Western brain death: Trump's Witkoff to Putin: "you are humane"

Witkoff, the real estate agent whom demented American President Donald Trump appointed as presidential envoy to advance peace in Ukraine — meaning he has full authority to negotiate, to blackmail, to flatter, to relay promises and to collect counter-promises — put on a show in St. Petersburg yesterday that would make any thinking, decent person feel sheer nausea. But let's start at the beginning.

Witkoff traveled to St. Petersburg to meet with Putin and relay to him the security guarantees and the related settlement ideas that had been discussed the previous day in Oslo with Ukrainian President Zelensky, together with Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre and Finnish President Alexander Stubb. Zelensky said at the time that Moscow's response would be known within two days — and it has now arrived, though more on that later. Following the Oslo talks, the American envoy sat down with the Russian president on October 21 at the Constantine Palace in St. Petersburg.

So Witkoff arrives in St. Petersburg, fist-bumps Putin, fawns all over the Russian president who is a war criminal, even gives a figurative blowjob to the interpreters present, then — like a lackey serving two masters — brings up Trump, never forgetting to note what a humane president he is, before turning to Putin: you too are humane, Mr. President. The exact course of the scene is even more nauseating than that:

At the start of the public conversation, Putin said that Trump is dealing with ending the war in Ukraine primarily out of humanitarian considerations, and then also thanked Melania Trump for her role in humanitarian matters — the American first lady has been working on bringing home Ukrainian children abducted by Russia. I wonder if anyone still senses the biting Russian sarcasm and contempt behind Putin's "thank you." Witkoff then expressed his gratitude for the release of American citizen Stephen Hubbard, saying he brought the thanks of Trump and the entire American nation, since the man can now return home to his family thanks to Putin — we wrote here about this case and its chilling resemblance to the Hungarian one. At this point Putin interjected that Hubbard was already at Pulkovo Airport. Witkoff said they would meet him, then circled back to mutual praise of each other's humanity, producing the sentence worth preserving for posterity:

"You are a humane person too, sir. I commend you, and thank you again."

Yes, the American envoy — who is supposed to convey the will of the free world's foremost figure and strive for justice — calls Putin humane. All this happened yesterday afternoon, only for ballistic missiles to flood the Ukrainian sky again by evening, for drones and cruise missiles to arrive, and for the killing, killing, killing to continue, because Ilya Ehrenburg* has not disappeared, he has merely transformed: the word "German" has simply been swapped for "Ukrainian." And with this I also have a message for all the woke brain-dead people who still manage to put their trust in so-called Russian culture as a reliable solution and as an excuse absolving murder — as if it weren't the people of Goethe who sent millions of Jews to death camps, but one of the surest and most enduring traits of our civilization is that it never learns from its own history.

Humanism, in forty-thousand-ton packaging,
financial details still being worked out

And what did Putin say in response to being called so humane? Nothing, according to the available transcript. Witkoff went on talking about the Oslo talks, the possibility of trilateral negotiations, and American–Russian economic cooperation, then also expressed gratitude for Russian diesel shipments. Putin's next recorded remark was about exactly that: he mentioned falling prices, announced that the first tanker carrying forty thousand tons of diesel could set off within two or three days, and raised the possibility of also shipping fertilizer to American farmers.

As for the negotiation itself: no substantive answer was given as to what Putin thinks of the security guarantees formulated in Oslo, or more broadly what he wants for the future, or how he intends to wind down his war machine. Presidential adviser Yuri Ushakov said only that Witkoff had presented new elements of the approach taken by the Europeans and Kyiv, but that, in Moscow's view, there was not much in them that was usable for a settlement. In other words, the response has arrived, yet we are no closer to peace: the Russian side assessed the proposals strictly on its own terms and announced no concrete commitment to halt the attacks.

We did learn, however, that the Kremlin is willing — note that, it's the Kremlin that's "willing" — to take part in restarting trilateral talks. Kyiv, Washington and Moscow could sit down together in mid-November, but this too was stated only by a Kremlin official whose influence over how events unfold is roughly on par with that of the doorman at a brothel in a St. Petersburg suburb — though the latter might actually have more. According to the official statement, Putin agreed in principle to continue, and Ushakov has already described the subject of this continuation as establishing a postwar security arrangement for Russia and Ukraine, because Russia's security is an important and unavoidable matter.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha, in any case, was quick to state after the latest nighttime attack that the residents of Kyiv had just heard what Russian "humanism" really sounds like. Ballistic missiles struck energy facilities, medical institutions, shopping centers and residential areas, while other Ukrainian cities also came under attack. According to Sybiha, appeasement, servility and flattery will not stop this war — only strength will.

In plain terms: ass-kissing and self-abasement will not end the war — but Washington is hardly likely to understand that.

Anna Karczag

*Ilya Ehrenburg: a Soviet writer, poet and translator to the core. During the Second World War, he urged Russian soldiers in his poems to kill; his most notorious poem is in fact titled "Kill." I am leaving it below — go ahead and swap the word "German" for "Ukrainian," and then ask yourselves exactly what has changed in the great Russian soul since then.

"Kill! Glorious Soviet warriors, kill! The Germans are not human beings. From this day on, let the word 'German' be the greatest curse you can utter. You must kill, and if you have not killed at least one German today, then your day has been wasted! If you cannot shoot them dead, then run them through with a bayonet. If the front around you is quiet, and while you wait to go into battle again, use that time too to find a German you can kill. Kill, for there is no greater pleasure than leaping over the heaped-up corpses of Germans! Do not count the days, do not count the kilometers — kill, and kill again. Count the Germans you have killed instead of the cities you have taken. Kill the German — this is your grandmother's plea! Kill the German — this is what your mother prays for! Kill — this is what your child asks of you! Kill the German — this is what the Soviet homeland demands of you, shouting at the top of its voice! Make no mistake, show no mercy, kill! Glorious Soviet warriors, kill!"