CONSIDERATIONS ON THE WHITE HOUSE SUMMIT (AUGUST 18, 2025)

Foreword

On August 18, 2025, a summit of eight European leaders convened at the White House to discuss the aftermath of the 2025 Russia – United States Summit. The meeting came as a surprise because in public the United States has not taken any measures that would actually lead to an end of the war in Ukraine. This is a war fundamentally provoked by the United States over a 30-year period. Actually, it is a war of NATO expansion. That is an effort that began in the 1990s contrary to the promise that the United States had given to the Soviet Union and then to Russia that NATO would not move one inch eastward. But when the Soviet Union ended in 1991, the United States reneged on its promise and began NATO enlargement.

Background

The Western powers' policy when Soviet Russia was born in 1918 was to strangle it in its cradle as British, French, Czechoslovakian, and Italian military intervention occurred. The French sent 20,000 soldiers to Odessa. The British occupied Archangel, believing they could strangle Russia in a few months while arming the White troops against the Red Bolsheviks.

Russia survived this attack and was recognized late, very late. England recognized it in 1924, the United States much later. And the Second World War saw a treacherous German attack in 1941. Russia responded in an exemplary, united, national and patriotic manner, and at the end of the conflict achieved a certainty: a security belt around its borders.

Following the experience of the five major invasions it had endured thus far (the Polish-Lithuanian, the Swedish, the Napoleonic, and the German invasions in the First and Second World Wars), all from the West, and with the 27 million deaths of World War II, the Soviet Union achieved an international order that guaranteed its security. When the Soviet Union collapsed as a political structure, but certainly not as a state, NATO decided (primarily on American initiative) to consume the entire intermediate space, reaching all the way to Russia's borders. This is precisely the cause of the Ukrainian conflict. And the solution will come when the West understands that a new order requires a security belt separating the bodies prone to conflict.

The Russia-Ukraine war

The causes of the war date back to 1994 when President Bill Clinton made the decision to expand NATO eastward with the explicit intention of surrounding Russia and of defeating Russia (or dividing Russia or decolonizing Russia).

As a matter of fact, we have to understand where the war came from and therefore how it can end. The war started with the continuation of the cold war when people thought there was peace, but the CIA and the military-industrial complex continued the effort to weaken Russia. In his 1997 book The Grand Chessboard Zbigniew Brzezinski did say that if Europe went to war again it would start in Ukraine. He talked about Russia falling into three pieces saying that maybe there will be a loose confederation of a European Russia, a Siberian Russia, a Far East Russia. But the US design was that Russia should finally basically be crushed.  And on that basis, Clinton began NATO enlargement followed by Bush, Obama, and Biden. This has been 30 years of trying to push NATO to Ukraine and to Georgia. The idea is: Russia is a big country and therefore it should be a weak country according to the US strategic doctrine.

US overthrew the Ukrainian government in February 2014 and installed a pro-NATO regime. Russia immediately took back Crimea at that moment because the post-coup government in Ukraine wanted Russia fleet out of its Black Sea naval base in Crimea. A naval base that Katherine the Great established in 1783 and that has been core to Russia's national security and power since 1783. The United States and its deep state wanted Russia out of there. That was the same idea of the British and the French in 1853 who tried to get Russia out of Crimea in the Crimean War.

From 2014 to today

Russia says that to end this war US and NATO have to get to the root causes of it, that is essentially NATO enlargement but many other things alongside that. The United States made a coup in Ukraine in 2014 which brought in this pro-NATO regime after overthrowing a president that wanted neutrality for Ukraine which is the right policy for Ukraine. Ukraine could have become the Switzerland of Eastern Europe.

The new central government in the post-coup Ukraine decided to crack down on the ethnic Russian regions in the east and the south. To stop what was then a beginning war a treaty was brokered by Russia called the Minsk 1 and then the Minsk 2 agreements. And the idea was that those regions especially the two in the east, Luhansk and Donetsk, would be autonomous. Interestingly the model of that was Italy. There is a German-speaking region called South Tirol which has autonomy within Italy.

But the United States dissed the Minsk 2 agreement that could have prevented the full-scale escalation. The agreement had been endorsed by the UN Security Council and called for autonomy in eastern Ukraine for the ethnic Russian population of that region.

The United States wasn't having it and the extremist nationalists in Ukraine were not having it. They said no autonomy and they blew the chance. The United States told the Ukrainians: “Don't do it”. They swooped in and told Zelensky, "Don't sign that. We'll fight on. We'll defeat Russia." 

Now Ukraine cannot win back those territories but Zelensky is saying every day: "We'll never give up a square meter of our territory. Impossible. This is all ours." The European leaders who were at the White House have shared that line. Well, what's the alternative? The alternative then is the fighting continues. If the fighting continues as it is going on now, Russia will simply take more territory and eventually on the current scenario Ukraine would simply be conquered. The European hard-line warmongers say: "Sure, let's escalate. We won't give up an inch." But the Ukrainian people don't want that. The most recent Gallup survey in Ukraine said: "Stop this war. We are exhausted. We have already more than a million Ukrainian total casualties”.

Current situation in Ukraine

It's important to understand that there is martial law in Ukraine. The videos show people being forcibly knocked off their bicycles or dragged off the street to the front line to their death. Zelensky is ruling over a military regime, not a democracy. His term of office expired years ago and he continues to rule by martial law, basically by decree. So, does he have any legitimacy in his statements as reflecting the will of the Ukrainian people? He did not sign the peace agreement that he had in front of him on April 15th, 2022 in the so-called Istanbul process, that would have ended this war on far better terms than anything that's going to happen now. He let the United States talk him out of that. Since then, he has lost massive territory with too many casualties. So, is that defending Ukrainian democracy?

The White House meeting

What was this meeting about? If NATO will not enlarge eastward, if the United States will stop its relentless attempt for regime change in Russia or to surround Russia and there will be a neutral and secure Ukraine, then there can be peace. But President Trump has not had the guts to say that. He's surrounded by the US military-industrial complex, which absolutely doesn't believe it. Trump is not a statesman, but a politician who wants to stay afloat. He came to power with revolutionary phrases like "The war in Ukraine should never have happened. This is Biden's war. Russia's legitimate interests have been betrayed by NATO's expansionism" Not a lionheart, but a cynical and practical businessman, who tries now to navigate by backtracking on his previous bellicose statements.

The main job of the president of the United States is to put the foot on the brake of the war machine of the United States. That is his job. It is not an easy job. He is not very good at this job because he does not communicate political ideas. He does not speak to the American people. He does not build a base. His idea is that everything is backroom trades, backroom transactions, threats, bluster, bluffs.

On that basis, he can't face down the military-industrial complex. It surrounds him. The only way a president can face down the military-industrial complex is true leadership. Does Trump has it in him?

Trump's policies are quite unpredictable and seem to reflect the balance within the deep state (already highlighted by Eisenhower in his famous 1961 speech): a power apparatus comprised of the military-industrial complex and CIA, now relocated to Europe, with Zelensky and Europe devoid of political subjectivity. It is absurd to continue talking about Zelensky, as if he represented Ukraine's interests. Regarding the European Union, how can  Merz, Macron, Starmer, and Ursula von der Leyden represent a European line when  they have accepted a genuine attack on European independence and autonomy: the destruction of the gas pipelines and Trump's tariffs? They continue to respond to certain power groups that want this war, that want the war to continue.  Trump should set aside Zelensky and this bellicose, yet strategy-less, Europe that repeats that sanctions and a hard line are needed to convince Putin to negotiate. For more than three years, the opposite has been happening. The harder Europe has taken a hard line, including sanctions, the more Russia has reacted and continued to advance in Ukraine, seizing territory from Kiev. Continuing to repeat this litany is obviously foolish: it's absurd to continue the war at all costs, a war in which Ukraine no longer has infrastructure, is a failed and corrupt country dominated by an elite no longer engaged in electoral dialogue with the people, a country losing territory. Does the dream of eroding Russian power still harbor within this elite of failures? Russia has demonstrated its ability to respond very well with economic diversification, geopolitics, and alliances within the BRICS.

Russia's point of view

From Russia's point of view, sic stantibus rebus, accepting a ceasefire just would mean that the West will restart the war on its convenient date at any time rather than getting to the fundamental reasons for this war in the first place. If this war is to end, it should end by addressing the fundamental reasons for this conflict. The United States was the strong side of this over the last 30 years and it basically said to Russia: “We can do what we want, where we want, when we want, and we will do so.” And that's why this war continues. If Trump will say something different, there could be an end to the war.

The truth is: this is a US deep state war. This is a CIA – Pentagon – military industrial complex war. It has an agenda. The agenda was spelled out very clearly and explicitly by Brzezinski to make Russia a second or third rate power by surrounding it in the Black Sea region so that Russia could not project its power and would have to agree to the European- NATO enlargement. Brzezinski was wrong.

Putin is then disappointed by the miserable European leadership. European leaders have expressed in private how they know that the US destabilized many things but they don't say it in public. So the question is why is Europe in this rather pathetic state? As a matter of fact the US has actively cultivated and manipulated the European political environment for decades. The CIA was involved in many elections in Europe to keep the so-called left out of power. The US has carefully chosen and trained young politicians and helped to support them to rise in power. So the US has played its active role in management of the European scene.

The russophobia that is underway in Europe is another factor. The European leadership is trying to scare its citizens by saying that Russia is about to invade Europe. It is the most absurd conceivable idea. Then they run to Uncle Sam, say "Defend us. Defend us. We will do anything so that you keep defending us." This is really pathetic. Actually after 1991, Europe and Russia were developing stronger mutually beneficial economic relations, notably German-Russian economic linkages. The US hated that. It's so clear. The US told Germany not to import that cheap energy from Russia, but that was the basis of Germany building its heavy industry which is now tumbling down under the US demand. In fact, after the blowing up of the Nord Stream pipelines, now the German energy advantage is gone and Europe commits to buy liquefied natural gas from the US that is roughly four times according to some estimates more expensive than what they were getting in pumped pipeline gas from Russia.

Europe is still today to a shocking extent 27 independent countries and they don't have a coherent foreign policy, a coherent governance. Maybe that is why they feel so dependent in security terms. But it is hard to be 27 small countries in a world of major powers and they can't figure out that what they should do is actually get together and take a stand independent of the United States and reflecting Europe's own true strategic interests.

Europeans should get their diplomacy together and have normal diplomacy with Russia. Discuss and negotiate without depending on the United States which has completely different interests: but so far Europe has not figured that out.

Likely consequences of the meeting

It is hard to believe that, after 11 years of war, the war is about to stop because Europeans says they're going to have troops on the ground or Article 5 like agreements. Russia is not going to accept it. What happened in Washington was a class in ambiguity on everything. Nothing was clear. Nothing was very truthful. Nothing was settled. There is a general recognition that Ukraine is losing on the battlefield. A general fact that the United States  is not going to continue any large-scale war proxy or otherwise with Russia. And so that something should be done to end this one. But the specifics are very vague and Trump thinks that the way to make deals is to procrastinate, to make things vague, to keep things behind the scenes, to pull each person in as his buddy, to say yes to everything in an oblique way.

But it's not going to end with the Article 5 like guarantees. The Russians have been fighting against that basically for more than 30 years. They've been in a hot war over it for 11 years when the United States conspired in a coup to overthrow a neutralist government. And the Russians aren't going to accept European troops in Ukraine.

So, what sort of conditions would the US, the Ukrainians, the Europeans, the West broadly have to meet in order to conclude some sort of a a grand peace deal and bring this war to a close?

The basic point is Russia does not want to be surrounded. It does not want NATO presence. It does not want security guarantees like Article 5. It does not want Western troops on the ground. It wants Ukraine at a minimum to be a neutral buffer zone between the United States (and its proxies and allies) and Russia. That's the bottom line. So starting point is no NATO similarly, nothing that's NATO-like or NATO-light of French and British troops as that's what the whole war has been about.

Second point is: Crimea is never going back. This is absolutely clear. This was a gambit. It was a ploy of NATO to grab Crimea. And the whole idea which Brzezinski spelled out in 1997 was to get Ukraine and push Russia out of the Black Sea, thus Russia would have no power in the Middle East and in the eastern Mediterranean.

Then come the territories that Russia has annexed as of November 2022. This is two in the east and two in the south.  At least in the east, the Donbas, with Luhansk and Donetsk, is overwhelmingly ethnically Russian. Some 70% to 90% of all these areas are now controlled by Russia. So the basic idea is that ironically before the United States made the coup in February 2014, Russia was not claiming these territories at all. US blew it for Ukraine because this is so typical of the CIA.

BRICS and Tariffs

Both senator Lindsey Graham and the White House adviser Peter Navaro said that India's Russian crude oil buying must stop. But, even the imposition of 50% tariffs on India has not changed their behaviour a single iota. In fact, Narendra Modi has posted his phone calls with President Putin. Meanwhile the Chinese foreign minister went to New Delhi for a meeting with the Indian foreign minister. So they're basically holding up a middle finger to the US in response to these tariffs.

So it does appear that many of the cards that are supposedly left to play both by the Europeans and the US don't really exist if they want to put any more pressure on Russia. Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS) are pretty close up: within 24 hours from the Oval office meeting among their leaders there was a flurry of calls. Brazil with India, Brazil with Russia, Brazil with China, China with India, China with Russia. Donald Trump was the great unifier of the BRICS.

The tariffs, imposed without any real strategy or economic rationality, have convinced the BRICS that bowing their heads and believing they can reach an agreement with the United States would mean the gradual disappearance of their sovereignty.
And this explains why India, a historic American ally with strong disputes with China, has decided, in the face of Trump's threats, to move even closer to Beijing. Therefore, without a doubt, the BRICS are a fundamental political entity that offers hope. The economic and geopolitical growth of China and those who are close to it offers hope for a return to a multilateralism without double standards and to an international law that can emerge from the anarchy into which it has been plunged by the West, which now clearly privileges (or perhaps has always privileged, but previously more covertly) force over norms.

The BRICS are much stronger and more united now than ever. Donald Trump united them. 

Russia and Europe

Russia does not see Europe as a threat, but if Europeans continue to propagate the narrative of a Russian enemy, with anti-Russian rearmament, and Russia's neighbors, such as Poland, arm themselves to the teeth, it could well happen that Russia will begin to view Europe differently. In reality, European citizens shouldn't fear Russia, but rather the warmongering European elites currently ruling the West, and Europe in particular.

The worrying new element is Germany, currently led by the most conservative wing of the CDU, with Chancellor Merz wanting the most powerful army in Europe in Germany. It's undeniable that, like Israel, which acquired the atomic bomb without permission, Germany also wants its own nuclear force, like France and England.

And what Hitler couldn't achieve because he didn't have time to develop the atomic bomb (the Americans got there first), Merz could achieve. And since Merz is a staunch supporter of German hegemony over Europe, he uses alarmist propaganda to claim there's a Russian threat. Anyone familiar with history knows that Russia has never attacked the West in all its centuries of history, so what is this blatant lie aimed at? To heighten tensions to what could become unsustainable limits.

Europe has never been committed to peace. Europe has provoked two world wars, one after the other. The second, worse than the first, was essentially driven by imperialistic and violent pressure. In the First World War, England and France even wanted to divide the world, taking away Germany's influence for their own benefit. Therefore, Europe is guilty of appalling sins, with hypocrisy at its highest levels. Now, dangerous figures like Merz, Macron, and Starmer (who has left Europe but wants to lead it) have revived their desire to wage war on their own. Therefore, if there is one characteristic of Europe, it is that of provoking wars. European citizens must be aware of that and choose carefully their leaders!