symbolically powerful, but materially isn't going to change much. And another thing that, if I can sort of tie the two themes of this discussion together, Another thing that might have been slightly useful in, again, the sort of muddled and somewhat contradictory reporting about the preliminaries of the Alaska Summit is Steve Whitkoff apparently is suggesting a kind of West Bank administrative arrangement for Russia and Ukraine. Now, I can only advocate Steve Whitkoff touring European capitals and saying, right, so what we want the Russians to do is what the Israelis are doing in Palestine. That'll go down real well here. you know like again you know dim philby steps on a rake europe has been historically much more sympathetic to the palestinian plight and cause than the united states is although things seem to be

changing in america as well opinion is not what it what it once was and i think the israelis recognize that do they they care i guess would be my question no no no when i say the israeli i don't mean netting yahoo in his cabinet i mean people who are certainly intelligence and military professionals of old see that there is a massive international isolation taking place, and they're blaming Bibi for it. I mean, they say you can't afford to lose some of these allies, because without them, we're kind of lost or drifted sea. I think in some cases, Israel is a victim of its own military triumphalism and its successes in the region, particularly, you know, neutering Hezbollah, which was probably the cornerstone of its multiple theater wars. what they did in Iran, they think that they, you know, they're the only game in town. No one can sort of confront them or challenge them and that everybody will kind of fall in line.

Well, no, it's not, it's not working out that way. One more just kind of tying the conversation together is the tariffs, just as like as one example here, Bessent yesterday, was talking about how we've put secondary tariffs on India for buying Russian oil. They're trying to use that the tariffs is a leverage point. here in these negotiations ahead of Alaska. This is sort of thrust India to China's arms, creating other geopolitical issues. You can go off on that or just anything broad that you're hearing about how the tariff conversation has impacted things. Yeah, I mean, look, you know, I understand the point of view of those who think Trump has not and will not ever do anything untoward

to the Russians because he's either just feels it in his Kishkas that Putin is the best friend he just hasn't made yet, or perhaps might be a Russian intelligence asset or whatever. I mean, look, the bottom line is, if you're going to really hit the Russian energy sector, you're going to have to put tariffs on China. However, hitting India was sort of baked into the cake of the much-touted and yet unrealized Blumenthal or Graham Blumenthal bill, right? Yeah. Which is meant to be this kind of neutron bomb of secondary sanctions, which would impose 500% tariffs

on any country importing Russian oil, gas, petroleum products, or uranium. Well, India certainly qualifies in that regard. And you've seen some reporting suggesting that the Indians are saying, well, okay, we'll back away from importing Russian oil, or we'll pivot to American oil or whatever. It is kind of funny. It's like we're really, in order to show how strong we are on Russia, we're really coming down hard on India. Yeah, one of our allies.

Yeah. No, I get it. It's a low-order thing for Trump to do. He's very, it's very easy for him to beat up on our friends and allies, right? And then eventually he kind of climbs down. That's why he's taco. He doesn't like going after our adversary, or at least our great power adversaries. I would not qualify Iran as that.

And that, I think, as I said earlier on your show or a previous episode, that was sort of an invitation crafted by the Israelis to come on in, the water's fine. We've taken care of it all, right? So it was the lowest order kind of military action for him. But it does not look very likely that he is going to impose any kind of penalty on the Russians. And if the best outcome here is that he doesn't give the Russians any new freebies, he doesn't improve the state of their economy, which is right now in tatters, and he allows the Europeans to kind of inherit the mantle of this conflict, which, as I've said before, they have done to a large degree already. That's probably the best case scenario I can envisage. So in other words,

kind of benign neglect, wash his hands of it, move on to, I don't know, sending the Marines into Madison Square Garden or whatever. Like, you know, honestly, I just, we have to be very realistic here. This is not a guy who cares about Ukraine at all. In fact, the opposite. I think he sees it as a liability and a burden, and he would like to see Russia as a great opportunity. But, But if only the Russians would agree with him on that. All right. Michael Weiss. Anything else around the world on your eyes?

Anything I didn't ask you about? Anything you're monitoring? Or just, you know, appearing for Anchorage? Yeah, no. I've been kind of, I've been trying to be as switched off as possible while I'm on holiday here. All right. All right. Well, I'm sorry for taking off of holiday and beautiful cache-c-c-c-c-h.

People who have not been there, it's spelled for listeners, C-A-S-C-A-I-S, right, C-C-C-C-H. Yes, and I'm determined to mispronounce it. even after I leave here, because I hear different things from different people, including the way my in-laws pronounce it, would probably get all Americans driven out of Portugal. I just had the most glorious afternoon there, and it was bittersweet, actually, because I was just jealous. I hadn't scheduled more time when I was there in Portugal, so I'm jealous of you. This has become like a very popular expat country, because it's beautiful. The people are very friendly and warm and it's inexpensive. I mean, you will not eat a bad meal and you will not pay

a lot of money for it. So I encourage all to come to Portugal. And no, I'm not being underwritten by the Portuguese ministerialism or culture in saying that. That's Michael Weiss. Appreciate you for taking an hour on your holiday. Appreciate your wife. Sure. You know, kind of having to mosey around here. No birds this time. But, you know, we've got people around. You can only do so much. And everybody else we've got we've got an interesting guest for you tomorrow we'll be doing some rhyming and I think you'll be enjoying it so come back for that we'll see you all soon peace your mom's got nothing on me your daddy's got nothing on me and the world that sleeps in his noticing has got nothing on me

on me and the fool who sees it's the beast that he's got nothing on me you know it's not because the light here gets brighter and it's not that I'm evil I've got a friend in the devil but I can't even be your friend I can't even be your friend I can't even be your friend I can't even be your friend I can't even be your friend I think it's so wild up, but I've been alright, and if I get some dressed, yeah, there'd be nice when I shouldn't do it, I'd say, do it, what you think is like, nothing to turn to a dance, before you were born, I wish I'd love to sit. Yeah, yeah, when I get to work it up, when I walk it out, and then I get you down, I just shouted out.

I may not have it all, but the rest will do, and it's nothing that can't sort of do with you. Before you were born, I was already sitting there, and it's not because the light here is trying to, and it's not that I'm evil. I don't like to pretend that I could ever be your friend. The board podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brett.