First Moves Since The Riyadh US - Russia Meeting
Events are continuing to develop after the initial meeting of top American and Russian officials in Riyadh, KSA. The #1 priority that SecState Rubio presented after the meeting was the reestablishment of normal diplomatic relations between the US and Russia. Today we hear that Putin, having heard what FM Lavrov had to say after the meeting—presumably that Trump isn’t trying to play any “Gypsy tricks”—has agreed to this important step:
BREAKING:
President Putin announces that Russia and the United States have officially agreed to restore diplomatic relations.
The importance of Putin’s statement is that this should pave the way for the first face to face Putin - Trump 2.0 meeting in Riyadh, possibly by the end of February.
Putin’s statements coincides with, or possibly directly follows, statements on the American side—to include Trump referring to Zelensky as a “dictator” and stating that Ukraine started the war. All of that has to be run through the usual Trumpian Rhetoric Interpreter, but we get the idea.
But it wasn’t just Trump:
Polymarket Intel @PolymarketIntel
JUST IN
Reuters: The U.S. refuses to sign a draft UN resolution marking three years since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which reaffirms Kyiv’s territorial integrity and condemns Russian aggression.
7:39 AM · Feb 20, 2025
This, of course, comes on top of increasingly acrimonious statements between the Trump 2.0 reps and the Kiev regime. Also, it follows rumors in the German paper Bild and the UK Financial Times that the US has agreed to withdraw from NATO countries that became NATO after 1990—a key part of Putin’s draft treaties of December, 2021:
Megatron @Megatron_ron
NATO is on the verge of collapse
If the rumors that the German newspaper BILD published, and a similar announcement was made by the Financial Times, that the United States is ready to withdraw from NATO member states that joined after 1990, which includes the Baltics, are true, NATO can officially be declared dead.
NATO was formed and operated with one goal, to stop the influence and threat from the Soviet Union and later Russia.
NATO gradually expanded towards Russia, absorbing country after country.
The conflict happened, Russia won and the existence of NATO, which is 70% on the back of the United States, no longer has a purpose, at least not for the US.
It may survive, but not as we knew it until now, it is possible to rebrand itself as some European military organization.
2:01 PM · Feb 19, 2025
Doug Macgregor was predicting this at the very start of the conflict. I had to chuckle at this story:
Poland Revives 'Fort Trump' Idea In Effort To Keep US Troop Presence
Keep US troops in Poland—while slashing Pentagon spending? Nice try.
Megatron @Megatron_ron
BREAKING: President Trump will massively cut the military budget
The US presidential administration has instructed the Pentagon to prepare a plan to cut the budget by 8% per year over the next five years, the Washington Post writes.
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3:37 PM · Feb 19, 2025
Not coincidentally, Wall Street is down massively this morning. That says a lot about the US economy’s dependence on massive government deficit spending. More …
PP comments on JDVance savaging globalist narrative spinner Niall Ferguson:
JD Vance @JDVance
This is moralistic garbage, which is unfortunately the rhetorical currency of the globalists because they have nothing else to say. …
Philip Pilkington @philippilk
The British neocons are going under the bus. The Churchillian stuff is a tired old horse and Americans under 45 have been sick of it for years. Sadly the younger Britcons have been unable to articulate a new position for the country. No surprise the gold is being repatriated. … The Americans intend to pin the blame for the war on @BorisJohnson and the British.
In fairness, Trump has been blaming Zhou all along but, yes, the Anglo-Zionists will get dumped upon.
America is literally repatriating all the British gold before they dump the country. It’s brutal to watch - and the clownocracy in Whitehall have no idea what is going on.
In the meantime, Russia is not slowing down its military momentum—not for a moment. Trump, of course, will have known there would be no slowdown, and that’s why he needs significant side agreements, such as on arms control.
Interesting development reported by Andrei Martyanov, tracking a statement by Putin himself. Russian forces have entered Ukraine’s Sumy Oblast. This follows weeks of reports of heavy Russian bombardment of the region:
Sumy Oblast lies between the Kursk area in Russia and Kharkov directly to the SE. Now, the reports are that Russian “marines” have entered Sumy. There are two possibilities, which are obvious from the map. Of itself, this would not be a full scale offensive—but could be the beginning of such an offensive. Russian forces have been increased in this area for many months. This could signal a big arrow move to encircle most of the Ukrainian forces east of the Dnieper—bringing about a massive collapse. On the other hand, this could signal another move to force a reallocation of Ukrainian forces for enhanced destruction, as in Kursk. In either case, Kharkov—but possibly much more—is clearly in Russian sights:
Translation: Russian President Vladimir Putin said that he was informed an hour ago that Russian Armed Forces fighters had crossed the border with Ukraine in the Kursk region. "The latest information that was reported to me literally an hour ago is that tonight fighters from the 810th Brigade crossed the border of the Russian Federation and Ukraine and entered enemy territory," the head of state said, answering journalists' questions during a visit to a drone manufacturing plant in St. Petersburg, TASS reports.
This validates fully the hypothesis of the whole Kursk ordeal--as of today 62, 000 of VSU have been killed in Kursk Oblast, hundreds upon hundreds of vehicles destroyed--that upon assessing the situation, the GS decided to use Kursk Oblast as a trap and the numbers of VSU losses from there are stupefying. And now, marines are already in the territory which likely will become yet another territorial acquisition for Russia. Sumy and surroundings are shaken non-stop by the work of Russia RUK/ROK with Iskanders and FABs arriving to the assembly areas non-stop. I speak about this in my latest video which should be up shortly.
Big Serge @witte_sergei
If the Trump team really does disconnect the AFU from all the American-provisioned ISR and communications, it’s going to become apparent overnight. The clock will essentially reset to early 2022 when Russia smashed all their indigenous communications.
Lastly, one has to assume that a statement by Xi Jinping plays directly into all of the above. I mean, we’ve already seen that “the Middle East” has twice been listed as #2 among topics to be discussed by the Russians and Americans. Who seriously thinks Xi got up yesterday and just decided to say something about the Middle East, and Palestine in particular? That is not the way the Chinese operate diplomatically.
China says Palestine should be governed by Palestinians.
Oh, Lee Zeldin’s discoveries about the looting of the Treasury by the outgoing Dems looks extremely interesting. This is the war that Trump is waging in earnest:
"It is particularly concerning that U.S. taxpayer money may have been misallocated to campaign for former presidential candidate Kamala Harris."
"As we continue to learn more about where some of this money went, it is even more apparent how far-reaching and widely accepted this waste and abuse has been," EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said. "It’s extremely concerning that an organization that reported just $100 in revenue in 2023 was chosen to receive $2 billion. That’s 20 million times the organization’s reported revenue."
…
Unraveling the climate funding has led to more Democratic Party associates who appear to be implicated in the illicit distribution of taxpayer funds. It is particularly concerning that U.S. taxpayer money may have been misallocated to campaign for former presidential candidate Kamala Harris.
There are names being named in the developing scandal: Randi Weingarten, Kamala Harris, Jeff Bezos, the AFL-CIO, Gavin Newsom’s top ally Phil Angelides, Obama’s former transportation secretary and others.
Who in their wildest dreams could have hoped for even a fraction of all this? It’s truly astounding. I can only imagine how the other side (lefties, uniparty shills, deep state operatives) are feeling right now. The momentum has grown to the point that I can’t see how they can recover.
The scale and speed of developments feels like the collapse of the Communist Party in the wake of its failed coup against Gorbachev. Lots of arrests, but also suicides, followed. We may see something similar here.
What a great VP Vance is. He runs intellectual circles around everyone - especially the Europeans.