See this brilliant analysis of the Trump-Putin summit!

16 August 2025, by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)

It’s amazing: In an exclusive interview by Dmitriy Lascaris, the Australian-American polymath John Helmer, who is the longest-serving and most-respected foreign and independent journalist in Russia (and a former professor of political science, sociology, and journalism), displays supreme reportorial mastery by detailing — which no other journalist has yet done — and even dissecting, the sequence of events, and the contents, of the negotiations that occurred in the lead-up to, and during, the personal and private 2-hour and 45-minute meeting (90 minutes for discussion plus 75 minutes for translations) between Putin and Trump, which had been scheduled to be a 7-hour private meeting (231 minutes — nearly 4 hours — of discussion), but which was apparently terminated in an abrupt manner, by the Russian side, when Putin and his team suddenly left and returned to Moscow the same day. One of the reasons for this termination was that whereas the participants in this private meeting were to have been ONLY Trump and Putin, each with only his translator, the Trump side provided instead no such Trump-Putin discussion, but instead Trump had two of his aides (Witkoff and Rubio) participate also. (38:19: “Trump didn’t want to be in the room — couldn’t be in the room — with Putin by himself,” said Helmer.) So, the confidentiality wasn’t what the Russian side had been given to expect that it would be — and wasn’t what it needed to be. Plus, because Trump required the ‘private’ meeting to be instead 3 people per side, Putin was frustrated (perhaps because Trump’s two chosen advisors could — or might — get him to change his mind afterward on anything that would be agreed-to, in Putin’s presence, by Trump; so, Putin just quit the summit at that moment. Trump’s top goal was to get Putin to agree not to embarrass the U.S. (himself actually — because when he was President during his first term, Trump continued Obama’s war against Russia in the battlefields of Ukraine) by Putin’s winning the Ukraine war and acknowledging publicly that the U.S. is abandoning the Ukraine war (which would embarrass Trump). In other words: Trump wanted to hand Russia its victory in a way that would make it look like instead it’s a defeat only of Ukraine and of the Europeans in NATO — but NOT of the U.S. Trump’s main concern was simply to avoid that blame. He doesn’t want to be the President like Nixon was, who ‘lost’ Vietnam; nor like Biden was, who ‘lost’ Afghanistan. He wants to remain the American empire’s leader, the world’s “top dog,” regardless of Ukraine.

Helmer went on to explain why, ultimately, what appears to have happened — and to be happening — is a kind of magic trick (or card trick), to maintain Trump’s status:

50:40

In my judgment, the Russian side interprets that [Trump] to mean

50:47

he [Trump] accepts that Putin is offering a ceasefire

50:52

and terms which weren't negotiated but which are inherently conditional on

51:00

Trump and Vance, obtaining from the Europeans the squeeze on Zelensky. If

51:07

they can't and don’t, the scheme fails,

51:13

ceasefire doesn't come into operation [but it’s not because Trump had failed; the Europeans and Zelensky will have failed because they didn’t accept what Trump is offering them]. Trump has offered Putin

51:19

everything [whatever he wants from Ukraine] in return for Putin offering everything that Trump said he wanted:

51:26

ceasefire to start with, and it fails. Why? because Zelensky and the British

51:33

and the French and particularly the Germans will refuse.

51:41

That refusal by Zelensky, Starmer, Macron, and Merz, will protect Trump. According to Helmer, that’s the set-up, and as soon as it was mutually agreed, and confirmed by Trump, Putin requested — and Trump agreed — to hold the closing press conference, and Putin left for The Kremlin, with his team.

Trump then (after their refusing Trump’s offer to them) can now go on to do what he really wants, which is to seek to conquer China and Iran — no longer Russia (he’s leaving that to Zelensky, Starmer, Macrom, and Merz). But, of course, if Trump actually tries to do that, then these will be just additional wars that the U.S. will likewise lose (because the tide of history, regarding the American empire, is increasingly toward collapse). In America, only the fantasy to the contrary can continue. But, realistically, that can’t continue for much longer.

Near the end of the interview, Helmer says that even for the leaders in Europe, the outcome will be okay:

1:08:15

They want to, yes, they may be losing on

1:08:17

that battlefield, but they want to preserve the arms builders as constituents. They want to keep building

1:08:23

um uh, and financing [with their taxpayers’ money], a war against an enemy. Uh, they want to preserve those

1:08:31

votes in those regions or all of those things and if we, uh, if we took each

1:08:36

country Italy, France, Portugal, Spain, uh, the UK, uh, the Netherlands, one by

1:08:44

one, the the constituencies would be different. But yes, they [the public] can’t suddenly

1:08:49

say we see the light. Why? Because their [the rulers’] propaganda war has been won.

1:08:55

The journalist Helmer says that those rulers’ propaganda organs or ‘press’ will manipulate the mass-mind so that the rulers won’t be blamed. Maybe fifty years later, but not now (when it would count).

This entire interview of Helmer provides enlightenment. I think it’s well worth watching.

—————

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.