Civil War In The Russian Leadership?

I’m offering below a transcript of John Helmer and Nima’s video exchange:

John Helmer: The Real Reason the Anchorage Deal Collapsed

The video presentation amounts to an oral conflation of two Helmer articles:

WHY THE WITKOFF-KUSHNER ATTACK STRATEGY IS BEING REPLACED BY US COMMANDERS WHO SAY BATTLEFIELD DEFEAT REQUIRES TACTICAL WITHDRAWAL

and

POPEYE AND THE ANCHORAGE FORMULA – KREMLIN NEEDS MORE THAN SPINACH TO FIGHT THE US AT SEA

The titles aren’t terribly enlightening as regards the content. What Helmer presents is a disquieting view of a Russian leadership that is divided. On the one hand are the Oligarchs, who have links to Putin especially via Kirill Dmitriev, with whom Steve Witkoff (and sometimes Jared) talks deals. On the other hand, according to Helmer, is essentially the entire Russian natsec establishment—the General Staff, the intel agencies, the Foreign Ministry—with FM Sergey Lavrov fronting for them. Let’s try to put this in context.

When Dmitriev began his wheeling and dealing with Witkoff it was noticeable that Sergey Lavrov appeared to be sidelined. This seemed unusual at the time because the Russians are usually sticklers for proper form—peace negotiations should be discussed through diplomatic channels. Those early talks culminated in the Anchorage summit—and I’ll rely on Helmer’s description of that event. In the months since Anchorage there has been succession of Witkoff (and now Witkoff/Jared) meetings in Moscow. To all appearances Putin has held his ground on peace terms, but has clung to the notion that something or other was agreed to at Anchorage. Again, more on that in the transcript.

Now, in the last week or so, Lavrov has issued a series of strongly worded statements calling into question the viability of Russian reliance on anything that was supposedly agreed upon at Anchorage. He has argued, with no beating around the bush, that the American side has basically walked away from any commitments and has instead adopted a policy of escalated economic warfare—including piracy on the high seas—in a bid to enforce an American chokehold over global energy flow. Lavrov’s statements sparked a rejection from Putin’s spokesman, Peskov—who, presumably, was speaking for Putin, even though Putin himself seems to have backed off to some degree from optimism stemming from Anchorage.

Most recently there was the Bloomberg report of a “Kremlin memo” that suggested that a Russian peace plan was in the offing—a plan that was, to all appearances, a Russian capitulation to Trump. I wrote about that in The ‘Kremlin Memo’, King Dollar, Gold, and noted pointedly that this mysterious memo sounded for all the world like the things we were hearing from the early Dmitriev - Witkoff talks:

Here’s the gist of the memo:

One central item is the call for pivoting back to fossil fuels over green energy, expanding joint ventures in natural gas and offshore oil, while partnering on critical minerals - with significant upside for American firms.

The partnership would include, per the Bloomberg report:

1. US and Russia working together on fossil fuels

2. Joint investments in natural gas

3. Offshore oil and critical raw material partnerships

4. Windfalls for US companies

5. Russia’s return to the USD settlement system

The memo was reportedly circulated among senior Russian officials and would mark a dramatic and sharp reversal from the Kremlin’s de-dollarization push, with obvious major implications for global financial flows.

When was the last time you saw a dramatic and sharp reversal of Russian policy? And why would Russia embrace the dollar at this particular juncture (see below)?

…

For my part, this “memo” sounds suspiciously like reports we got about the conversations between Kirill Dmitriev and Steve and Jared. In other words, a Jewish American wheeler dealer dream list.

Some people speculate that this hoax—there is no Kremlin comment, but perhaps that will be the subject of another memo release—was floated to try to drive a wedge between Russia and China. That’s as plausible as anything I can think of. For the rest:

All of the above impressions are strengthened by Helmer’s presentations, both oral and written. I have long maintained that Trump’s Anglo-Zionist handlers will never, ever, allow him to make peace with Putin—except on terms that would lead to Russian submission. I admit to being rather shocked by what Helmer describes, because it fits in with the surrounding circumstances.

Here’s the transcript:

One of the most important questions and one of the main points that we were talking about is, What exactly was the Anchorage formula as referenced by Russian officials, and in what ways do current US sanctioned enforcement measures--such as tanker interceptions-- undermine and contradict Russia’s interpretation of that formula? What is your understanding of that?

Well, it’s a very important new development that everybody should understand here. Sergey Lavrov, the foreign minister of Russia, has declared war on Dmitri Peskov, the Putin’s spokesman. Let me explain how this works.

You’ve introduced it as the argument over the so-called ‘Anchorage formula.’ The Anchorage formula is a slogan that the Russian side has been using. President Putin has repeated it many times, and therefore his spokesman has repeated it many times, as a formula that they allege to have been agreed with President Trump during the Anchorage summit meeting last August. Let’s remember that Trump walked away abruptly halfway through that summit meeting. The summit meeting papers indicated the plan on the US side was for at least 4 hours, a 45minute press conference, a lunch with the extended delegation, and so forth and so on. Trump walked away, cut it short. This is not part of the formula. What happened-- according to my Russian sources--is that President Putin lectured Trump and believed that Trump understood a variety of Russian concerns, the so-called ‘root causes’ of conflict that led to the battlefield war that preceded the special military operation.

Putin believed Trump agreed, but Trump left quickly. His attention span is not high level. He left quickly. And ever since then, the Russian side, as it dealt with Trump’s emissary, particularly Stephen Witkoff, have [regarded the] Trump [presidency as] the opportunity to make an end of the war in the Ukraine and reopen economic relations, business relations, business as usual, with the Americans and, to some extent, recover from the damage sanctions have done--including the freezing of the central bank’s two to300 billion worth of reserves.

The formula has factional meaning in Russian, in Moscow politics, in Kremlin politics. On the one hand Kirill Dmitriev--the so-called ‘business representative’ of the president who negotiates directly with Witkoff, directly with Bessent, directly with other members of the administration--Elvira Nabiullina, the governor of the Russian Central Bank, and business constituents--let’s call them the Oligarchs, for short--have all wanted a shortening of the war, a resumption of US relations. They believe that the deal--and Dmitriev celebrates it in self advertising tweets--has been done. And, indeed, my Russian sources confirm that largely the negotiations with Witkoff and Kushner have resulted in their appearing to accept that Russia has won on the battlefield and that there are a number of ways in which the sides can agree on reopening business relationship. Stopping the sanctions war and so forth.

That’s what they think they’ve agreed to with Witkoff. We can go into more details about what they plan to do. It’s essentially privatize the $200+ billion worth of [seized Russian] central bank reserves. Privatize them in a US-Russian fund which Kushner, Witkoff, and Dmitriev would oversee. Privatizing state property is a rather unusual way of solving a war, but that’s what they think they’ve achieved.

I think we can all agree that that would be a mind boggling giveaway by the Russians, if it ever happened.

At the same time, that is not the view of the General Staff, it’s not the view of Sergey Lavrov, it’s not the view of the intelligence services, and it appears not to be the consensus of the Security Council advising the president. They believe the United States wants to get out of a losing war on the battlefield in the Ukraine and make a tactical withdrawal, so it does not appear to be a rout. As they withdraw, they want to reinforce as much of the Ukrainian armed forces as will continue in the future to harass, attack, terrorize, and continue their war against Russia. So, conserving them as the US withdraws is a major objective. Conserving European readiness to continue the war against Russia on the other fronts-- Poland, Finland, up to the Arctic, northern route and so forth--that’s another US strategic objective, as the Russian side, [all but the Oligarchs], think.

Now, what’s happened is that for some weeks and months the Russian foreign ministry has been saying that there is such an escalation of sanctions against Russia--against Russia’s ability to trade its oil and so forth--that the so-called Anchorage formula on reducing tension and ending war no longer exists. When a deputy foreign minister said that, he’s been corrected by the Kremlin. This time, foreign minister Lavrov said it as as bluntly as it’s possible, and then Lavrov’s position was rejected by Peskov. I’ll read that too. So, basically, what Lavrov said on February the 9th in an interview in Moscow was:

The Trump - Putin meeting in Anchorage indicated to us that the Ukraine problem should be resolved in Anchorage. We accepted the US proposal. Quote, I’m quoting. “If we regard it as gentlemen, it means that they proposed it and we agreed. So the problem must be resolved. So far”--and this is where Lavro declares war--”the reality is quite the opposite. New sanctions are imposed. A war against tankers in the open sea is being waged in violation of the UN convention on the law of the sea. They are trying to ban India and our other partners from buying cheap, affordable Russian energy. This means the Americans have set themselves the task of achieving economic domination.

“Furthermore, while they ostensibly made a proposal regarding Ukraine and we were ready to accept it, now *they* are not [ready to go forward]. We do not see any bright future in the economic sphere either. The Americans want to take control of all the routes for providing the world’s leading countries, all continents, with energy resources.” And it goes on.

He said that on February the 9th, and Tass reports [that Peskov called Tass in to make a statement for publication]. Remember, Peskov doesn’t just suddenly say something. Peskov is responding to what Lavrov says. “The spirit of Anchorage,” says Peskov, speaking for the president, “reflects a set of mutual understandings between Russia and the United States that are capable of bringing about a breakthrough, including in the settlement between Moscow and Kiev. There is a whole range of understandings that were reached in Anchorage which were already discussed even *before* Anchorage, during Mr. Witkoff’s visit here, and it was after this that the need for a summit meeting arose. These understandings achieved in Anchorage are fundamental and it’s these understandings that can move the settlement process forward and allow for a breakthrough.”

Peskov then refused to go into the details answering your question: What the hell is the Anchorage formula? Now, that’s faction fighting. It’s as clear as day. Let me go back to what Russian sources tell me is the behavior of Witkoff and Kushner in the negotiating room--as happened in Abu Dhabi recently. But they report this is how Witkoff behaves in Moscow as well. They regard Witkoff as extremely crude, very arrogant. They regard Kushner as somebody who almost never says anything. Kushner behaves as if Witkoff is his father figure. Kushner is there to symbolize Trump’s presence, but he does no negotiating, no talking. That’s odd for those who are sitting in the room watching the two of them. But Witkoff believes--is in fact obsessed with-- the notion of projecting military force, projecting military power--US power that’s decisive. He’s therefore confident at all times that he and his military can enforce a settlement--as they believe they have done in Gaza, as they believe they could do in Iran, as he believes that they have done in Venezuela, could do in Cuba, and so forth and so on.

But in the Ukraine, as we saw in the recent Abu Dhabi meeting, there were senior military officers present. [US] General Alexus Grynkewich, the commander of the European Command, was to the right of the table--the American delegation, if you look at it. And, on the far left, General Adamsky, I believe, the head of J2, the military intelligence for the European Command. In other words, military officers were talking to the [Russian] Admiral Kostikov, General Formin [?] and General Zorin on the Russian side and the Ukrainian military figures including the chief of staff Hnatov [?].

The following paragraph is strangely phrased. I interpret it to mean that the Dmitriev faction believe that there attempts to bribe the Trump faction will bear fruit, and so the Dmitriev faction is determined to prevent any interference by the NatSec faction in the Kremlin. Especially, they are determined to prevent the Russian Navy from taking steps to protect Russian shipping.

What has happened here is that Dmitriev’s confidence that Witkoff can be bribed--that the Trump family can be bribed, that the huge billion dollar deals, including with Russian reserves, can generate returns for the Trump family, returns for the Witkoff family and so forth--that these lures are, in fact, achieving economic coordination between the two. They [the Dmitriev faction] do not want any form of resistance, especially not at sea. They are absolutely determined to block any conflict clash between Russian forces and American forces.

This supine response to American piracy is exactly what Lavrov and the NatSec faction are incensed about.

Now, as Lavrov pointed out, as clear as day, while the Americans have been negotiating a tactical withdrawal from the Ukrainian battlefield because they are losing and want to conserve their forces from total capitulation and destruction, the Americans have been escalating at sea. So, they’re attacking every single major sea route. They seized the Russian flag vessel the Marinara was reflagged as it sailed off the coast of Scotland near Iceland. They are expanding in the Baltic through Estonia, Poland, and Germany. They’ve expanded in the south in the central Atlantic off the coast of France. They’ve expanded aggressively in the Danish straits through Denmark. We’ve talked about all of these incidents. Attacks off the coast of Crete in the Mediterranean. Vessels, Russian vessels have been sunk. So-called sabotage off the coast of Algeria at the end of 2024. And I’m not even including the war at sea in the Black Sea.

So what we have, including the most recent seizure of vessels, is what Lavrov called piracy. Now piracy happens when vessels are not Russian flagged … not all working for Russia, only about 15% of them, are Russian flagged, but the speed at which Russian flagging has occurred is now accelerating. The question then becomes—and it’s a fraught question, a controversial question in Moscow right now—What can the Russian Navy, what can the Russian air force, what will the commander-in-chief agree to do, to defend this fleet from US attack? And you can very well understand when Lavrov says this level of attack on our vessels, on our trade, whether it’s flagged or not, it’s still Russian trade, is an escalation that violates—no matter what understanding was reached in Anchorage.

So now they’re having an argument. And in December, Admiral Alexander Moiseyev, the Russian naval commander, published a piece in a military magazine, Military Thought it’s called in English, arguing that you must have Russian naval protection to keep the trade routes open. Now, that’s easier said for the Arctic route because there’s a Russian shore, there are Russian bases. It’s not so easy to project Russian naval power far off Russian shores where the US has bases. And we’ve just seen a major interception and seizure of a vessel, not a Russian flagged vessel, in the Indian Ocean. The Americans, for the time, have been keeping it secret. It appears to have been in the western Indian Ocean and it takes a lot of effort for the US Navy and its shore bases—Singapore, Diego Garcia, and elsewhere—to mount these operations. However, it’s clear it’s a war against Russia at sea, it’s clear it’s got an economic target, and it’s clear that Dmitriev and that faction in Moscow have nothing to add to the defense and they don’t want their business-as-usual doctrine to be undermined if there’s a clash between Russian naval support for Russian flagged vessels.

Now years ago I wrote a book called Softcomplot, published 2023. It’s very difficult to have gotten President Putin then to make the decisions that are required to run one of the world’s largest fleets as Softcomplot was then. Now it’s sanctioned. It’s very difficult to run that fleet without controversy, without faction fighting, without corruption. It was very difficult then without war. Now we’re at war and the Softcomplot fleet is a major Russian defense of its trade and it’s very difficult, in Moscow terms, to get President Putin to decide not only how Softcomplot should function that’s been half decided, half decided as it were by keeping the fleet in the dark. Now that doesn’t work. You can’t have the Russian Navy defend [just any] flagged vessels. The Russian Navy must defend Russian flagged vessel. We said this, we discussed this in an earlier program, but to reflag and then to deploy the Russian navy means a serious military problem and for the Dmitriev faction it’s a serious challenge to their power.

So Sergey Lavrov has thrown down a gauntlet. We must defend. And that means the navy, the air force. And it means lots of things. Shore alliances. Shore alliance with India for the Indian Ocean, shore alliance with China for the Pacific, and so on and so forth. There are huge strategic problems to be solved here, military and technical problems to be solved, and Dmitriev’s opposed to it. He thinks Witkoff and he made a deal. Witkoff, on the other hand, enjoys this [US] projection of power, supports this projection of power, and so we’re not as quite as close to a a peace treaty, an end of war, as some folks want to say. Even if the Ukrainian military capitulated on that battlefield.

Now Helmer shifts to to talking about coordination of the those countries that have an interest in protecting their shipping from American interference—especially Russia and China.

Each country is going to have to look to its own interests. And we’ve just seen a very significant division, disagreement, surfaced by Yuri Ushakov after the telephone or video conference that was held between President Putin and the Chinese president, President Xi Jinping last week. And in that readout from Ushakov, we see disagreement. … It repeats the Russian disclosure, let’s say, that Lavrov disclosed last year last December when Wangi Yi the foreign minister of China came to Moscow and met with the security council secretary Sergey Shoigu and foreign minister Lavrov. What was said indicates that there are significant points of difference. The two sides’ positions overlapped, closely coordinated, but didn’t quite agree. But the points of disagreement have not been identified.

There *was* a disclosure by the Russian side that there *is* a point of disagreement that was important for the Russian side to surface. Lavrov did it in December. Ushakov just did it last week. We don’t know what that point of disagreement is, and the Chinese readouts are so empty of information as not to admit even what the Russian side has admitted. Is there a concern between the two sides, for example, on preserving the oil trade, the seaborne trade that carries Russian goods--not only energy goods--to China in the event that the United States starts to try to intercept and stop that trade?

I will venture a guess, which may indicate Chinese uneasiness with the Dmitriev faction’s influence with Putin. In Ushakov’s readout we read:

Overall, Moscow and Beijing have been working in coordination with each other on the international stage. It was pointed out that the sides’ positions on the overwhelming majority of international issues are similar or fully coincide. Of course, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping also exchanged views on their countries’ relations with the United States. Their approaches almost fully coincide, which is evident from their attitude to the US President’s initiative for creating the Board of Peace.

Maybe this is just me, but recall that Putin was initially remarkably positive toward what was a transparent and quite vulgar Trump manipulative ploy, but then recently backed away from it. My guess is that the Dmitriev faction tried to talk Putin into signing on, but that the Russian NatSec faction as well as the Chinese strongly urged that Trump’s vulgar ploy was a transparent attempt to essentially do away with the UN and substitute Trump himself as a sort of world ruler.

For the time being, and we said it a long time back when Trump actually relieved China from the Rosneft oil sanction that was introduced last year. He, Trump, enforced it against India but relieved it against China. Okay. But what if it changed? We would expect it would be normal for the Russian side and the Chinese side at the level of security council level of navy at the level of of of senior officials and then kicked up to the summit to be discussing how to coordinate shore action to facilitate defense against these US-based driven interceptions at sea.

We know that for, example, the US seizure of the Marinara required a US base [to conduct the] interception [from the] Scottish shore with the British. ... What we must understand now is that for Admiral Moiseyev [and the] Russian Navy protection in convoy with overflights or naval escorts you need shore bases. Okay, shore bases in the Indian Ocean means India. Shore bases in the Pacific means China. Shore bases in the Arctic, that’s Russian, that’s less of a problem. Shore bases in the Baltic, less of a problem. Shore bases in the in the Black Sea, less of a problem. But there’s clearly a need now for coordination between Russia and India and between Russia and China.

We know that coordination is necessary for any such scheme. China is quite vulnerable to naval interference by the US in the Indian Ocean, so one would logically expect China to strongly favor joint efforts. Is it possible that China is disquieted by the Dmitriev led Russian flirtation with reconciliation with the US on American terms—at precisely the moment when US hostility toward China is at a fever pitch? Is China suspicious of a possible Russian sellout? If so, Putin’s friendship with Dmitriev would likely be to blame.

Is that one of the points of disagreement with China? We don’t know, but I’m making it public because the Russian side has made it public--except it isn’t seen to have been made public. Now the Indian side during the Putin - Modi summit meetings in Delhi in December agreed to a variety of coordinated deployments, so that Indian military can use Russian ports and vice versa. The US has similar relationships with Pakistan for the Indian Ocean. They use Diego Garcia in the middle of the Indian Ocean. They have bases all the way to the east in Singapore. So we know that Trump is enforcing the so-called promise of Prime Minister Modi that India will cut its oil imports from Russia and the Indians are indeed reducing and will reduce over time. On the other hand, there have been vessel interceptions, allegedly in relation to Iranian oil movement off Mumbai, off the coast of India in the last few days and hours. So what we have to assume, what must be happening is the three allies--India, China, and Russia--in support of their allies, including Iran, in support of the oil trade that’s vital to all three, must be negotiating naval cooperation to protect these convoys these trade routes these straits, Gibralta, Malacca, uh, Danish Straits, the Dardenelles and so forth. They must cooperate. And do they disagree? Is everyone wanting to make their own deal with the United States? We don’t know yet.