For a good long time what’s been happening in Ukraine is nothing more than postwar gore. If you have lost a war but cannot admit it, you are playing the old game of pretend.
President Donald Trump at a Salute to America celebration at the Iowa State Fairgrounds in Des Moines on July 3. (White House /Daniel Torok)
By Patrick Lawrence
Special to Consortium News
Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin have spoken by telephone numerous times since the former reassumed office seven months ago. Not much appears to have been accomplished by way of these exchanges, some of which have been lengthy, according to the accounts Washington and Moscow have provided afterward.
No progress toward a durable settlement to end the war in Ukraine. Talk and desultory diplomatic contacts with a view to repairing the profligate damage successive American administrations have done to U.S.–Russian relations, but no substantive advances. O.K., it is what it is, as we say. But there was something singularly conclusive about the telephone conversation the U.S. and Russian leaders had last Thursday.
I detect that a dead end has been reached.
Trump was trying once again to get Putin to agree to an “immediate and unconditional ceasefire” in Ukraine — “the quick end to the military action,” as Yuri Ushakov, the Kremlin’s senior foreign policy adviser, put it. Putin was trying once again to explain that the time has come to structure an enduring settlement by addressing — the Kremlin’s favored phrase these days — the “root causes” of the conflict.
Maybe it is the barrage of drones and missiles with which the Russians bombarded Kiev and other Ukrainian cities within a few hours of the Trump–Putin exchange that prompts me to think the two leaders or their diplomats are unlikely ever to get anywhere on the telephone or at the mahogany table.
The Ukrainians, for what their word is worth, counted 539 drones and 11 missiles, including a hard-to-intercept, high-velocity (Mach 10 hypersonic) projectile called the Kinzhal.
This was the largest aerial attack so far in the war, by the Ukrainians’ reckoning, and it left Kiev smoldering last Friday morning. It is hard to avoid concluding the Kremlin had a point to make after the failure of the phone call.
Trump Has Nothing to Propose
Or maybe it is Trump’s remarks after the call that makes me think a diplomatic settlement seems simply beyond reach — this at least until the Ukrainian military is decisively smashed, and very possibly not even then.
“I was very unhappy with my call with President Putin,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One afterward. “I didn’t make any progress with him at all. He wants to go all the way, just keep killing people, it’s no good.”
You cannot be surprised at this current state of affairs. Trump made no progress with the Russian leader because he has nothing to propose that would make progress possible. Social media messages demanding a ceasefire, replete with capital letters and exclamation points, do not count and do not work as statecraft; they betoken nothing so much as Trump’s — read, the West’s — un-seriousness.
Putin gives statement after a phone call with Trump on May 19. (Mikhail Tereshenko /TASS)
The fundamental problem here is that Kiev and its sponsors are unable to accept defeat. I concluded more than a year ago that Ukraine and its Western powers had lost the war — “effectively lost,” I thought for a time, but then I dropped “effectively.”
For a good long time now what we’ve watched is nothing more than postwar gore. If you have lost a war but cannot admit you have lost because the West must never lose anything, you are down to the old game of pretend. And so long as the U.S. and its European clients insist that they deserve any consequential say in the terms of negotiation — as if they can assert the authority of a victor — it amounts to the pointlessness of pretending.
It is as if the Germans, if you do not mind the comparison, insisted they set the terms of surrender in May 1945, or had a say in the settlement concluded at Versailles in 1919.
When a settlement is finally reached it will not be termed a surrender — you can count on this — but this is what it will come to. And Russia, to turn this question another way, will have a responsibility to avoid turning a finally achieved peace into another Versailles disaster — where the victors planted the seeds for a renewal of conflict — by asking too much.
I am confident Moscow will hold to its currently expressed demands, which I consider eminently just and not at all excessive: A new security architecture in Europe; no NATO membership for a neutral Ukraine that must be demilitarized and de-Nazified; and recognition of the four oblasts that voted to join Russia.
Ressentiment
But I am not confident Ukraine and the neo–Nazis who control the military and the civilian administration — yes, both — will ever accept any kind of coexistence with the Russian Federation. The hatred is too visceral, too irrational, too atavistic, too pathological. This is why de–Nazification was and remains a Russian objective.
The neo–Nazi beast, never far below the surface in post–1945 Ukraine, was sprung into the open air with the U.S.–cultivated coup in 2014. Washington and its clients in Kiev needed the neo–Nazis, especially but not only the armed militias, because they could be relied upon to fight the Russians with the sort of visceral animus the occasion required.
Donate to CN’s 2025 Summer Fund Drive
I do not know what a de–Nazification operation would look like, given the phenomenon’s above-noted characteristics, but something will have to be done to rid the Ukrainian consciousness of this deformity.
What we will see in Ukraine otherwise will prove an horrific case of ressentiment — enduring and poisonous. Ressentiment is a term the Germans, Friedrich Nietzsche among them, borrowed from the French in the 19th century because they had no term for the phenomenon.
It denotes the hostility and anger within a group arising from a shared sense of inferiority in the face of another — this other becoming a kind of scapegoat for a society’s frustrations and complexes.
Max Scheler, the 19th and early 20th century phenomenologist, explored all this in Ressentiment, a brief but pithy book he published in 1912 (in English, Marquette Univ. Press, 1994). As Scheler explained in interesting detail, a socially accepted set of values arises from this complex of feelings.
Ressentiment is a potentially dangerous sentiment when it animates a society that feels itself wounded over a sustained period of time. We need look no further than the extreme Russophobia evident today among some segments of the Ukrainian population for a case in point.
Against this historical and social backdrop, I do not see the Ukrainians as capable of reaching a settlement to end the war that has already torn apart the nation and its people. I do not see that they can achieve peace, either with others or among themselves, because they do not know peace and they are not capable of it.
A Rockface of History
Country leaders at the 17th BRICS Summit in Rio de Janeiro on Sunday. (Prime Minister’s Office /Wikimedia Commons/GODL-India)
But I see another reason peace in Ukraine will prove elusive, if not impossible, even as the Russians achieve it on the battlefield. (And I tend toward the latter probability.) This judgment arises when we put the Ukraine crisis in a larger, global context.
I think of Ukraine as resembling the rock face in a mine, or a front line in a global conflict: It is where the non–West is most urgently chiseling a new world order into being. It is a site of insistence, let us say. And it is where the West proposes to stop this world-historical turn of history’s wheel — a turn that simply cannot be stopped.
Think of Putin’s demands. Apart from de–Nazification — an objective that, to me, reflects considerable insight on Moscow’s part — there are the more encompassing “root causes.” I gather Putin used this phrase yet again in his call with Trump. [See: Rooting Out the Root Causes in Ukraine]
Putin, Sergei Lavrov, his foreign minister, and other senior Russian officials have been clear on this point at least since Moscow sent those two draft treaties Westward in December 2021 as the proposed basis of negotiations that would lead to an encompassing new security structure between Russia and the West.
This framework would relieve the decades of tension along Russia’s western flank and Europe’s east and would be of benefit to both sides. This was and remains Moscow’s intent. Settlements that address the concerns of all sides, as against one side’s at the expense of another, is the very essence of sound statecraft.
But any such settlement would stand as an expression of parity between West and non–West. As I have argued severally over the years, parity between these two spheres is a 21st century imperative. There will be no world order without it — only more of the disorder the Western powers call, altogether absurdly, “the rules-based order.”
But it is precisely even the thought of parity that the United States and its trans–Atlantic allies refuse to accept. It would bring to an end the half-millennium of dominance the West cannot release from its grasp even as it will eventually have to do so.
“It is no good,” Trump said after his latest telephone talk with Putin. No, and I do not see how it can be. Trump has nothing to offer the Russians that would amount to a serious address of what is genuinely at issue between America and Russia — between the West and non–West.
I leave it to readers to conclude where this leaves the Ukraine conflict and the larger question of Russo–American relations. It is, once again, what it is — or what it is at the moment.
In another column I will revisit this question of parity as it applies in West Asia.
Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for the International Herald Tribune, is a columnist, essayist, lecturer and author, most recently of Journalists and Their Shadows, available from Clarity Press or via Amazon. Other books include Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century. His Twitter account, @thefloutist, has been permanently censored.
TO MY READERS. Independent publications and those who write for them reach a moment that is difficult and full of promise all at once. On one hand, we assume ever greater responsibilities in the face of mainstream media’s mounting derelictions. On the other, we have found no sustaining revenue model and so must turn directly to our readers for support. I am committed to independent journalism for the duration: I see no other future for American media. But the path grows steeper, and as it does I need your help. This grows urgent now. In recognition of the commitment to independent journalism, please subscribe to The Floutist, or via my Patreon account.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
Donate to CN’s 2025 Summer Fund Drive
Thank you for introducing me to ressentiment. I am very familiar with the concept, but didn’t know of the word. I often refer to these people as victims, but I recently read Altemeyer and he associates it with followers of authoritarians. It seems to me that Bonhoeffer’s stupid may be another term (synonym).
Unrestrained Capitalism requires unrestrained growth. Unrestrained growth is the definition of Cancer.
Our cancer is consuming the structure of our economy, our morality and our foreign policies.
We could begin to cure ourselves and our reckless international behavior by restricting our excessive growth and focusing our efforts on a Sustainable Future.
Thank you! A very good analysis of the situation. We know that there are adequate people in the West who can get to the bottom of it.
I am positive that Trump knows and understands Moscow’s position but is getting extreme push back from the European leadership, members of his own administration as well as the political donor class as a loss for Ukraine is in reality a loss for NATO and the United States which as the author points out is anathema to the collective West even though a settlement on Russian proposed terms with some give and take on economics could be highly beneficial to all parties.
Putin ”is not there” according to The Dotard. I found that phrase the most telling. The retarded salesperson thinks Putin can be led to come to the salesperson’s terms, given enough blather, soft soap and intimidation. Damn right, Putin is not there. The Russians spelled out their needs in late 2021. Blinken, Biden and Sullivan sneered and threw the proposal on the floor. There’s zero sign Trump has had a single new thought of any value since that time. The pathetic ”ceasefire” plan is so lame as to be ridiculous, offering Russia nothing, when they’re winning.
Don’t worry, Donald: Putin is only killing Nazis. O, that that was the truth, but helpless Ukrops who are getting dragged to the front line by TCS criminal thugs, have an average life expectancy of FOUR HOURS before their inevitable violent death. ‘Ukraine’ will simply disappear, at this rate, cause the Americans don’t give a damn about their lives. Russians have had a gutsful of them, and will not tolerate Russophobic Nazis net door, pumped up by fascist Yanks since Operation Aerodynamic in 1946. Why don’t you gringos take a bloody hard look at your CIA, and ask, Why is it full of fascist scum?
From a speech by Sergei Glazyev, Kremlin advisor, 10th June 2014:
“We have to understand that the key to resolving the catastrophe of Ukraine is to be found in Washington. That’s where Nazism has to be defeated.”
The main problem to a settlement in the Ukraine conflict is that the US is simply not a peace loving country. As Randolph Bourne has said, “War is the Health of the State,” and this is no more true than in the United States.
One only has to see our endless wars against countries that never posed any real threat against us, and never would—as we are protected by a blessed geography of two large oceans and only two large friendly countries on our borders—to understand that we ‘choose war’ as the standard of practice, instead of pursuing peace. As the current leader of “the West” the US sets the policies that our vassal states tend to follow. Unless and until we gain control of our massive and obscenely funded war and weapons complex, the US will always create enemies for us to oppose.
As to “another Versailles disaster – where the victors planted the seeds for a renewal of conflict,” Russia must finish the job of de-Nazification. Germany was defeated, but the Nazis were not. “Root causes” is a gentle way of saying kill the Nazis.
A must read, and share widely. Clear as a bell.
“The larger question of Russo–American relations.” Patrick Lawrence.
No doubt, the Russian Bear’s Coming in HOT! Consequently, the American Eagle, #47, is shriveling fm the heat. Leaving his *“cotton candy hair, sprayed w/piss,” & his feathers, singed a burnt-orange & flailing wildly. Leaving POTUS dumbfounded. Scorched by the Russian Bear. “The main thing for us is to eliminate the root causes of this crisis.” President Vladimir Putin.
……“The problem is the West appears too full of itself to bother listening to what its adversary has to say, which in itself has been one of the root causes of the conflict.” Joe Lauria; AND, in a New York minute, JOE LAURIA, delivers the motherlode!!! [See: Rooting Out the Root Causes in Ukraine].
“[WHAT’S] required is a full, sustained comprehension that Trump may be incapable of.” Joe Lauria
Concluding, *“[WHO]— the Russians, the Chinese, the Africans, the Latin Americans, the Europeans, the East Asians, the Indians — who will engage the Americans diplomatically any longer but with deep suspicions, deep reservations, and a profound reluctance to trust? Not to mention a well of contempt.” PATRICK LAWRENCE.
TY, Patrick Lawrence, CN, et al. “Keep It Lit!”
* China snubs US on Russia, saying ‘He who tied the bell to th .. @ hxxps://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/china/china-snubs-us-on-russia-saying-he-who-tied-the-bell-to-the-tiger-must-take-it-off/articleshow/90316107.cms#
* hxxps://consortiumnews.com/2025/06/23/patrick-lawrence-completely-totally-obliterated/
No doubt, it is, what it is, “an overwhelming defeat!” Fm Russia “w/love.” Leaving the USG/NATO black & blue. A momentous beatdown. “Not good. Buhlieve me. Not good!” Consequently, POTUS shifts blame. “The War between Russia & Ukraine is Biden’s war, not mine. I just got here, and for four years during my term, had no problem in preventing it from happening,” (DJT) “President Putin, and everyone else, respected your President! I HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS WAR, BUT AM WORKING DILIGENTLY TO GET THE DEATH AND DESTRUCTION TO STOP.” DJTrump, 4.14.25.
….“We,” the people, call “Bull-$hit!” Hate & wars trump peace. There’s “No Love;” 1) Ukrainians are “living & dying,” in war, &, are, under martial law, 24/7; 2) Martial Law, effective 2.24.22 to date! 3) Elections, per the War, Cancelled; 3) the de facto President, Volodymyr “El Chapo” Zelensky’s on life $upport w/o a lifeline. His European bromances flamed out. He’s still carrying a torch for DJTrump, who declared his independence from Ukraine, emblazoned in burnt-orange, “Used. Abused. TB Abandoned.” It’s the “American” way. DJT, totally, ignoring China’s advice, *“He who tied the bell to the tiger must take it off;” AND, “It takes two hands to clap.”
“With these simple dictums, Chinese President Xi Jinping rejected Joe Biden’s, efforts to pressure Beijing into abandoning Russia on the Ukraine issue, while implicitly blaming Washington & its NATO allies for the crisis. The two aphorisms were cited in a 1030-word Chinese foreign ministry statement on a video call between” Xi Jinping & Joe Biden “that was an unalloyed take-down of US policies on both the Russia and China fronts.” It is what it is.
As always, Mr. Lawrence knows what he’s talking about and has an audience who appreciates his work Thank you.
Mr. Lawrence, I think you would appreciate hearing Scott Ritter’s Russia House interview of Russian forensic scientist, Igor Ivanishko; it made me realize the Ukraine/Russia war is a religious war. I knew all the facts about the rulers in Ukraine and Russian leaders, but hadn’t put the obvious together.
This goes so much deeper in entrenchment than just the direct NATO/Russo conflict of the third decade of the 21st century here. There are hundreds of years of animus emanating from the West, London in particular, that will not be readily nor easily abandoned.
This conflict is the marker for the larger game at hand, the latest iteration of the contest for the ‘World Island’ and the concomitant incipient exposure of the loose and amorphous hundreds of $ trillions of casino dollars, pounds and euros that are threatened with exposure for their utter flim-flam vacuousness of so much (once again) being held in derivatives.
And as the noose tightens more on the counting houses of the West, the BRICS nations resolutely, inexorably do the two-step of their ultimate intentions, that’s “two steps forward, one step back,” h/t to the West, but forward they are going against the violence-laden pull of fresh new intrigues from Turkiye to Xinjang.
Perhaps that’s panic now being smelled in the air, lately from the activities of Southwest Asia, and of course creeping up into the western Caspian and eastern Black Sea as the Owners plot their next moves to halt the New Silk Road.
Thucydides Trap: its irresistable pull on the minds of hidebound so-called think tanks, hapless and thoughtless though they be, it is evidently they directing the pitiable actions of our latest foray into Presidential senescence. Two in a row. What are the odds of that?
Sometimes I may overlook the point but hope I get the gist .
Patrick’s vocabulary uses words that are sentences inside a sentence and he is careful at junctures as if sliding on ice .
In a sense more than is written is written
Is there something more than what he stated to learn from his command of prose ?
tnx
It boils down to the Western Empire requiring unconditional surrender to its military economic religious dominance of all centuries from the Roman empire to now. Including the surrender of Russian/Greek Orthodox fantasy born for the Roman occupation and the weaponizing of antisemitism to promote occupation by stealing a religion and a monotheist messiah complex we turned into a human sacrifice cult freeing slaves then going on to enslave many entire cultures.
Trump has screwed up the economy so bad out front in the open I guess he s thinks no one will notice he is funneling money from government coffers into the hands of privateers he contracts to do his bidding so fast and increased the debt so much doing so he running out of room for his lies to be worth anything. This man knows nothing and the world knows it. And ‘We the People” are left to deal with billionaire twelve year old.
He has built his own police force the largest in the country and the writing is on the wall.
Putin is in the divers seat because Pat is right. Trump has nothing worth the damage George H W Bush caused when he reneged James Baker’s insinuations, verbal assurances, promises which amounted to lies lies. U.S. with NATO countries NATO shunned Putin when he wanted to negotiate, repeatedly turning his offers down.
If trumps father had not left him the benefit of an ongoing concern and connections to lawyers Donny would not have anything. I have seen enough. The man is terminally dysfunctional , it’s just a mater of time. If there ever were a naked emperor can we consider him naked if he wears a diaper? Curious people want to know.
Y’all have a nice evening.
Yes, it is what it is: Ukraine has an illegitimate puppet regime, barely propped up by western military and financial support.
Fighting until the last Ukrainian won’t help the already lost war. The west miscalculated, Zbig’s dream of breaking Russia up into rump states aint gonna happen. Instead of “prying” Ukraine away from Russia, Russia has regained productive (and Russian-speaking) territories while leaving basket-case western Ukraine (Galicia) to the rump-state of Ukraine that will remain.
Since the Idiot Emperor shows signs of genuine mental illness, frequently lies and contradicts himself etc. Vlad knows to just shine him on with diplomatic niceties but a firm “nyet” to the west’s demands. But the US has no intention of ending the hostility against Russia, it will continue in Central Asia and the Arctic instead.
DT has not ordered the two hundred fifty billion of USD reserves that was stolen from Russia to be returned. Just today, DT threatened to ramp up more sanctions on Russia. Attacks on Russia ally, Iran did not go unnoticed. Some “friend” dude is. Vladimir Putin knows that the DT is an idiot and a liar, and has acted accordingly.
If we connect the dots here, the pattern is clear: the war is against Russia/Iran/China. Instead of playing nice with BRICS etc., the US will sanction, threaten, bomb… but it is fast becoming a paper tiger. The US can’t even manufacture enough missiles and ammo for Israel, let alone Ukraine.
If we connect a few dots the war is against Russia, Iran, China. The geopolitical game is afoot. As always, lets just hope this does not escalate into “Samson Options” for proxy Israel or the US.
Nuclear First Strike is official doctrine now, nothing to worry about eh.
The Wolfowitz Doctrine, which is an extension of Straussian thought, is leaving us all in danger of potential nuclear annihilation.
PL’s excellent article gets at the root of it, as the Russians are saying, in that real parity between the West and the new emerging BRICS world might prove to be the greatest sticking point in global history.
It’s unipolarity or perpetual war; this is what our ruling class has to offer us all.
“I was very unhappy with my call with President Putin,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One afterward. “I didn’t make any progress with him at all. He wants to go all the way, just keep killing people, it’s no good.”
Unless, of course, they are Palestinians – or maybe Russians – or maybe even Democrats.
Thank you, Mr. Lawrence, for another excellent analysis.
Since you invite us readers to draw our conclusions, I will offer my own. Which is this: We are now a little more than 3 years into World War 3, which began with the Russian entry into Ukraine in February of 2022. The United States are now in the quagmire into which it sought to trap Russia, which is a long-lasting, resource-draining conflict that has no prospect for either victory or conclusion. The US is committed to this war (regardless of what comes out of Trump’s mouth or other orifice) because it cannot press China until Russia is separated and subdued. And in the course of the conflict Russia and China have grown closer as they recognize that this is an existential contest between the US Empire and all of its competitors. Russia and China are now closer, Russia and North Korea are military partners, and Russia and Iran are somewhere in between: they do not have a reciprocal defense agreement but Russia has said that it offered one in the process of developing the current mutual aid treaty.
It was fairly clear, back in 2022, that the US planned to subdue the EU economically and Russia both economically and militarily. The subjugation of the EU went as planned through the destruction of the Nord Stream Pipelines, while Russia declined to fall in response to the combination of economic sanctions and military pressure. This outcome was not foreseen by US Empire managers and has led to an ad hoc improvisational style of program and action. There was never a plan for backing down and withdrawing support from Ukraine, not because of any concern about Ukraine’s welfare but because Russia is supposed to collapse. Otherwise, how can the US pivot to China?
Meanwhile, the southern front against Russia has proved similarly obstinate, as Iran, which was supposed to collapse into chaos and regime change after Israel’s sneak attack, instead handed Israel its ass on a plate. The Zionist pundits in Tel Aviv and Washington are still trying to parse this cosmic accident by repeatedly claiming absolute victory.
The geopolitical wheel continues to turn and the US Empire finds itself shut off on multiple angles. Now it is trying for a color revolution in Serbia and attempting to turn Azerbaijan against Russia. In Myanmar, somebody (not yet openly identified) is pouring mountains of cash into a rebel war against the established military government, with the prospect of gaining the upper hand in the Gulf of Bengal, a potential pressure point against China.
At no time in my life have I seen so much activity as this in so many regions of geopolitical import. My conclusion is that the US Empire is in dire straits now and pulling every lever it can grasp to keep its place on top of the system, with no real plan or strategy, only desperate hope.
It did NOT begin in February of 2022! It began long before that, even before the U.S. overthrow of the democratically elected Ukrainian government in 2014. It began with the Dulles brothers during WWII and escalated after 1945. Allen Dulles rescued the Nazi Reinhard Gehlen from the Nuremburg trials and brought his entire Nazi group to the United States to work for the CIA.
I’m not discounting the long history of US activity against Russia. But the activity between WWII and 1990 was part of the Cold War. From 1990 to about 2001, the US was the sole global superpower. After that, Russia got back onto its feet, China accelerated, and that stimulated the US to begin plotting Color Revolutions in countries adjacent to Russia and China, such as the ones in Ukraine in 2004 and 2014. I mark 2022 as an inflection point that drew Russia into full-scale military action. Bringing us to where we are now.
Great summary,made lots of sense
Best overview anywhere to date. Sadly, none of the legacy media or 70% of the electorate could understand it, much less accept its dispositive accuracy. Re just Ukraine, I hadn’t though of the only downside for Russia: “another Versailles disaster — where the victors planted the seeds for a renewal of conflict.” Hmm. I don’t see who the incipient 3rd Reich would be.
Re the new “parity,” I look forward to Patrick’s applying it to West AQsia. He keeps me contributing regularly to Consortium, and I beg my fellow contributors to do so as well.
The United States.
Thanks, patient Patrick ! I agree with your analysis.
Most likely the Russians will have to set up a GDR type of state in what remains of Ukraine. The Russians will have to take back old Novorossiya and everything else up to the Dnieper. This would then provide a buffer to any Nato expansion. Its now too late for the Ukrainians to get any better deal. Too much blood has been spilled.
But don’t worry I am sure that the Ukr leadership will organize attacks from their mansions in the US with all the money they liberated.
Meanwhile whats left of the poor Ukrainians will have to pick up the pieces.
Russia has never seriously deviated from or exceeded the Minsk agreements, which the Ukraine has never honored.
@vonu: as angela merkel told us, MINSK I and II were never intended
to reach peace agreements. instead they were meant to give the west
time to further arm ukraine. once i learned that, i was finally convinced
of what m. gorbachev had realized long ago: ‘the west can’t be trusted.’
he felt betrayed more than once.
remember (1): “not an inch eastward!” NATO kept expanding eastward,
remember (2) sergej lavrov’s remark: “frankly, i don’t care if the west
trusts us or not. trust isn’t something that illustrates western positions.”
Yes, and you have made an important point that is rarely made: Russia keeps its treaty commitments and is scrupulous about that. The Russians negotiate in good faith.