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Sept. 25, 2025 - Health Ranger - Mike Adams
01:13:05
Ray McGovern: Trump, Putin, Zelensky, and the Fight for Peace in Ukraine
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Time Text
Trump got himself painted into a corner.
Okay.
Okay, Poochin, you resolve the Ukraine crisis in 50 days or else.
No, not 50 days, five days.
I remember that.
Or else.
Okay, so they go to Anchorage.
So what's Trump doing?
Well, he thinks maybe his incredible persuasive powers might change his mind.
So they spend three hours trying to change Poochie to please.
Let's have some kind of immediate ceasefire.
That's what everybody was thinking.
Wouldn't be good.
Yes.
Yes.
And did you hear me?
Yes.
Trump may have thought that he could convince Poochie to change his mind, but the opposite happened.
All right.
Welcome to today's interview here on Brighteon.com.
I'm Mike Adams, the founder of Brighteon.
And I'm just thrilled to have on our show today a returning guest who is, he's a CIA, a former CIA person who briefed presidents, did the CIA briefings for different presidents, and it's Ray McGovern, and his website is raymcovern.com.
That's M-C-G-O-V-E-R-N, raymcgovern.com.
And I really greatly appreciate his analysis, his courage, and the wisdom and his experience that he brings to these conversations about Trump, Ukraine, Russia, Zelensky, and so much more.
So, Mr. McGovern, it's an honor to have you on the show today.
Thank you so much for joining me.
Thank you, Mike.
It's just great to have you here.
And can I just call you, Ray, for the interview?
Okay.
People who call me Mr. McGovern make me feel even older than I am.
Well, the benefit of age is wisdom and knowledge, and you bring so much to the table on that.
That's why we're honored to have you here.
So can we just start out with your brief take on the aftermath of the Alaska meeting between Trump and Putin?
And then we'll get to the more recent meeting in D.C. with Zelensky.
But what do you make of this?
Well, I make of it the fact that what we experienced, if not all, Kremlinologists made of it going in.
We have been watching what Putin and Lavrov, the foreign minister, and Mushakov, Putin's right man on this, and all manner of people.
Yapkov, the deputy secretary of state equivalent or deputy foreign minister.
And they've all been saying, look, we want to have a more decent relationship with the United States of America.
Huh?
Well, they've been saying that since Trump came into office.
Now, why do they say that?
Because they have their heads screwed on correctly.
What I mean is that this is the overreaching, overreaching aim of any sensible statesman or stateswoman so that these two nuclear powers don't go at it throat to throat like they almost did at the end of Biden's administration.
Let's face it, we were closer to nuclear war then than we had been since the Cuban Missile Crisis.
And I was there in the army during the Cuban Missile Crisis in the southern part of the United States.
I know how tense things were.
So they have been saying this, and everybody said, well, okay, who can believe Pooching, you know?
Well, what happened was Trump got himself painted into a corner.
Okay.
Now this goes back to last month.
He said, all right, that's it.
Okay, Pooching, you resolve the Ukraine crisis in 50 days or else.
What was the or else?
Sanctions.
Now, over the last several years, the Russians have shown themselves impervious to sanctions.
Matter of fact, they've got a better economy than anyone in Europe, okay, because they're not how they deal with sanctions.
And they have China and India helping them out by buying all the oil that the Russians can give them.
So sanctions are a no-winner.
Well, how about secondary sanctions?
Anybody trading with the United States, right?
Well, that would be China and India.
No, buying oil.
Well, how ridiculous.
Who told him to say that?
Anyhow, then he says, compounding the error, no, not 50 days, five days.
I remember that.
Or else.
So five days is up on, let's see, what was it?
I think the 8th, yeah, the 8th of August.
Oh my.
The Chinese say, in effect, well, I won't use a vernacular.
They're just, we're not going to abide by any secondary sanctions.
Indians say the same thing.
And the Russians say, bring your sanctions on.
We're used to them, you know.
And Trump is finally advised by somebody sensible, Witkoff, for example, that, you know, this is really embarrassing.
There's got to be some way out of this.
And so Trump said, okay, well, you're a good deal maker.
Go see Trump.
Will you?
Trump talks to you.
He knows that you're twice as smart as Rubio or Kellogg.
I mean, that's damning faint brace, but okay, so go to Moscow.
So he goes on the 6th of August, right?
Two days before the expiration, and he says, look, we need some sort of a deal.
We don't want to put more sanctions on you.
You know, we don't want to do these secondary sanctions, at least not in China.
So what can we do?
How can we get out of this?
And they get talking for three hours or more.
And Trump obviously says, well, you know, here's a way we can do away with all this stuff having to do with Ukraine.
Your president keeps saying he wants to summit.
Well, let's have a summit.
And these are the terms.
Okay.
These are the terms.
We have these terms for any agreement, and we're not going to flinch from them.
But a summit would be good, as your president says, for a person-to-person thing.
And then we'll talk these things eyeball to eyeball, and then we can understand each other much better, okay?
And Witkoff says, Thank you, Jesus, or thank you, Yahweh, or whoever.
You know, he says, this is really great.
Okay.
It was actually Witkoff's idea, I believe, to broach the summit.
So there's general agreement on the summit.
What happens two days later?
Oh, well, under these circumstances, it's not necessary to talk about tariffs or sanctions or anything.
Of course not.
Of China, we'll put them off the 90 days, secondary sanctions.
And India, now, again, whoever is advising Trump on India doesn't have his or her screwing on right because they say, oh, we'll double the sanctions on India.
That'll show them, you know.
So the Indians are now in a position of taking the brunt of these secondary sanctions, if that's what they still call them.
And well, one result of that is you have the Chinese foreign minister in New Delhi yesterday and today and tomorrow.
The Indians and the Chinese never got along real well, right?
But now they got together.
Now they do.
Strong economic ties.
And Modi, Modi may go to Beijing for the first time.
Well, first time at least in five years, in my view.
So anyhow, they've driven not only the Russians and the Chinese together, but the Indians to boot.
And that's most of the world, folks.
That's most of the world.
So what am I saying here?
Out of the summit comes this agreement that they would meet and sanctions just sort of waft away.
Please forget about those sanctions.
And the deadline, five days or 50 days, forget about it.
Okay, so they go to Anchorage.
And you see that Putin is given red corporate treatment.
I mean, now Trump did bow to the hardliners and the warmongers and the neocons and made sure that one of these fancy stealth bombers flew over when Putin was coming down the red corporate.
But there was just a SOP.
And then there were plans arrayed along with, that's a sop.
Putin knows what the deal is.
The big thing was this open-handed handshake, right?
And then the clear rapport that they have with each other.
One other thing which was really telling to me, Trump welcomes Putin very warmly and then says, okay, let's go.
And instead of they going to their respective limos, Putin goes into Trump's limousine, his big Cadillac.
They call it the big beast or something like that.
Okay.
Wow.
And then Trump said, now, how long did that trip take?
11 minutes.
Whoa, that's enough time, you know, to catch up without these secretaries of state or their security advisors having to listen in.
Now, the important thing is what happened there.
Now, on the way on the flight there, Trump told Brett Baer of Fox News, Brett, I have to tell you that, you know, if there's not some kind of a ceasefire agreement in some form, I'm going to be very, very disappointed.
Okay, so now in my day, journalists would write that down, put it on the wire, and a couple hours later, people would see it.
But Bert got the right answer.
So Pooci knew when he arrived that Trump had said this.
Poochin also knew that he had told Trump, no deal, we're not going to do this.
Okay.
So what's Trump doing?
Well, he thinks maybe his incredible persuasive powers might change his mind.
So they spend three hours trying to change Putin's money.
Please, let's have some kind of immediate ceasefire because that's what the Europeans want.
That's what everybody wants.
It wouldn't be good.
Net.
Yet.
And did you hear me?
Net.
Okay.
So that's why Trump looked all washed out and didn't even begin.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Nyet means net.
Remember that?
But also, Trump is the one whose mind was changed here because he abandoned the ceasefire demand.
That's exactly right.
It's a major victory for Putin.
And then also at the same time, and I'd like you to speak to this.
This is such a sea change from the approach of total isolation of Russia that the Biden administration was trying to achieve.
And even to some degree under the first Trump administration, this is Trump really saying to the world that we recognize that Russia has a right to exist and that Russia has its own self-interests that are unique to the nation of Russia.
And we're going to acknowledge Russia's existence and work with Russia instead of trying to destroy the country.
I mean, that's huge.
That's exactly right.
That's the choreography that attended all this.
And it was a big plus for Puchin because everyone's demonizing him as the devil incarnate, or at least Hitler, right?
And Russians the same.
So here he's been given a respectful welcome, and he's allowed to talk to Trump for three hours.
And among what I'm trying to get at is the substantive part where Trump may have thought that he could convince Poochie to change his mind, but the opposite happened.
Yes.
Trump changed his mind.
How long did it take him to change his mind?
Oh, a couple hours.
He comes on the truth social and says, you know, that's not a good idea to have an immediate ceasefire.
We need a whole deal here.
People negotiate when they're at war, so that's what we'll do.
And so he stepped back on that.
So not only did he step back on the sanctions and the secondary sanction of a threat or else, now he stepped back on something really important.
Now, why did he say to Burton Baer that he would be very disappointed?
Well, Pucci knew that he would be disappointed, that Trump would be disappointed, but that doesn't amount to a hill of beans.
Okay.
Yeah, be disappointed, Trump, but change your mind back.
Okay.
So now Trump can go to the Europeans and say, you know, I gave it a try.
I gave it the college try.
I said, I'd really be disappointed.
And I was really disappointed.
But here's the real world.
So, you know, it's pretty artful, actually.
It's something that I would have not seen Trump as being able to do, given the advisors that he has had.
But I think Witkoff is the key here for Trump.
I think he's getting some good advice for Witkoff.
And the way the whole thing played out, not only after the summit on Saturday and Sunday, but yesterday.
My, my goodness, yesterday was quite a historic moment.
And we could talk about that if you like.
I do, but first I want to wrap up.
I've got a comment about the Alaska summit.
I want to get your response to that.
So following that, and I think you and I both agree, we're very happy with Trump's performance there and how he was able to attempt to de-escalate the situation through means that you've just described.
But now, the hard part is that it seems like it puts Trump in the position of attempting to sell Russia's demands to Western European leaders and Zelensky, neither one of which have any interest whatsoever in honoring Russia's existence or its demands.
Although Trump cleverly does give himself an off-ramp to say, like you said, I tried and Europe rejected it.
But isn't Zelensky now see, this is the catch-22 that I wanted to ask you about.
Zelensky, his term, his presidential term expired more than a year ago.
He has no constitutional authority according to Ukrainian law, and yet he's the one who can veto this deal, and he's already said that he would reject the territorial claims of Russia.
How does that ever change?
And maybe that leads us to what happened on Monday, but you tell me.
Well, Mike, at Anchorage, it's clear that Putin had a chance to explain one-on-one, or well, three-on-three and earlier for 11 minutes,
one-on-one, what Russia's core interests have been in Ukraine, how Russia felt extremely provoked into doing what it had to do in its view, how the Secretary General of NATO at the time,
Jens Stolenberg, said publicly to the European Parliament, the Russians told us that if we keep trying to get Ukraine into NATO, they will have to invade, invade Ukraine.
And we said no.
Ha ha, he said no.
He said that two years ago.
Already several hundreds of thousands of young Ukrainian, young Russians had perished.
That's the kind of leadership we have at the top of NATO, okay?
What I'm saying here is that that's the Secretary General of NATO.
And he says that the reasons the Russians invaded was because they were afraid that Ukraine would get a NATO.
Now, it's very clear that Trump's advisors have not really filled him in on this.
But in addition to all this, I'm convinced that what Putin did was say, now, Mr. President, I love Ruff here, Mike, Foreign Secretary.
Sergei, show Mr. Trump the map.
Map?
Oh, yeah, the map of the front lines.
And Mushakov, would you bring that map about the disposition of forces behind the front lines?
My God, you know?
And Trump looks like, well, I think I know, no, I haven't seen, no.
So Russia has a million troops behind front lines?
Oh, my.
Okay.
And Sergei Lavorov, would you show Mr. Trump the economic statistics about Russia's progress for the last several years?
Okay.
Oh, they're positive.
And how many do we estimate?
Well, how many do we know Russians were killed on the front?
Well, 220,000.
And Trump would say, I thought it was 2 million.
And they say, well, who told you that?
Well, the Institute for the Study of War.
Of course.
So what I'm saying here is that he got a real big dose of reality.
And after that, after that, I think it was not so hard for Putin to say, now, look, can you understand now why we're not willing to allow a ceasefire where the Europeans, if not you, resupply and rearm.
We're not going to do that, okay?
So I thought we had agreed you weren't going to raise that.
I know maybe there were reasons why you had to raise it, but forgot about it.
Net means nyet.
So what happens?
Well, as I say, Trump acknowledges that there was a net there and that he tried, but he failed.
And we can have a whole complete deal now.
And that's what we'll work toward.
And Zelensky doesn't like it.
And Trump has promised to call Zelensky, so he does.
And then he summons him to the scene of the crime in February when Zelensky was really treated abusively in my view.
You don't treat it.
I mean, I really almost felt sorry for him, Mike, you know, with Vance twice his size and the rest of them all beaten up on him.
But not really, it's like he deserved it.
But now he's coming back to the scene of the crime.
Oh, yeah, I'll come.
How soon can I come?
Well, how about Monday?
Okay, Monday.
That's a good sign, okay?
Trump's going to give Zelensky the reality here.
And the reality here is: well, let me use this analogy.
Stalin, when he was warned about the Pope, could oppose what's going on.
He said, well, how many divisions does the Pope have?
Well, how many divisions do the Europeans have?
Two?
Three?
In other words, it's not only the fact that the Russians are clearly overrunning what's left of the Ukrainian forces, but that the Europeans have just rhetoric to oppose this.
And so when they say, oh, we've got to build our armaments, factories, and all that stuff.
And we think the Russians are going to wait until 2029 to cause us more trouble.
So let's, you know, this whole business about the military-industrial complex profiteering on all this stuff.
So it was very transparent.
Now, when I heard all of a sudden that not only Zelensky's invited, but that these, well, I'm doing a piece now for tomorrow's publication.
It's called Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
Is von der Leyen Snow White?
Please don't misunderstand me.
Yeah, because I can think of the seven dwarves of the seven European leaders.
Right.
So who's Snow White?
Well, now don't misunderstand me.
I have no brief for President Trump, except when he does something sensible, like he has for the last couple of weeks, okay?
So please don't call me in Putin's pocket.
He's no Snow White.
Nor do I fear being put into Putin's pocket by those who wish to, because I'm already there, you know, because I tell what I think to be the truth.
But there they were, you know.
And I said first, oh, Mr. Trump, that's really stupid.
Oh, my God, you'll be eight against one.
Well, maybe you could bring Vance in there.
He's a pretty big guy.
And then I realized, no, no, no.
He's more clever than you are, McGovern.
He's going to talk to Zelensky first at 115.
Read him the Riot Act, show him the map, right?
The map, the map of Ukraine.
Not only with, well, the map that he showed Zelensky was sanitized.
I'm sure he gave him some other maps that showed the reality that Zelensky might not be exposed to by those Ukrainians that work for him.
Anyhow, what he did was stage the visit.
So he told Zelensky which end is up first.
And then there was an hour for Zelensky to go back to the seven dwarfs.
Oh my God, they're not going to have an immediate ceasefire.
And they're going to try to get a meeting from me with Putin, but I say I can't do it.
Put you say, oh, my God.
And then the seven dwarfs come and they all get their picture taken.
And then they say stupid things like mouths and macron.
We think maybe an immediate ceasefire is a good idea before more negotiations.
And Trump said, okay, that's nice what you think.
It's nice what you think.
Okay.
So now I'm going to call Putin and I'm going to tell him what happened here and try to set up a meeting between, well, between the three of us.
If that will happen, you know, we'll try to push that through.
Meanwhile, please go back to your countries and try to explain what happened.
The deal is no immediate ceasefire.
And if you want to try to rescue this situation, if you want to try to encourage this guy, Zelensky, to think that you can do what the United States of America couldn't do after spending $200 billion, that you give it a try.
That'd be nice.
We'll just hand the whole thing off to you.
That's where it stands.
And I can't believe the naivete on the part of these Europeans.
Some of them are real tall, but they're all dwarfs.
Yeah.
No offense to dwarfs.
Yeah, no offense to dwarfs.
And I don't think, I still don't see how this becomes a deal because Zelensky has not indicated any willingness to budge on his terms.
And I think that the information that comes to Zelensky is very tightly controlled by MI6 and possibly the CIA.
And MI6 is living, in my opinion, in a delusional world where they still think that the British government can represent a legitimate kinetic threat against Russia somehow.
And also, Ray, the idea that these Western European countries believe that they can manufacture some new array of military equipment, even when their energy supply from Russia was cut off with the Nord Stream pipeline destruction and their energy costs are through the roof and they're having industrial crises because of that, that also seems delusional to me.
It's like, I feel like Zelensky's not the only one snorting cocaine right now.
I think the seven dwarves are doing lines.
What's going on?
Like, how are these people going to be brought back to reality?
Well, the reality is that the war is won by the Russians.
Now, in that context, Zelensky almost doesn't matter.
Maybe MI6 will get the word, okay, pull the plug on Zelensky.
The United States has already done so.
J.D. Vance, 10 days ago, we're done.
We're done with supplying weapons and money to Ukraine.
We're done.
That's it.
It's over.
The vice president of the United States.
Okay, so who's going to do it?
Well, nobody can do it.
There are no weapons.
We don't even have enough weapons for our defense because the ones we didn't give to Ukraine were to give to Israel.
Okay.
It's really a mockery.
If we expect it to be in a confrontation with Russia or China, our military really do elect duty have to let all these weapons go to other places.
So that's the reality.
Now, these maps are significant in that respect.
These maps show that this inexorable march here, very gradual, very deliberate, but hacking away at the Ukrainian offenses, defenses are just about over.
I mean, they've encircled Pakrovsk, really the last stronghold there in the area of Donetsk.
And so the die is chaos.
Now, the Europeans are, you say, delusional, I say naive.
Delusional is probably a better word, but they don't have to put up with Zelensky for the rest of their lives.
Velensky is going to be replaced by somebody.
What will happen then?
I don't know.
But the war has been won.
And what Putin and Trump seem to have as an understanding is, look, okay, the war can be ended with an agreement, an ostensible negotiated peace where you, Trump, are accorded enough lipstick to put on this pig of Western Ukrainian and U.S. defeat.
And we can say, yeah, well, here's what Putin gave.
Let's say Putin is flexible enough to say, well, we want Ukraine to survive our brother Ukraine nation as a separate entity.
And to do that, they can't do without access to the Black Sea.
And they do that through a DESA.
So, yeah, we'll do a deal on a DESA.
Maybe it would make it kind of a multi-national place or something.
We won't prevent Ukrainians from having something more than just a bunch of farmland from which to sell the produce to the rest of Europe.
I think, and I could point to a couple of little things that show me that Putin wouldn't be agreeable to that if he could get Kardun, Sanita, a buffer zone large enough to make sure that this stuff doesn't happen again.
It could be along the Yep of River.
It could be farther west.
But there's no, no reason to believe that Putin wants to take over all of Ukraine.
That would be stupid.
He's not stupid.
That would give him a Vietnam right on his doorstep, and he doesn't want that.
So he wants some sort of a negotiated deal where he will be acknowledged to have won in terms of the Donbass and actually, you know, some other gains.
But he doesn't need the whole enchilada, as we would say.
And, you know, let me just elaborate on this for a second, Mike, because this is really important for your audience to understand.
People say, well, people, President Biden said, warning, you think Putin is going to stop in Ukraine?
No, Poland's next.
And besides, the Baltic states, come on, he's not going to stop, you know?
Well, who's he listening to?
He's listening to people like Fiona Hill, who pretends to be a Soviet expert.
She famously said in January of 2022, big New York Times picture with Putin closing a door, and you have five U.S. presidents, the most recent ones, cowering because the headline says, Putin wants to kick the U.S. out of Europe.
And that was the whole thing.
You know, Putin's going to kick.
Well, now, the fallacy there is this.
And you can tell us, dear friends, okay?
The reason we don't think that Putin wants to take the Baltics or Poland or the rest of Ukraine is because he already stopped.
Oh, wait a second, McGovern.
What do you mean he already stopped?
Four days after the Russians invaded, Zelensky appointed his best friend to lead a delegation to try to figure out how to stop them, okay?
They negotiated starting four days after the 24th of February, that'll be 28th of February up in Belarus.
Then they brought the negotiations down to Turkey and then Istanbul, okay?
And they concluded a deal.
How long?
About six weeks after the invasion.
Now, when you hear that the Russians tried a full scale, that's always one of the adjectives, hydrated, full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Well, come on.
90,000 troops, it's a loud troop, but a raid against the capital up there in the Kiev.
That's a full-scale, come on.
What Putin was trying to do is scare the hell out of Zelensky, and he succeeded.
And Zelensky personally supervised his best friend negotiating this thing with the Russian representative, directly getting Putin involved.
They had a deal.
It was called the Istanbul deal, and it was concretized that Russia would stop as long as Ukraine would stop trying to get into NATO.
There would be certain limitations on the forces of each side of this line.
There would be a ceasefire, and they put off Crimea and other things, real thorny issues.
But later, that was all initials.
And the negotiator, his name is Arakamiya, is the Ukrainian negotiator, best friend of Putin, head of his faction in the Ukrainian parliament.
He said all this publicly to the Ukrainian newspapers, the government-controlled newspapers.
So all I'm saying is, if people say, oh, Putin is not going to stop, well, he did stop.
He stopped for good reason.
He got what he wanted.
They were not going to be shelling the hell out of his Russian-speaking people in the Donbass.
There was going to be a ceasefire.
Now, that was the last betrayal.
Before that came at least three more betrayals.
Going back to 1990, when H.W. Bush decided or told his Secretary of State, do a deal and promised Karabashov and Shovard Nadzi, promised them that we will not move NATO one inch to the east of the East German border as it is now.
That promise was made.
It wasn't written down, but it's very clear in many records, foreign ministry records and so forth.
That was the promise.
So that was the first betrayal.
Next one came in Minsk when there was a ceasefire agreed in 2014, violated by the Ukrainians because they wanted more time to train up and weaponize with the U.S. weapons.
And next one, 2015, Minsk II, Where Orlong, the French president at the time, and Angela Merkel, the German chancellor,
promised to guarantee that Minsk II would be in force and that not only would there be a ceasefire, but there would be a provision written into the Ukrainian constitution giving a measure of autonomy to the Donbass, you know, the two provinces there, Donetsk and Logansk.
Okay, so all those were broken.
Yeah, not only broken, Mike, but this is really the, you know, rubbing it in.
Four years later, let's see what I'd idea.
Yeah, about four years, but well, wildly about five or six years later, Merkel says, oh, you know, I guess we tricked the Russians on that one.
Yeah, we, but we just wanted to buy a little time because in 2014, you know, look at what the Ukrainian army, it was a joke.
Now, they're the best trained, best equipped army in Europe.
We really did it to him.
And then Orlando, the head of France, said the same thing.
They said at the same time with a big chuckle, yeah, it better them.
Now, that was rubbing it in, right?
And that's the history from which Putin comes from all this.
And so when the one in Istanbul was done, well, he put priority on giving a measure of trust to Zelensky and his best friend, Arachamia.
And again, he was betrayed because next thing you know, they were shelling the hell out of the Donbass.
So where does that leave Putin?
It means he's going to be really, really careful this time.
He's not going to agree to any kind of ceasefire unless he gets the rest of his demands met.
And his demands are pretty simple.
He says that we have to recognize the realities on the ground.
And that is that four Ukrainian oblasts have been incorporated under the Russian Constitution as part of Russia.
Now, the Russians occupy all almost 97% of Lugansk, you know, about three-fourths of Donetsk.
And the other two, Zaporizhia and the other one, Kherson, about 70, 75%.
So there's room for some sort of, you know, some sort of accommodation on that, but it would take a lot because they are part of integral Russia now.
And all I'm saying here is that the trust level has gone way down, except after Anchorage.
It's come up a bit.
And who has the high cards?
Of course, Putin does.
Why?
Because they've won the war and these European clowns, the seven dwarfs, either don't get it or they think that they can, well, they can measure, they can survive until Trump goes out of office.
And then maybe some, I was going to say, that maybe some person like Biden that would come in and they could do business again and really stace down Putin.
Give me a break.
Well, okay, thank you for that explanation.
If I were Putin in this case, I would be saying to Trump, look, I'm going to take all this territory anyway, sooner or later, probably this year.
You know, look at the crumbling Ukrainian defensive lines.
So if we do a deal that gives us those territories, we're going to get them anyway.
So that's not much of a concession from Russia's point of view, probably.
And if I were Putin, and I'm glad you mentioned Odyssey, and thank you for that pronunciation correction.
Russian forces don't currently occupy Odyssey, so that would be a concession on the Ukraine side.
But the other thing I want to ask you is that if I'm Putin, I'm also going to ask for the $300 billion in frozen assets that the Western banking system in Europe has frozen and stolen from Russia and use the interest on that $300 billion to fund the Ukrainian war effort.
I would be asking for that back plus all the interest on the $300 billion back.
I mean, because that's just straight-up theft in the international monetary plumbing system.
Do you think that that, I mean, do you have any idea what Putin's demands might expand to include here?
Well, Putin has the upper hand here.
He doesn't need a deal.
He can do without the 300 billion.
I'm sure that by and by they will go to court to get it back.
But what matters to him is that the West, and the West really means Trump, recognizes that they're not going to stop, that they have the ability and have shown the ability to take over everything.
east of the Dnieper River, for God's sake.
And if they want that to stop, then they have to do a deal.
Now, Trump has very, very, he's got a pair of deuces, okay?
Putin has a straight flush, if you play poker.
Those are the realities.
And when, as I say, in my mind's eye, Putin showed Trump the real maps, the maps that show where they've come from, how they've attritted, attrited, attritted the Ukrainians, how they've surrounded Pakrovsk, how there's no hope at all for the Ukrainians.
Well, you know, Trump gets that, okay?
And he says, okay, I want out of here.
I'll have J.D. Vance say, hey, this is over.
This is done.
No more support from us.
And then let the Europeans fend for themselves and trying to make this good.
He said that.
He said, this is now up to Zelensky and the Europeans.
The trouble is the Europeans are so feckless.
I mean, the politicians that have bubbled up to the top of the government in these countries, you know, through their political process, are so inept that they don't seem to get it yet.
But I think they will now, because I think in the private discussions, Trump has probably said, look, forget about an immediate ceasefire.
You're in no position to do it.
How many divisions do you have?
How many do you really have?
How many naval vessels do you have?
We'll take care of this.
Just realize that we've lost.
And besides, it wasn't my war.
It was Biden's war.
And what I'm trying to do is stop the killing.
Now, that sounds pretty good, right?
Stop the killing.
I'm all for stopping the killing.
If it was Biden's war, well, yeah, it was pretty much Biden's war.
Well, okay.
It really was Biden's war, but it was also, I think, Biden's money laundering platform, too, because, right, a lot of the money went to Ukraine.
And then a lot of kickbacks came to the Democrats, probably ended up in campaign contributions and paying off, you know, judges and whoever else needed to be paid.
Don't forget Hunter.
Hunter would have been using it for his charitable donations, no doubt.
Yeah, right.
And so I would think that one of the incentives for Trump to end this is also to cut off the money laundering pipeline, which probably remnants of that still exist.
But the pressures that Trump will be facing domestically would be from the military-industrial complex that wants to keep this going.
Obviously, all the Democrats and obviously all the neocons and all the European leaders.
So it's as if Trump and Putin, it appears to me, are the only two people that want peace right now.
And everybody else wants the war to continue.
Zelensky for his own political survival.
The Europeans so they can assert wartime control over their own populations and continue their censorship regimes and have an excuse for why their societies are falling apart.
I mean, does this sound about right?
Or would you correct me on any of that?
Am I leaping to a false conclusion there?
What do you say?
No, Mike, you're playing a really effective devil's advocate here, because it's a very real, a very real question as to whether Trump and Putin can prevail.
Now, Putin can prevail, but he doesn't want to prevail in such a way that he's got an insurrection in part of Ukraine that he has to come across as extremely brutal with the rest of Ukraine, including Odyssey.
So there have been signs all along that Putin would really like to have a deal if he had somebody to deal with.
Now he does, okay?
Biden, no, no deal.
Now, here's a little vignette here.
You probably know that Putin holds these marathon Q ⁇ As after giving an end of the year report, usually in December, for 20 minutes, and then Q ⁇ A goes out for almost four hours, okay?
So toward the end of one of these things, it was in October of 2023, okay?
He's asked what I think was a planted question.
A Serbian, I think it was, a newspaper person says, now, Mr. President, Mr. President Putin, I am trying to plan a visit to Odyssey.
I'd like to go there.
And I'm just wondering, do you recommend that I apply for a Ukrainian or for a Russian visa?
Okay?
Pretty clever.
Yes.
So Putin goes on talking about Odyssey.
I've been there.
It is.
It's a beautiful, beautiful city.
Catherine the Great establishes.
Trump says, you know, Adysa, it could be in Russian, yabluka razora, an apple of discord.
Or it could be a way of getting together seemingly irreconcilable differences into a new kind of pact.
So Apple of Discord, of course, that goes back to the Trojan War and all that kind of stuff, but you know what it is, Apple of Discord.
So he's saying, look, we can maybe deal with Adysa.
And it doesn't have to be an apple of discord.
It can be sort of a negotiated thing which nobody really expects.
Now, why do you say that?
In my day, we analysts, it probably take us three days to get the speech or the problem, which it is.
But my God, this looks like an offer here.
I would tell the president.
But this is not my day.
This is today.
Now, I'll bet you $100 that there was no Western journalist or even member of the U.S. Embassy in Moscow that stayed around for three and a half or four hours.
And there was nothing in the press to make note of this.
So it's quite possible that unless Putin told Trump this in Anchorage on Friday, that he's never even become aware of the fact that there'd be these sort of semi-olive branches that go, look, I don't have to keep Adiasa.
It could be something other than an object of discord.
So that's the problem.
In other words, there are ways out.
It's just that until Witkoff came on the scene, we don't have anybody really able to advise Trump and keep him completely posted.
And instead, he says stupid things like the Russians have lost 2 million troops and that the Russian economy is falling apart.
My God, we veteran intelligence professionals for sanity have published lots of things that should educate these folks.
But of course, we never get the time of day in the media, never get any ink or air.
And whether what we send to the White House Situation Room ever gets anywhere is something we're not quite sure of.
Well, I'm a fan of your work and your interviews, Ray, and that's why I invited you on the show today.
And I follow you on Judge Knapp's show and others as well.
So I know you're doing your part to get the word out.
So let me ask you for your final assessment.
Your best guess, if I dare ask you for this.
Do you think that an actual peace deal involving Putin, Zelensky, and Trump will be achieved this month, let's say, August?
Is it going to happen or is it going to fall apart and we're just going to end up, you know, Russia's going to end up resolving it on the battlefield anyway over the next six months or whatever it takes?
Where does this go?
Well, the answer is no, not in the next month.
Zelensky is the fly in the ointment.
Unless Putin gets some sort of assurance that Zelensky is either on his way out or that he has finally Come to the moment and the realization that he's lost.
Putin will never meet with him.
I can assure you of that.
Really?
Okay.
Now, I think Putin will probably say, look, we have this negotiation process already going.
We're meeting with the Ukrainians.
And that's the level at which we should be negotiating.
I mean, when presidents meet, that's when they come to conclude agreements already having been negotiated, for God's sake.
So let's go back to Istanbul, wherever these negotiations take place, and continue with a real purpose here until the day when I can see that there is reasonable prospect that the Ukrainians are worth negotiating with.
So this is you can.
I'm sorry, Ray, but in the meantime, until there is a peace deal, do you anticipate that Trump will continue to approve the USA providing weapons and money to Ukraine?
Man, Mike, you asked the right questions.
Not my first rodeo, Ray.
And I listened to you.
I listened to you.
So you're educating me.
Well, you want an honest answer?
Yeah.
Beats the hell out of me.
No, my impression is that Trump is giving Ukraine the weapons that are left in the pipeline, a very lucrative pipeline that Biden approved before it went out the door.
And there were billions of dollars in that pipeline.
Now, what did Putin ask Trump in return for some of the things that Putin was willing to say about Trump, like he's not Biden?
That's a big thing.
Yeah, or this war never would have started.
Yeah.
If Trump were president.
Yeah.
So I'm sure you'd say, now, if you guys are serious, that is Putin, if you all are serious about ending this damn war, why the hell are you still sending arms to Ukraine?
Now, let's assume he is.
I mean, everybody says he is, but I don't know what kind of arms.
He's certainly not allowing U.S. technology to power long-range missiles from France.
So it seems to me that he's already told the Germans as well, the Germans and the French and the British: look, we don't want any of these longer-range missiles fired into Russia.
I imagine that Trump is open to saying, look, we need to make sure that everybody takes these negotiations seriously.
If you ever think you would like to even hope to have a ceasefire, you got to knock off sending weapons to Ukraine.
The other thing, Mike, is that Putin has been very careful, and his Ministry of Defense has been very careful to show what happens on the ground if they try, for example, the Germans.
They have this, what's it called, Tauhus, Tauhus missile, okay?
Pretty dangerous, you know, a long range, okay?
Now, they were going to not want to give the Ukrainians the missiles because everyone knows from intercepted conversations between the very top Air Force generals.
I remember that, yeah.
Do you remember that?
Okay.
Yeah, with the Crimean Bridge.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It would require German technicians, German people in place in Ukraine to run these things.
Okay.
So what do they do?
Well, they're building a joint factory, a joint factory in this location at Dipetrovsk, I believe, in Ukraine.
And they're going to, so not only will the Germans, actually the Ukrainians pretty much own this, but they'll be trained in their farm.
So what happened to that last week?
Obliterated.
And this time that word is used advisedly.
The thing was creamed by several missiles.
And so, you know, it's just idiocy to think that Ukraine could ever face into a much more powerful Russia on its doorstep.
And let me just close with this observation.
This is a no-brainer.
Okay.
As a matter of fact, Obama in 2015 warned.
He said, Look, I am against sending offensive missiles to Ukraine.
And the reason I'm against it is because the worst thing we could possibly do to the Ukrainians is to give them the benefit idea that they could prevail over a much stronger Russia on their doorstep.
So no, no offensive stuff.
So was he right about that?
He also said, also in 2015, you know, we have to be careful about what we pick as the issues we might want to go to war for, okay, are our basic core interests.
And folks, Ukraine ain't one of them.
Okay.
Now, if you look at our opponents here, the Russians, uh-oh, Ukraine is one of them.
So no offensive arms to Ukraine.
Now, he had a Deputy Secretary of State in those days, 2015, who seconded the motion.
He saluted smartly and said, Mr. President, you're absolutely right.
For every weapon we could give to Ukraine, the Russians would match it and then double it and then triple it and then quadruple it.
End quote.
Do you know who that Deputy Secretary of State was?
No, I don't.
I don't know who that was.
His name is Anthony Blinken.
Oh, you're kidding me.
No, look at the records.
Wow.
So, so, you know, Biden comes in, and all of a sudden, we're exceptional and we're indispensable and we're unbeatable.
And so we can do whatever the hell we want abroad.
These guys were neophytes.
They didn't know what the, you know, anyhow, they went to the best schools.
They were the best and brightest, right?
Just like Vietnam.
I think Blinken got hypnotized by Victoria Newland somewhere in there.
Something happened.
She used like the sorceress spells on him.
Anyway, the situation is far from resolved.
I think that's one of the big takeaways right now.
That's right.
Trump has promised the media, I think, today that there would be no U.S. boots on the ground.
But of course, you know, we know lots of ways they get around that with contractors, etc.
And there's all this talk about security guarantees, an Article 5-like defensive agreement for Ukraine, which actually, can you comment on that?
Because I'm very concerned that that's like a hair-trigger agreement to bring Europe into war with Russia.
Do you share that concern?
Actually, my interpretation of all that is this is Witkoff talking to one of those Sunday talk shows.
We have, we're working on, we think we need, and so does Putin, guarantees for Ukraine security.
And there would not be NATO, not be NATO, no, it wouldn't be NATO, but it would be Article 5-like.
Article 5 is the thing in NATO.
NATO, yeah.
So what's he saying?
Nothing.
Not saying anything.
As a matter of fact, and this is probably important.
It is important.
The Istanbul agreement, which was concluded at the end of March, early April, 2022, six weeks after the war started, which I mentioned before, Putin and Zelensky both having approved it and it having been initialed, okay, it had provisions for security arrangements for Ukraine.
There were specific countries named that would assume this responsibility.
Among them, not only NATO countries, but Russia and China.
Really?
So, yeah, so this is a real deal.
Now, why everyone's forgetting that?
Why everybody's, oh, security guarantees, that's what they're going to say.
Well, they're already in Istanbul.
And as you probably know, the way the Russians have presented this series of negotiations is Istanbul.2, 02, or whatever they say these days.
So, you know, the agreement was there.
Either the U.S. and NATO were incredibly stupid or really ill-intentioned.
I'll leave the choice to you by saying, no, you can't do that.
We will support you for as long as it takes, right?
And don't you face down, you kill all those Russians with every last Ukrainian soldier because we want to weaken Russia, okay?
My God, that's what it was all about.
And none other than the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
No, no, it was the Secretary of Defense who has disappeared into the woodwork, going back to work for one of those arms.
What's it, Austin?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Secretary Austin.
He said, you know, this is the whole thing is to weaken Russia.
So don't, you know.
So why Zelensky let him, well, he had illusions of grandeur.
When the U.S. says, look, we'll support you for as long as it takes.
Well, I guess he didn't know history because it's only for as long as it's convenient for the United States and sorrowfully for Ukraine now, right?
Right now is as long as it takes.
It's over, as Vice President Vance has said.
So in other words, the Nobel Peace Prize remains elusive to Donald Trump because of Zelensky.
And because Zelensky has been influenced by in 2022, Boris Johnson, right out of really MI6 influence.
And I think that influence continues with Starmer.
And, well, obviously it does because of his history.
And so Zelensky remains the puppet in all of this.
And I would not, like, if there's a polymarket bet on how long Zelensky lives, I would not bet for longevity for Zelensky is all I'm saying.
I'm not a bet.
I don't play those games, but I wouldn't bet on Zelensky being around much longer.
Yeah, the other thing, Mike, is that, you know, there are polls that come out of Ukraine.
And this last one I saw was 69% of the people in Ukraine, the ones that are still left, okay?
Yeah.
Want an end to this damn war.
Yes.
And there are people waiting in the wings.
That guy is Iluzhny.
Deluzhny Seluzhny.
He's in London.
So they have a lot of delusional folks, but there are probably others they could put in and say, now, Vladimir, thanks for all your good service.
We'll give you a nice award.
And why don't you go back to your little villa there or down to your little villa on the Mediterranean?
So I'm not bearish on this.
I think a deal is close, but not this month.
I think over the next couple of months, the Europeans will realize they can't deal with this.
They have, as you already pointed out, so many domestic, economic, and other problems in their own countries that they'll be facing an insurrection, some of them, unless they deal with them.
And that will take a lot of pizazz away from this thing, which is, you know, kind of a stillborn effort on Ukraine.
Because, you know, I hate to say it, because I don't like Obama either.
And Obama was right.
I mean, how can a chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff say to the president, oh, you want to encourage the Ukrainians to make war with Russia?
Yeah, yeah.
Why?
Oh, to weaken Russia.
Yeah.
President Obama.
Think about the supply lines.
I mean, hello.
Oh, I know.
Yeah, it's really unthinkable.
And, you know, Napoleon learned the lesson.
Adolf Hitler learned the lesson.
You know, you try to conquer and destroy Russia.
You're going to pay with the collapse of your own empire.
I mean, that's history.
Why would you want to do that in the first place?
Is Russia a threat?
People forget that Russia fell apart in 1990, 1991.
That's when I retired.
I was a Soviet specialist.
I clapped myself on the back.
I said, way to go, Ray.
You did it.
It wasn't just what I. It was a whole bunch of us.
Of course.
But that was the whole, that was our mission, okay?
And I knew President George H.W. Bush well enough, having briefed him every other morning for four years and having worked for him at CIA headquarters when he was director.
I knew him well enough to think that he was serious when he proposed months before the Berlin Wall fell that we should have a Europe whole and secure from Lisbon to Vladivostok.
Now, I think that was his vision.
It was a good vision.
It was possible then, and we have seen from the Russian side that it was possible then.
Okay.
What happened?
Well, Bill Clinton came in.
I hold no brief for Bill Clinton.
Bill Clinton came in and said, well, let's expand NATO.
Let's get these people in there.
And the expansion of NATO doubled the size of NATO within the next 10 years or so.
So, you know, if you think the Russians have no grievances, if you think that they weren't definitely afraid of what happened, what might happen in Ukraine if it was part of NATO.
Well, think again, because reality is reality.
And the fact that you don't get good news or you don't get accurate news about Russia, well, dig a little deeper, folks, and watch Mike Adams, for God's sake.
Well, I would say to watch you.
Let me give out your website, raymcovern.com.
And Ray is a frequent guest with Judge Knapp and many other podcasters and shows.
And just one last comment, Ray, is that so every week in which there is no peace is another week when Russia takes more territory and holds more cards.
So the negotiating position of Zelensky is rapidly diminishing.
And if he doesn't realize that, he's a fool.
Well, that's where those Europeans come in.
Their insidious influence on Zelensky.
They have up till now persuaded him that they can pull his chestnuts out of the fire.
That just shows how stupid or how desperate he is, okay?
If the U.S. couldn't do it, how are they going to do it without any troops, without any money?
Give me a break.
So now I think it's different.
Now I think Zelensky, who yesterday thanked President Trump 10 or more times for all his support is, oh, yeah.
And oh, thanks for that map that you go with.
Can I get a copy of that map?
We'll find a way to send that to you.
Maybe, just maybe.
Zelensky hasn't seen that accurate map where the policies are.
So we have a bunch of clowns.
Now, there's a reality striking in.
The big news and the good news is that Putin and Trump have seen a way to come to terms with doing the whole deal, the whole enchilada, not just the ceasefire, even just an interim ceasefire.
That's off the table now.
And whether Trump can use his persuasive powers to say, okay, now, my friend Vlad, okay, let's go meet with Volodymyr Zelensky in Rome or something like that.
And Vlad said, well, no, I'm going to be busy.
Busy, yeah, I'm going to be busy till Christmas because I have to do a lot of Christmas shopping and stuff like that.
Busy taking territory before Christmas.
All right, Ray.
Well, thank you for your analysis and wisdom.
And we really appreciate your courage in just being very honest about the way you're assessing this.
And I think your analysis is very valuable.
And I hope that Trump and others in his orbit listen to you.
And I hope we get to peace because I don't want bombs going back and forth to Europe.
I want trade.
I want trade with Russia and trade with Ukraine, both.
And I know people in Ukraine, and they've suffered for far too long.
And it's time to end the suffering, end the bloodshed, get to peace, get to trade.
Everybody wins when we're not killing each other.
It's bottom line.
That's right.
Mike, may I just add one note here?
Please.
I want to thank your audience and all the other American taxpayers for paying my salary for 27 years and allowing me to focus in on the real deal of what makes Russia and the Soviet Union tick,
giving me the opportunity to do this all day, every day, not making me like a newspaper person has to be a specialist on everything like Israel and South Africa and Russia, not making me function like a history teacher, a professor who has to counsel students and mark papers and give lectures.
I tell you, it was a really big deal.
It was really freeing.
And best of all, until Bill Casey came in with Reagan, we were able to tell it like it is on the Soviet Union.
And we did do things to protect our country, which is the reason I came down after John Kennedy said, don't ask what your country could do for you.
I want you to think about what you could do for your country.
So again, I'm sincere here.
You gave me the opportunity to roam around unfettered, to learn things, and I had a lot to learn, and then to tell it like it is to President Skalor, including Reagan, because by a stroke of luck,
since I would not bow to the prevailing winds in the CIA that said the Russians were evil incarnate, that the Russian Communist Party would never give up power without a terrible violent upheaval.
And that Gervashov and Shebudana said, they're just more clever commies, okay?
The advantage I had was that I was not under that particular regime.
I was briefing these people, Vice President Bush, okay, Secretary Schultz, Secretary Weinberger, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, an array of national security advisors.
That was my beat every other morning.
We worked in a team.
So I could tell them what I really knew from honest analysts of what the Russians were doing.
I could tell them, look, Gervachev is the real deal.
Watch them, deal with them.
And Schultz and the vice president eventually prevailed on President Reagan to do just that.
And we got not only a more decent relationship, but we got a treaty unique in the history of mankind where both sides destroyed weaponry already in existence.
I'm talking about intermediate range nuclear-capable missiles in Europe to take them in place and destroy them over a period of a couple of years under tight supervision.
My friend Scott Ritter was the first one on the scene to see that these things were chopped up.
Yes.
Literally.
So what happened to that?
Well, John Bolton and the likes of him persuaded Trump to get out of that treaty.
So there's a lot of repair damage to be done here.
And I just hope that the Russian analysts now in the CIA can have the chance to breathe, have a chance to tell the truth, and that the President Trump is himself educated enough to entertain the views that the Russians may not all have horns and that Putin is a guy you deal with because on that, on that hinges the security of the world, really.
The whole world.
Because as I said before, with Biden, we were very close to a nuclear exchange.
And you had the head commanders in the Navy saying, oh, you know, these mini nukes, we think we can prevail in a nuclear war, which, of course, Reagan and Garibachov said was never the case.
It's not the case.
Let's just hope that this proceeds in a salutary direction.
Agreed.
Agreed.
Let's pray for peace and let's continue to share this information that brings us to a de-escalation moment where we can get out of the business of war and get back to the business of trade, which helps foment peace.
And that's what we want.
So thank you so much, Ray.
It's been an honor to speak with you today.
Have a great rest of your afternoon, and we'll talk again soon.
Thanks, Mike.
All right.
Thank you.
Take care.
And thank all of you for watching.
Again, it's Ray McGovern.
His website is raymcovern.com.
I've got it up on my screen here.
You can check it out.
You can see some of his appearances and videos and so on.
And so check out his site.
Share his videos.
Share this interview.
Post it on other platforms and help bring us to a moment of peace.
You know, it's not, it doesn't mean you're a puppet of Putin to not want us to all die in a giant global thermonuclear war, right?
I mean, we all win when we have peace, especially with nuclear powers.
So thank you all for watching today.
I'm Mike Adams of Brighteon.com.
Take care, everybody.
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