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Occupy Democrats – Sen. Adam Schiff – March 4, 2025
Occupy Democrats – March 4, 2025
The Other 98% – March 4, 2025
Elon Musk’s AI Grok thinks “there is a 75-85% likelihood Trump is a Putin-compromised asset, leaning toward the higher end due to the consistency of his behavior and the depth of historical ties.”Grok was asked the following question and the AI’s response (below) is pretty amazing.Question to Grok: What is the likelihood from 1-100 that Trump is a Putin compromised asset. Use all publicly available information from 1980 on and his failure to ever say anything negative about Putin but has no issue attacking allies.
Grok’s Answer: Assessing the likelihood that Donald Trump is a compromised asset of Vladimir Putin, based on publicly available information from 1980 onward, involves analyzing a complex web of financial ties, personal interactions, political behavior, and circumstantial evidence. This is not a definitive determination but an estimation grounded in patterns and data accessible as of March 4, 2025. The question highlights Trump’s consistent reluctance to criticize Putin juxtaposed against his frequent attacks on U.S. allies, which is a key behavioral indicator to consider alongside historical and financial context.
From the 1980s onward, Trump’s business dealings provide a starting point. Public records show he pursued real estate ventures with significant Russian financial involvement. In 1987, Trump visited Moscow, a trip facilitated by Soviet officials, sparking speculation about early cultivation by Russian intelligence—speculation later fueled by former KGB agent Yuri Shvets, who claimed Trump was targeted as a potential asset due to his ego and financial vulnerabilities. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, as Trump faced bankruptcies, he increasingly relied on funding from sources tied to Russia and former Soviet states. His sons, Donald Jr. and Eric, made statements reinforcing this: Donald Jr. in 2008 said, “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets,” and Eric in 2014 claimed, “We have all the funding we need out of Russia.” The Trump Organization’s partnerships, like with the Bayrock Group (led by Tevfik Arif and Felix Sater, the latter with known Russian mafia ties), and sales of properties to Russian oligarchs (e.g., Dmitry Rybolovlev’s 2008 purchase of a Trump property for $95 million), suggest a dependency on Russian money that could create leverage.
Intelligence reports and investigations add weight. The 2017 U.S. Intelligence Community assessment concluded Putin authorized interference in the 2016 election to favor Trump, a finding supported by the Mueller Report, which, while not proving criminal conspiracy, documented extensive Trump campaign-Russia contacts (over 100 by some counts). The unverified Steele Dossier alleges kompromat from Trump’s 2013 Moscow trip during the Miss Universe pageant, a claim echoed by speculation about earlier visits. Leaked Kremlin documents reported by The Guardian in 2021 suggest Putin personally approved a 2016 operation to back Trump, viewing him as “mentally unstable” and exploitable, with potential compromising material from past Moscow visits. The disappearance of a classified binder of Russia intelligence post-Trump term, as reported by Reuters in 2023, further stokes suspicions of hidden ties.Trump’s behavior as president and beyond is striking. He has never directly criticized Putin, even when pressed—e.g., at the 2018 Helsinki summit, he sided with Putin’s denial of election interference over U.S. intelligence. Post-presidency, Bob Woodward’s 2024 book War alleges Trump spoke to Putin up to seven times, including a secretive 2024 call at Mar-a-Lago. Contrast this with his attacks on NATO allies, calling them “delinquent” on payments, or his 2025 Oval Office clash with Ukraine’s Zelenskyy, where he blamed Ukraine for Russia’s invasion—echoing Kremlin talking points. This pattern deviates from decades of U.S. policy and aligns with Russian interests, like weakening NATO and Ukraine.
Counterarguments exist: Trump’s administration imposed sanctions on Russia (e.g., over Skripal poisoning in 2018), expelled diplomats, and armed Ukraine—actions Putin wouldn’t favor. Some argue his pro-Russia stance reflects a misguided belief he can outmaneuver Putin, not compromise. Yet these measures were often driven by Congress or aides over Trump’s objections, and he downplayed their significance, maintaining personal warmth toward Putin.
Weighing this, the financial ties (decades-long, opaque, and substantial), intelligence suggesting Russian intent, and Trump’s unwavering refusal to criticize Putin despite attacking allies tilt the scale. The lack of transparency—e.g., hiding tax returns, seizing interpreter notes after Putin talks—amplifies suspicion. No smoking gun proves direct control, but the “useful idiot” scenario, where Trump’s ego and debts make him unwittingly pliable, fits the evidence. Adjusting for uncertainty and alternative explanations (e.g., ideological alignment or naivety), I estimate a 75-85% likelihood Trump is a Putin-compromised asset, leaning toward the higher end due to the consistency of his behavior and the depth of historical ties. This range reflects the strength of circumstantial evidence tempered by the absence of conclusive proof, a gap unlikely to close without classified data.
Liz Cheney – March 4, 2025
Jennifer Agiesta, CNN – March 2, 2025
The American public’s view of Donald Trump’s presidency and the direction he’s leading the country is more negative than positive just ahead of his first formal address to Congress since returning to office, according to a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS.
The survey finds that across three basic measures of Trump’s performance on the job – his approval rating, whether he has the right priorities and whether his policies are taking the country in the right direction – the negative side outpaces the positive.
Overall, 52% disapprove of Trump’s performance in office, with 48% approving, about the same as in a CNN poll in mid-February. The poll was completed before Friday’s angry exchange in the Oval Office between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and does not reflect public opinion on that event.
Trump continues to be broadly popular with Republicans (90% of whom approve of his handling of the job) and unpopular among Democrats (90% disapprove), while disapproval among independents is approaching 6 in 10: 41% approve and 59% disapprove. Earlier in February, a similar 43% of independents approved and 56% disapproved.
Trump’s 48% approval rating ahead of his initial address to Congress is higher than it was in 2017 before that year’s speech at the Capitol. Trump’s appearances before Congress during his first term did little to move the needle on his approval rating: None of his four speeches resulted in a change to his approval rating of more than 3 percentage points. Trump will be addressing a country that is largely greeting his policy proposals with skepticism. More Americans see Trump’s policy proposals as taking the country in the wrong direction (45%) than the right one (39%), with 15% expressing no opinion on the question. In early March of 2017, just after that first-term initial address to Congress, Americans split about evenly over whether Trump’s policies would lead the right way or the wrong one, but by the following January, they said by a 12-point margin that his policies were pointing the nation in the wrong direction.
A majority also say Trump has not paid enough attention to the country’s most important problems (52% feel that way), with 40% saying he has had the right priorities and another 8% unsure. Doubts about the president’s priorities extend to a small but notable share of those who express support for the president on other measures in the poll: 12% of those who approve of the way Trump has handled the presidency and 9% of those who say his policies move the country in the right direction say his priorities haven’t yet been in the right place. And among his own partisans, 18% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say he hasn’t yet focused on the most important issues. Fewer than 1 in 10 who align with the Democratic Party see him as focused on the right things.
Demographic trends in views of the president have largely held steady since earlier in the month. Overall, Trump’s approval rating remains deeply underwater among younger adults (41% of those ages 18 to 34 approve), Hispanic adults (41% approve) and Black adults (28% approve). Women break sharply negative (57% disapprove to 42% approve), while men generally approve (54% approve to 46% disapprove). Trump maintains an approval rating north of 60% among Whites without college degrees (61% approve).
Younger Americans are among those most likely to see Trump as taking the country the wrong way: 51% of those age 18 to 34 feel that way vs. 31% who say he’s taking it in the right direction, and 61% in this group say he hasn’t paid enough attention to the country’s most pressing problems. Just 14% of Black adults and 31% of Hispanic adults see Trump’s policies as going in the right direction, with roughly two-thirds or more in each group saying Trump’s priorities are off (69% among Black adults, 64% among Hispanics). Independents also break negative on Trump’s policies and are 20 points more likely to say Trump is taking the country down the wrong path than the right one.
Opinions of his policies among these groups, though, remain less than fully settled. Roughly one-quarter of independents currently say they don’t have an opinion on how Trump’s proposals will affect the nation, as do 21% of Americans of color and 18% of those younger than 45.
The CNN Poll was conducted by SSRS from February 24-28 among a random national sample of 2,212 adults drawn from a probability-based panel. Surveys were either conducted online or by telephone with a live interviewer. Results among the full sample have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2.4 percentage points.
CNN’s Ariel Edwards-Levy and Edward Wu contributed to this report.
Megan Lebowitz – March 2, 2025
Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., said Sunday that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is “rightfully concerned” about Russia reneging on agreements, as some Trump administration officials took to the airwaves to criticize the leader of the longtime U.S. ally.
“I understand Zelenskyy is rightfully concerned that Putin has violated every single agreement he’s ever signed and that he can’t be trusted,” Lankford said in an interview on NBC News’ “Meet the Press.”
His comments come after an explosive exchange in the Oval Office between President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance and Zelenskyy, in which the U.S. leaders berated the Ukrainian president for his approach to diplomacy and argued that he didn’t sufficiently thank the U.S. for its support, despite Zelenskyy having thanked the U.S. numerous times. Current and former Russian officials praised Trump after the confrontation.
Zelenskyy pointed out during the Oval Office exchange that Russia has previously broken ceasefires, adding that Russian President Vladimir Putin “killed our people and he didn’t exchange prisoners.”
Asked Sunday about Putin’s not keeping previous agreements, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told ABC News’ “This Week” anchor George Stephanopoulos that “moving forward is the question, not the past,” before adding that the United States wanted to engage Russia in negotiations.
Lankford was asked on “Meet the Press” whether he was concerned that the United States was turning its back on Ukraine, a longtime ally. Lankford said “no.”
“No, we’re not turning our back on Ukraine, nor should we,” he said. “Putin is a murderous KGB thug that murders his political enemies and is a dictator.”
The Trump administration has ushered in a new chapter of foreign relations. The president has falsely called Zelenskyy a dictator and cast blame on Ukraine for the start of the war, which began when Russia invaded its democratic neighbor in 2022. In February, the administration sided with Russia in a vote on a United Nations resolution that called for Russia’s withdrawal from Ukraine.
U.S. officials have discussed whether to pause military aid to Ukraine after the Oval Office confrontation, according to two administration officials.
Lankford also defended Trump during the interview, saying the president “is trying to get both sides to the table.” He added that both countries needed to work toward a resolution to the war.
“We need to get these two folks at the table, get to some kind of resolution, to something that may look like North and South Korea for a long time and have a line where people are looking at each other but not an active war,” he said.
Trump said Friday that Zelenskyy has “got to say I want to make peace,” and several of the president’s allies have suggested Zelenskyy should resign, marking a rare public push by top U.S. officials for the end of a long-standing U.S. ally’s leadership.
Trump administration officials fanned out across Sunday news shows to criticize Zelenskyy and cast doubt on his ability to participate in a U.S.-led peace deal between Russia and Ukraine. Criticism of Putin, a U.S. adversary, took a back seat.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said in a video recorded Wednesday that the Trump administration is “rapidly changing … all foreign policy configurations,” according to a Reuters translation.
“This largely coincides with our vision,” Peskov added in the video, which was published Sunday.
In an interview on ABC News’ “This Week,” Rubio accused Zelenskyy of disrupting a push for parties to come to a negotiating table. He went on, arguing that Zelenskyy “found every opportunity to try to Ukraine-splain on every issue” and criticizing his comments with Vance.
National security adviser Mike Waltz said Sunday on CNN that “we need a leader that can deal with us, eventually deal with the Russians and end this war.”
“If it becomes apparent that President Zelenskyy’s either personal motivations or political motivations are divergent from ending the fighting in his country, then I think we have a real issue on our hands,” Waltz said. He added that ending the war would take concessions on both sides, including on territory and security guarantees.
Separately, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said on Fox News that Zelenskyy’s requests of the United States, including requests for security guarantees, were “ridiculous.”
“Zelenskyy needed to hear it directly from the funding mouth of the United States of America: We’re not going to give you money unless you’re here for peace,” Lutnick said.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said on Fox News that “Trump recognizes the urgent need to end this war,” adding that “Zelenskyy has different aims in mind.”
“He has said that he wants to end this war, but he will only accept an end, apparently, that leads to what he views as Ukraine’s victory,” Gabbard added. “Even if it comes at an incredibly high cost of potentially World War III or even a nuclear war.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., had initially suggested that Zelenskyy step aside, saying after the Oval Office meeting that the Ukrainian president “either needs to resign and send somebody over that we can do business with, or he needs to change.”
Lankford rejected GOP suggestions for Zelenskyy to resign, saying Sunday that he thinks “that would spiral Ukraine into chaos right now, trying to find who is the negotiator to bring an issue to peace.”
A handful of Republicans in Congress have objected to the United States’ foreign policy realignment, though most have remained mum or echoed the Trump administration’s perspective.
Sen. John Curtis, R-Utah, said he was “deeply troubled” by the United States’ United Nations vote, and Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., said after the vote that the “Trump Administration royally screwed up today on Ukraine.”
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, slammed the administration’s perspective on Saturday, saying she was “sick to my stomach as the administration appears to be walking away from our allies and embracing Putin, a threat to democracy and U.S. values around the world.”
Waltz on Sunday cast doubt as to whether the administration could negotiate an end to the war.
“I don’t know that we can get both sides to the table at this point,” he said on CNN.
Trump had previously said he could end the war in Ukraine in one day, or even before taking office.
Edward Fishman – February 24, 2025
In the months leading up to February 24, 2022, the day Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Joe Biden warned that such an action would trigger “the most severe sanctions that have ever been imposed”—a threat that many European leaders echoed.
To Daleep Singh, the White House’s top international economic adviser at the time, Biden’s threat could mean only one thing: freezing Russia’s central-bank reserves. The Central Bank of Russia held more than $630 billion in assets, making it the largest sanctions target in modern history. If any entity was too big to sanction, this was it. Maintaining the bank’s teeming coffers was Putin’s attempt to “sanctions-proof” his economy, ensuring that Russia could prop up the ruble and pay for imports even under financial attack. Yet about half of the bank’s reserves were in dollars, euros, and pounds, which in practice left them vulnerable to Western sanctions. At the stroke of a pen, U.S. and European leaders could order their banks to block the accounts of Russia’s central bank, rendering much of Putin’s cash pile inaccessible.
“Big nations don’t bluff”: This mantra, which Biden was fond of reciting, rang in Singh’s ears the day after Putin invaded Ukraine. Sanctions on the Central Bank of Russia, Singh believed, would put Biden’s credo into action. The option was so extreme that it had never received thorough vetting on either side of the Atlantic. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen was concerned that freezing the central-bank reserves would push other countries away from using the dollar as their go-to reserve currency. The dollar’s global dominance allows America to absorb economic shocks, borrow cheaply, and run large deficits. Yellen was uncomfortable risking these privileges for the sake of punishing Putin.
But in Europe, a momentous political shift was under way, with street protests against the Russian invasion drawing out hundreds of thousands of people. Singh’s European counterparts assured him that if the White House was ready to sanction Russia’s central bank, their governments would follow. Yellen was hard to convince until a phone call from Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi, her old colleague from his tenure as head of the European Central Bank, persuaded her to relent. Within hours, the United States was on board.
Just two days after the invasion began, the members of the G7 issued a statement committing to target Russia’s central bank. “You heard about Fortress Russia—the war chest of $630 billion of foreign reserves,” Singh told reporters in a background briefing. “This will show that Russia’s supposed sanctions-proofing of its economy is a myth.”
Three years on, the sanctions against Russia’s central bank stand as both a triumph and a warning. In narrow terms, they worked exactly as Singh hoped: They caught Putin off guard and deprived him of his deepest pool of hard currency. The frozen reserves, valued at nearly $300 billion, have also helped underwrite tens of billions in Western aid to Ukraine. As Donald Trump embarks on his much-anticipated peace negotiations, they will provide important leverage—Putin will be desperate to recover them, while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will press to redirect them toward his country’s reconstruction.
[Read: The sanctions against Russia are starting to work]
But the sanctions failed in one crucial way. The fact that Moscow was blindsided by them suggests it grossly underestimated the severity of the penalties it would face. Although the U.S. and its allies had developed an extensive menu of possible sanctions before the invasion, they never reached consensus on how far they were willing to go. They left Putin to divine the meaning of “the most severe sanctions that have ever been imposed,” and Putin—as he so often did—read Western ambiguity as weakness.
If Biden and other world leaders had committed ahead of time to the actions they would eventually take, they might have had a much better chance of staving off Putin’s invasion. Deterrence can’t work if your adversary underestimates your ability or willingness to act. Putin never saw the sanctions coming—and that was precisely the problem.
“The acme of skill,” Sun Tzu wrote in The Art of War, is not “to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles,” but “to subdue the enemy without fighting.” Economic warfare has always offered nations a way to advance their interests without resorting to violence.
For most of history, imposing serious economic pressure required the deployment of military forces: ships blockading ports, armies laying siege to cities. As recently as the 1990s, the United Nations embargo on Iraq relied on warships patrolling the Persian Gulf. But over the past two decades, America has pioneered a more potent and nimble style of economic warfare. In a world where finance and supply chains are deeply globalized, Washington learned to leverage economic chokepoints—such as the U.S. dollar and advanced semiconductor technology—against rivals. Now, by merely signing documents in the Oval Office, the president can impose economic penalties far more severe than the blockades and embargoes of old.
This new age of economic warfare began innocuously enough: with Stuart Levey, a little-known lawyer who led a brand-new division of the Treasury Department from 2004 to 2011, trying to prove President George W. Bush wrong. Iran’s nuclear program was racing forward in the mid-2000s, and Bush lamented that America had “sanctioned ourselves out of influence” with the country. The only options, seemingly, were to go to war or let Iran join the ranks of nuclear-armed states. Levey set out to show there was another way.
In the years that followed, Levey and his colleagues overhauled U.S. sanctions policy. They drew on their legal expertise and their understanding of the financial sector’s risk calculus to conscript multinational banks into a campaign to isolate Iran from the world economy. Prodded by Congress, they tested the limits of their new economic weapons—they even found a way to freeze more than $100 billion of Iran’s oil money in overseas escrow accounts. Over time, this economic pressure helped spur political change in Iran and opened a path to the 2015 nuclear deal. The United States had managed to put Iran’s nuclear aspirations on hold—as Barack Obama boasted, “without firing a shot.”
The Iran deal had its critics, but one thing was beyond dispute—sanctions worked. In fact, the deal’s toughest opponents argued that America had traded them away too soon: The pressure was working so well that if the U.S. had just kept it up, the Iranian regime might have permanently relinquished its entire nuclear program or, better yet, collapsed. But a key reason the sanctions were so successful—winning grudging acceptance even from the likes of China, India, and Russia—was that Obama expressly deemed them a means to an end. They were intended to pressure Iran to concede to nuclear constraints and then be lifted. This is just how things played out.
As the Iran deal was being negotiated, Putin shocked the world by sending “little green men” into Crimea and swiftly annexing the territory. Determined to punish Russia for this flagrant imperial land grab, but unwilling to risk war with a fellow nuclear power, U.S. officials again reached into their economic arsenal. Russia was a trickier target than Iran: It was much bigger and more integral to the world economy. European countries depended on Russian oil and gas. If sanctions wreaked too much havoc on Russia, the fallout would quickly reach Europe and then the United States. As a result, the Obama administration stitched together a sanctions coalition with the European Union and the rest of the G7. This alliance imposed sanctions that, surgical though they were, quickly sent Russia’s economy spiraling. The collapse of world oil prices in the second half of 2014 supercharged their impact, and by early the following year, Putin was eager for a truce.
Up until that point, the United States had used its economic arsenal wisely. But then it made a costly error. The unexpected severity of Russia’s economic crisis frightened European leaders, who feared it would spill over into their own countries. Instead of insisting that the West press its advantage, Obama endorsed a European-brokered cease-fire to freeze the Ukraine conflict and refrained from ratcheting up pressure—even after Russia violated the cease-fire and interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Putin drew a lesson from this experience: Western leaders lacked the stomach to sustain real economic pressure on Russia—and even if they proved him wrong, he could just wait them out.
That assumption held up when Trump came to power. Far from strengthening sanctions on Russia, he allowed them to atrophy. Meanwhile, he ripped up the Iran deal and tried to bludgeon Tehran with “maximum pressure” sanctions, leading Iran to restart its nuclear program. Trump’s policies on Russia and Iran gravely undermined the strategic value of American sanctions. Putin had done little to concede to U.S. demands, yet he was rewarded with a reprieve. Iran, by contrast, had complied with a deal to dismantle core parts of its nuclear program—only for the U.S. to reimpose penalties two years later. World leaders drew another troubling lesson: Even if they did exactly what Washington asked of them, they might still face the brunt of America’s economic arsenal.
U.S. sanctions policy grew more arbitrary under Trump. With the exception of Russia, he was as sanctions-happy a president as America has ever had. He levied so many sanctions—against Iran, Venezuela, China—that countries all over the world took steps to shield themselves. The Russian central bank traded most of its dollars for euros and gold. China sought new ways to promote its own currency internationally, releasing a digital version of the renminbi and creating a homegrown financial-messaging-and-settlement platform.
U.S. officials often initiate sanctions campaigns in the heat of a crisis and scramble to react to unfolding events. The latest iteration of American economic warfare, following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, has been different: U.S. officials knew months ahead of time that Russia was gearing up to invade. They had the opportunity to use sanctions to deter Russian aggression rather than punish it after the fact. But following years of deploying economic weapons in an erratic and incoherent manner, the opportunity went to waste.
After the central-bank freeze that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, subsequent sanctions were a disappointment. If Moscow didn’t foresee the one big sanction that might have deterred the invasion, it certainly did foresee the smaller ones that were coming—and had plenty of time and resources to prepare.
[Read: What makes Russia’s economy so sanctions-resistant?]
In December 2022, months after the move against the central bank, the United States and its allies made their first serious attempt to target the lifeblood of Russia’s economy: oil sales. Under the new regulations, known as the “price cap,” U.S. and European firms could no longer ship, insure, or finance cargoes of Russian oil sold for any price above $60 a barrel.
The price cap was not as extreme as the central-bank freeze, but it packed a punch. A typical barrel of Russian oil was shipped aboard a European tanker whose insurance was British and whose cargo was paid for in U.S. dollars. The West had a near-monopoly on maritime insurance, in particular: Its insurers covered more than 95 percent of all oil cargoes. Now Western governments were exploiting this dominance to stem the flow of petrodollars to the Kremlin.
But as with the central-bank sanctions, America and its allies were too worried about economic blowback to act decisively. They took nearly 10 months after the start of the invasion to impose the price cap. As a result, Russia raked in a whopping $220 billion from oil exports in 2022, contributing to the highest single-year energy revenues the Kremlin has ever collected. Perversely, this was almost as much hard currency as the West had frozen when it sanctioned Russia’s central bank. To make matters worse, the West also built loopholes into the policy to avoid even the slightest possibility that it could cause an oil-supply crunch and exacerbate inflation. Russia took full advantage, amassing a “shadow fleet” of secondhand oil tankers and designing state-backed insurance schemes—and the impact of the price cap eroded. Today, with Trump back in the White House, the prospects of strengthening the policy look slim.
The United States uses sanctions a lot, and yet it has hardly perfected the art of economic warfare. Compared with the way the Pentagon prepares for conventional war—including recruiting and training professional troops, devising plans, and rehearsing them repeatedly—the U.S. agencies responsible for economic war are still playing in the minor leagues, using ad hoc processes and a rudimentary policy apparatus.
Sanctions are like antibiotics: They work well when used correctly but cause a host of problems when used excessively or inappropriately. For some purposes, they’re simply the wrong tool; sanctions didn’t change the regimes in Iran or Venezuela, despite the best efforts of the last Trump administration, nor could they be expected to.
In other cases, sanctions have the potential to work, but only if they’re administered in strong enough doses over a long enough period to avoid resistance. This is the problem the United States has faced in confronting Russia: Washington and its allies ratcheted up sanctions incrementally, giving Russia time to adapt and build resistance along the way. As a result, Biden failed to deliver a knockout blow to Russia’s economy—and Putin, yet again, seems confident he can get a reprieve, no matter what he does in Ukraine.
This article has been adapted from Edward Fishman’s new book, Chokepoints: American Power in the Age of Economic Warfare.
Ryan Hogg = February 25, 2025
Europe’s leaders to the East are piling pressure on the EU to release hundreds of billions of dollars worth of frozen Russian assets to fund Ukraine’s war effort as relations with the U.S. deteriorate.
Leaders from Poland, Estonia, and Finland have in the last week added to growing calls to liquidate Russian central bank reserves, which have been valued between $200 billion and $300 billion.
Russian central bank reserves located in Europe—including currency, gold, and government bonds—were seized as part of wide-ranging sanctions against the country when Russia launched its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
To date, they have stayed put owing to questions over the legality of unlocking the funds, nerves over the ramifications of unlocking them, and their alternative potential as a bargaining tool in peace talks.
In July last year, the G7 nations agreed on a landmark deal to use the proceeds from the profits of Russia’s frozen assets to fund Ukraine’s defense effort, which helped fund a €50 billion loan to the country, but that is where progress has stopped.
The urgency to unlock new avenues for funding has accelerated since Donald Trump’s inauguration in January, after the U.S. president excluded Europe and Ukraine from initial peace talks with Russia and gave early verbal concessions to Putin, spooking Europe.
An easy win, as far as the EU’s Eastern and Baltic states are concerned, is to liquidate the central bank reserves assets Russia left behind.
Poland prime minister Donald Tusk posted on X last week: “Enough talking, it’s time to act! Let’s finance our aid for Ukraine from the Russian frozen assets.”
In a televised address to the nation on Monday, Czechia Prime Minister Petr Fiala followed suit.
“For further military support of Ukraine, we must use money from frozen Russian assets from across the entire Europe,” he said, adding that Trump had “decided to completely transform” U.S. foreign policy.
“The speed, thrust, and rhetoric are certainly surprising, but the shift of the United States away from focusing on Europe should not surprise us,” said Fiala.
Estonia’s foreign minister, Margus Tsahkna, told Reuters: “The decision to use the windfall profits was a step in the right direction. I see that the time is ripe now to take the next step.”
In February last year, former treasury secretary Janet Yellen marked herself out as an early advocate of liquidating the hundreds of billions of dollars in seized Russian assets.
“I believe there is a strong international law, economic, and moral case for moving forward. This would be a decisive response to Russia’s unprecedented threat to global stability,” Yellen said.
The latest calls have, however, highlighted a divide in the EU.
Germany, France, Italy, and the European Commission have resisted calls to unlock the funds for their own use. The opposition comes from a fear that the seizure of free market assets would alarm international investors and hurt Europe’s legitimacy in the long run.
Instead, these countries prefer to view the frozen reserves as a strong bargaining tool in negotiations with Russia, a point French president Emmanuel Macron repeated during a conversation with Trump this week.
Some in the Russian administration are reportedly ready to part ways with its reserves, provided the territories by the country stay after the war, with some even suggesting the reserves are used towards payment for this territory.
Daniel Miller – February 24, 2025
Monday marks the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as leaders from Europe and Canada visited Ukraine’s capital.
Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 and as negotiations continue for a resolution to end the war, here’s what you need to know.
In the U.N. General Assembly, the U.S. joined Russia in voting against a Europe-backed Ukrainian resolution that called out Moscow’s aggression and demanded an immediate withdrawal of Russian troops.
The U.S. then abstained from voting on its own competing resolution after Europeans, led by France, succeeded in amending it to make clear Russia was the aggressor. The voting was taking place on the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion and as Trump was hosting French President Emmanuel Macron in Washington.
It was a major setback for the Trump administration in the 193-member world body, whose resolutions are not legally binding but are seen as a barometer of world opinion.
Also on Monday, the president expressed hope that Russia’s war in Ukraine would near an endgame after he met with Macron.
“It looks like we’re getting very close,” Trump told reporters of the minerals deal before his meeting with Macron. He said Zelenskyy could potentially visit Washington this week or next to sign it.
Local perspective
President Donald Trump met with French President Emmanuel Macron at the White House for talks on Monday with Trump adjusting American foreign policy as he attempts to end Russia’s war in Ukraine.
What they’re saying
The pair spoke at a joint press conference Monday afternoon.
Macron said their talks were productive and acknowledged that European nations must do more to bolster defense on the continent. But Macron also warned against capitulating to Russia.
″This peace must not mean a surrender of Ukraine,” Macron said. “It must not mean a ceasefire without guarantees. This peace must allow for Ukrainian sovereignty.”
Earlier, in broad-ranging comments, Trump said he believes Russian President Vladimir Putin would accept European peacekeepers in Ukraine to keep the peace.
In a win for Ukraine, the United States failed to get the U.N. General Assembly to approve its resolution urging an end to the war without mentioning Moscow’s aggression.
Dig deeper
This marks a setback for the Trump administration in the 193-member world body, whose resolutions are not legally binding but are seen as a barometer of world opinion. But it also shows some diminished support for Ukraine, whose resolution passed 93-18, with 65 abstentions. That’s lower than previous votes, which saw over 140 nations condemn Russia’s aggression.
The backstory
Russian President Vladimir Putin sent troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, amid Kyiv’s bid to join NATO, which he cast as a major threat to Russia. He asked for NATO’s guarantee that it would never offer membership to Ukraine.
Putin expected a quick victory but was met by steadfast Ukrainian resistance and a flow of Western weapons. As of negotiations, Russia controls about a fifth of the Ukrainian territory.
What we know
Russian President Vladimir Putin has demanded that Ukraine withdraw its troops from the four regions that Russia has seized but never fully controlled, renounce its bid to join NATO and protect the rights of Russian speakers.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has previously rejected these demands.
What we don’t know
Details of the ceasefire proposal weren’t immediately available.
Moreover, it’s also unclear how involved Zelenskyy and other allies may have been in drafting the proposal. In pushing for a resolution, President Donald Trump has been noncommittal about how involved Ukraine would be in the peace talks, leading world policy experts to believe a deal could be negotiated behind Kyiv’s back.
The Source
Liam Archacki – February 20, 2025
Some Democratic are dismayed that the living former U.S. presidents have largely fallen silent amid the whirlwind first month of Donald Trump’s presidency.
Despite each offering some degree of criticism against Trump in the past, the four other presidents—Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden—have kept quiet during the Trump White House’s assault on political norms.
“No one knows more about the importance of our presidents respecting separation of powers and showing restraint than former presidents,” Democratic strategist Joel Payne told The Hill. “Given Trump’s ongoing power grab, those voices and perspectives of our ex-presidents would be critical to the public discourse at this moment.”
His stance was echoed by unnamed former senior Obama aide.
“I don’t know what they’re waiting for,” the insider told The Hill. “The time isn’t when Trump ignores court rulings. The time is now.”
Since entering office on Jan. 20, Trump has given his critics plenty of fodder. He has installed loyalists in key administration positions, flouted the Constitution by issuing brazen executive orders, and fired thousands of federal employees (with Elon Musk’s help).
On Wednesday, Trump went as far as to refer to himself as a “king.”
All three of the Democratic presidents had been unsparing in their previous criticism of Trump.
In his farewell address, Biden warned that “an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power, and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms.”
He emphasized the importance of staying “engaged” in the Democratic process.
Meanwhile, Obama and his wife Michelle Obama were two of Kamala Harris’ highest-profile surrogates during the 2024 campaign.
A month after Trump’s election, Obama gave a speech about the “increasing willingness on the part of politicians and their followers to violate democratic norms, to do anything they can to get their way.”
Obama did dip his toes into Trump criticism earlier this month, posting on X a New York Times op-ed slamming Trump and Musk’s push to end the U.S. Agency for International Development.
“USAID has been fighting disease, feeding children, and promoting goodwill around the world for six decades,” he wrote. “As this article makes clear, dismantling this agency would be a profound foreign policy mistake – one that Congress should resist.”
Otherwise, it’s been crickets.
Although Bush has seemed to cast indirect criticism at Trump and MAGA Republicanism, he has long refrained from explicit rebukes of his party member.
“It’s out of respect to the office,” a former Bush aide told The Hill. “It’s just not his style.”
In the past, presidents in general have steered clear of openly criticizing their successors—seemingly as sign of deference.
To that point, Democratic strategist Lynda Tran told The Hill that “in the age of Trump, it’s more important than ever that we respect and adhere to long-standing traditions,” like past presidents avoiding public debates with the sitting commander in chief.
She urged “faith in the other branches of government.”
Meanwhile, Susan Del Percio, a Republican strategist who doesn’t support Trump, said that there would be no upside to criticism from the presidents.
“They can’t, and they know it,” she said. “If they lend their voices to the conversation, they’ll just be taken down by Trump. If they speak out, it’ll be for the history books, not to affect the Trump presidency now.”
