- 5/12/2025
Russian President Vladimir Putin has given Kiev another chance to restart direct negotiations in Istanbul, a process Ukraine walked away from in 2022. Meanwhile, Trump’s recent Middle East visit doesn’t include Israel—raising questions about Netanyahu’s position. Watch as Mark Sleboda and George Szamuely break down these developments. ✌️🌍
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NewsTranscript
00:00Welcome to Crosstalk Bullhorns, where all things are considered.
00:18I'm Peter Lavelle.
00:19Russian President Vladimir Putin has offered Kiev the opportunity to restart direct negotiations
00:24in Istanbul, which it unilaterally walked away from in 2022.
00:28Also, Trump's visit to the Middle East doesn't include a stop in Israel.
00:32Is Bibi on the ropes?
00:34To discuss these issues and more, I'm joined by my guest, George Samueli in Budapest.
00:39He's a podcaster at The Gaggle, which can be found on YouTube and Locals.
00:42And here in Moscow, we cross to Mark Sloboda.
00:45He's an international relations and security analyst.
00:48All right, gentlemen, Crosstalk rules in effect.
00:50That means you can jump anytime you want, and I always appreciate it.
00:52All right, let's start out with Mark.
00:54We have an announcement only hours ago, actually, where President Putin announced the direct
01:02negotiations with the Kiev regime in Istanbul on May 15th.
01:08So this is a bit of a repetition.
01:11It's being reported as something that's very big and new.
01:14We have Trump saying, think of the hundreds of thousands of lives that will be saved when
01:20this endless bloodbath is hopefully over.
01:22It will be a whole new and much better world.
01:25This is what he said on True Social.
01:27We have the French President Macron.
01:29This is according to AFP.
01:31It's a first step, but it's not enough.
01:33He claims that this is an alleged looking for a way out, still wanting to buy time.
01:41We could have expected those responses from the two different leaders.
01:44What's your take, Mark?
01:45Yeah, Trump's emotive comments about saving human life always strike me as a bit rich as
01:51he's threatening in loud, screaming capital letters to bomb Iran once again.
01:56And he's already hit Yemen a thousand times.
02:00Although now Trump seems to have capitulated in the U.S.
02:04Navy has retreated out of the Red Sea away from the Houthis.
02:08But regardless, this is nothing new.
02:11At least most of it is nothing new.
02:14Well, I mean, there's a venue.
02:15There is a date.
02:16A venue.
02:17Yes.
02:17Yes.
02:17So what is going on is there was another meeting of the Coalition of the Irrelevant.
02:24I mean, the Coalition of the Willing in Kiev just after Russia's Victory Day celebrations.
02:34Starmer was there, Macron, Meretz, Tusk, and a few other irrelevants.
02:39And supposedly they at least have tacit U.S. backing with Zelensky demanding that Putin unconditionally
02:51accept a 30-day ceasefire or suffer EU sanctions, which will further EU sanctions because the
03:01first 28,000 weren't enough.
03:04You know, the next one will definitely be the straw that break the camel's back or
03:09suffer that, you know, these these consequences.
03:11And Russia is playing a game, right?
03:14There's a dance going on.
03:16Everyone knows that these peace talks are going to go nowhere.
03:19They just want the blame for the failure in Trump's eyes to fall on someone else.
03:25Trump has said two things.
03:27He wants a ceasefire now.
03:29And now he's hit on that he wants direct talks with Russia and Ukraine.
03:34So while the Kiev regime jumps on the ceasefire and says there will be no talks without a 30-day
03:41ceasefire so that the Kiev regime can rearm, rebuild, get European troops on the ground,
03:48Russia is trying the different tactic.
03:50This is nothing new except for the date and time.
03:53But what Putin is attempting to doing is to deflect and misdirect from the ceasefire ultimatum
04:00of Kiev and basically issuing his own ultimatum for direct negotiations to happen this week
04:08at a date and time, you know, in Istanbul.
04:12So this again, this is a dance.
04:15This is a diplomatic, you know, or maybe you want to say hot potato.
04:19See who is the last one to catch it and catch Trump's ire for his great peace,
04:26quote unquote plan to fail.
04:30I think ultimately, though, unfortunately, there's too much impetus in the West behind
04:36this.
04:37No matter what, Russia is going to catch the blame.
04:40But they're making a good attempt to try to avoid it.
04:45Well, and George, it's I was going to say it's very interesting, but it's not very interesting
04:49that the venue is Istanbul because the Russians are not so subtly messaging, you know, we've
04:56been here before and it was you guys that walked away.
05:00And I think this is a reminder of that.
05:03And those that have been following this tragic, unnecessary conflict are that this is going
05:09to come top of mind.
05:11I mean, you guys were this far apart.
05:14And look what look what's happened during the course of this conflict.
05:18Like you're in a much weaker position economically, militarily and and to reflect upon what Mark
05:26just said here.
05:27Russia is not so isolated in the world.
05:29Did you see who was on Red Square during the Victory Day parade?
05:32Go ahead, George.
05:34No, I think that's right.
05:35And in Putin's announcement, he he talked obviously about what happened in Istanbul.
05:41And he said that we didn't walk away from the talks in Istanbul.
05:44It was the Ukrainians who walked away and refused to engage in any further negotiations
05:51after Istanbul.
05:53And then, of course, Putin also talked about, well, you know, you talk about ceasefires.
05:57You didn't observe any of the ceasefires that we've been talking about.
06:01You didn't observe the the ceasefire on the energy infrastructure.
06:04You didn't observe the Easter ceasefire.
06:07You didn't observe the the three day, you know, May 9th ceasefire.
06:12But I think that it is important that what Trump is, what Putin is doing here is playing
06:20on the differences between the Europeans and the Trump administration.
06:25Trump did not endorse the 30 day ceasefire.
06:28If you read his truth, he said, ideally, we will have a 30 day ceasefire.
06:34Ideally means maybe not, it'd be nice to have, but he's not issuing any kind of an ultimatum
06:40that the, as Mark said, the coalition of the irrelevant issued, they issued an ultimatum.
06:45You either sign on to this 30 day ceasefire or we impose sanctions.
06:50What Trump said is that, well, ideally, we'll have a ceasefire.
06:53But once a ceasefire takes place, whoever violates it, then that'd be sanctioned.
06:59He didn't say that it'll be against Russia.
07:01He says whoever violates it, Ursula von der Leyen said, well, if Russia violates the ceasefire,
07:06we will impose sanctions on Russia.
07:08She's already, already has that in mind that, of course, that Russia will have sanctions.
07:14And when J.D. Vance last week talked about Munich, he said, we want to see direct negotiations
07:21between Russia and Ukraine.
07:24So I think that's what Putin is saying.
07:25OK, well, we're offering direct negotiation.
07:28You said you wanted it here.
07:29Yeah, this is direct.
07:30So they're saying, well, are you going to be against this?
07:33You're saying you don't want direct negotiation.
07:36So he's put the Trump administration in a bind.
07:39They have to then make a decision.
07:41Why do they object to direct negotiations?
07:44This is what you've been called for.
07:45Trump said the other day, hey, get this war sorted out.
07:48He said, to Russia and Ukraine.
07:50He said, that's my message to you.
07:51Get it sorted out.
07:51So Putin is saying, well, here, we're offering direct negotiation.
07:55So it's actually a very clever ploy on Putin's part.
07:59But Mark, also, isn't it a reminder of what has happened during the course of the conflict
08:05from the Istanbul of 2022 to now?
08:09Because I think that's a that's not a so subtle reminder to the Ukrainians and actually to their
08:13backers, the Europeans, that the the deal was a very I had preference to Ukraine, not to
08:21Russia in 2022.
08:23We're not going to see the same kind of agreement now, even if we were to parenthetically go
08:28forward May 15th negotiations.
08:30What kind of outcome could that even generate?
08:35Because it's not going to be the same deal that it was in 2022.
08:39Yeah, I thought I think it's kind of moot.
08:41I'd really no one really expects Zelensky to send the team there.
08:46He still has a diktat that no one can negotiate with Russians.
08:51Right.
08:52Well, I mean, what kind of pressure can the Trump administration, if they so want to put
08:58on the Kiev regime to show up?
09:00Well, theoretically, they could do what they claim to have already done and halt military
09:07aid and intelligence to the Kiev regime.
09:11But just this in the last week, we see more U.S. signing off on military transfers.
09:18Germany just announced it's sending 100 more Patriot missiles, long range artillery shells
09:24and other armaments.
09:26And they had to have the U.S. sign off on that.
09:28And they obviously did.
09:29So that's the fourth weapon package that that Trump has either sent or signed off on in
09:37the last week.
09:39And I'm sorry.
09:41I think that, you know, the if Putin does not accept the ceasefire and Russia has made
09:48clear they will not accept the 30 day ceasefire.
09:50It's not to their benefit.
09:52They're they've been down this road before.
09:54Minsk one, Minsk two.
09:55Right.
09:56They're not going to let the West rearm the Kiev regime while it's back on its heels.
10:00That's that's not going to happen.
10:02And inevitably, I think, you know, there's not going to be other way, any other way around
10:07that.
10:08And then Trump will put sanctions on Russia.
10:12Well, some of them will be against Russia, probably the Russian central bank.
10:16Not that that it will have necessarily any great effect.
10:20But the rest of the sanctions will be more Trump sanctions against the world.
10:24Secondary sanctions to try to get them to stop buying Russian energy, to get them to
10:30stop trading with Russia.
10:31And I think China and India, the two biggest on that block, have already also indicated that
10:37they are not going to be dictated by Trump or any U.S.
10:42leader about who they will or will not trade with.
10:46Well, but, George, let's say let's say that Mark is right about Trump's frustration and
10:51how he'll react to Russia.
10:53What happens to the warming of the bilateral relationship between Moscow and Washington?
10:58Is that going to go down the tubes?
10:59Yeah, I think it will.
11:01Mark is Mark gave the visual effect.
11:03OK, you can get a verbal.
11:04Yeah, no, I think I think it would go down the tube.
11:06That's why I'm not entirely convinced that that's what he's going to do.
11:10So, again, if you go back to J.D. Vance's presentation in Munich, he said we have gone
11:16beyond this obsession with the 30-day ceasefire.
11:19He said obsession.
11:20He used that word.
11:21So, therefore, it's clear that within the administration, there are voices saying, look,
11:27if you go, if you obsess over this 30-day ceasefire, then we're not going to get anywhere.
11:32Russia is not going to accept the 30-day ceasefire.
11:34So, therefore, we need to do something a little more than that.
11:37We've got to present some kind of a framework that Russia can accept, or at least Russia
11:42can negotiate.
11:43Because if we do this, if we make it a fetish, which is exactly what the Europeans are doing,
11:48because it's clear from what Vance said, he knows the game the Europeans are playing.
11:52The Europeans are trying to do everything they can to sabotage any possible negotiated
11:58outcome in Ukraine.
12:00They are sabotaging.
12:01That's why they want to make this a big issue of the 30-day ceasefire.
12:06They know Russia is going to reject it.
12:08And that's why they said, oh, Trump is with us.
12:10But where was Trump?
12:11Trump wasn't there.
12:12You know, they said, oh, we're speaking on behalf of Trump.
12:15Well, they weren't speaking on behalf of Trump.
12:16They were speaking on behalf of themselves.
12:18So, the Americans know this.
12:20And so, there's at least a possibility there, precisely because, as you said, if they go
12:25down this path and they're going to impose sanctions on Russia, and it may happen, may
12:29happen, then that's it.
12:30The end of the bilateral relations.
12:32And it will be a failure on Trump's part, as he failed during his first term.
12:38He wanted to improve relations with Russia.
12:40He got sidetracked by Russiagate.
12:41He got pushed into doing the sanctions.
12:44Oh, I'm tougher on Russia than Obama was.
12:46And that's what's going to happen again this time.
12:48He's going to go down this path of sanctions, and then that's it.
12:51End of any possible improvement of relations.
12:55Well, as we go to the point.
12:57J.D. Vance also said this week that Russia is asking too much to end the war.
13:04And it has to be said again and again and again.
13:07Yeah, but he said, but that always happens in the first step of any negotiations.
13:12That's what he said.
13:12Gentlemen, hold your thoughts.
13:15We're going to go to a short break.
13:16And after that short break, we'll continue our discussion on some real news.
13:19Stay with our team.
13:24Welcome back to Crosstalk Bullhorns, where all things are considered.
13:27I'm Peter LaVelt.
13:28Remind you, we're discussing some real news.
13:30All right, gentlemen, before we move on to Trump's visit to the Middle East, I want to finish off what we said in the first half.
13:35So, Mark, given what George said, and you were interjecting as we went to the break, then this is Trump's war.
13:44He he's inherited Biden's war.
13:47And there will be a battlefield outcome to this conflict.
13:51I mean, I'm trying to connect all the dots here.
13:53Mark.
13:54Yeah.
13:55So J.D. Vance, as George said, said that is what always happens.
14:01You know, one side asks for too much in the beginning of negotiations.
14:05But Russia is not going to back down from the negotiations.
14:07In fact, they're likely to ask for more.
14:10Why?
14:10Because they are winning on the battlefield.
14:12And it needs to be reminded again and again and again.
14:15You can't say it enough.
14:16The U.S. is not some third party arbiter or mediator.
14:20This is their proxy war against Russia, however much Trump is trying to create a degree of political remove.
14:28This is his war now.
14:31Every Russian that dies at the hand of a U.S. weapon is being killed by Donald Donald Brandon Trump.
14:39Right. Because that is the cause of it.
14:43And that is certainly something that is always at the Russians mind.
14:48And Russia right now, I think whatever they may say publicly, they think this one only ends on the battlefield and two only ends with regime change in Kiev.
15:00That's the only way it ends.
15:02And they're already prepared for relations with the Trump administration to go down the tube if that's what happens.
15:08George, do you want to retort before we go? Move on?
15:11Except I would say that that's not what Russia is saying publicly.
15:16Russia has made very clear that it distinguishes the approach of the Trump administration from that of the Europeans.
15:25And they're saying that the Trump administration is one that we can work with.
15:29We like their approach. We like their attitude.
15:32And so they haven't yet made this the issue.
15:35Oh, you are militarizing this.
15:38You're sending all this weaponry.
15:39You know, you're involved in the war.
15:41They are essentially accepting, OK, you're still sending military stuff.
15:45But this is stuff that had already been promised by the Biden administration.
15:48You're just continuing with this.
15:50This is there is this it's a kind of inertia that this is going to continue.
15:55Well, well, but beyond it.
15:57But at the moment, the Russians are cutting the administration some slack.
16:00Yeah. But they're they're coming out with some newfangled ideas of allowing Ukraine to buy weapons from the Europeans using funds allocated.
16:11I mean, it's they're they're trying to maneuvering.
16:15It's a maneuver.
16:16All right. All right. We're not going to solve the Ukraine crisis on this program today.
16:20OK, I want to move on.
16:21Mark, Donald Trump is making his first trip abroad in his second term.
16:25He's going to the Middle East.
16:26As I said in my introduction, he's not making a stop in Israel.
16:30Much has been made of the growing rift or split or whatever word you want to use between Trump himself and Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister.
16:42I don't know how much to read into that.
16:43But not going to Israel does seem to be significant.
16:47And he has made you've already mentioned, OK, the United States declared victory in Yemen.
16:53I don't want to waste a lot of time on that.
16:55Obviously, it was the U.S. that capitulated there.
16:57The Trump administration is with the Abraham Accords is given an exemption now where Saudi Arabia can acquire the full fuel cycle to for civilian nuclear power, something that was something that was not part of the original Abraham Accord for the Saudis to normalize relations with Israel.
17:22And then even even stranger for me, the Trump administration has its own private initiative for Gaza.
17:29There's a lot going on simultaneously as he's flying to the region right now.
17:34Your thoughts on all these moving pieces?
17:36Yeah, I really think this is a nothing burger story, really little relevance.
17:43Obviously, Saudi Arabia is not going to just renew to the Abraham Accords after everything that has happened and is happening with Gaza.
17:52They've made that perfectly clear.
17:54Trump is going to the Middle East.
17:56First, he actually went to the Vatican briefly for a funeral.
18:00So this is the second trip.
18:02But that was just a brief stopover and to listen to Zelensky during a the pope's funeral.
18:09That was kind of shameless.
18:11But Trump is going back to the Middle East.
18:14You might remember in his first administration, he went there and he did sword dances.
18:19And there was this weird photo op with him and Sisi and the leader of the FBS touching this glowing orb like there's Saruman in the Lord of the Rings or something like that.
18:33Really weird.
18:34But he knows that he's not going to be criticized in the Middle East.
18:37They're going to roll out the red carpet for him.
18:39They're going to shower him with money.
18:41Or at least the U.S. economy with investments.
18:45Saudi's promised some $600 billion of investment over so many years.
18:51And the UAE topped that off with $1.4 trillion over slightly longer years.
18:57They're just showering money.
18:59This is what you do.
19:00Trump is playing at being God Emperor of mankind.
19:05Trump loves that.
19:07And they know how to get on his good side.
19:09You flatter him, you give him these airs, and you throw some money in his direction.
19:15And I think that this is primarily what this trip is about.
19:19The administration is trying to make it about business deals, meaning the Arab leaders throwing money at Trump so that he stays on their good side during the next four years.
19:30I think too much is being made of this, of any split between Netanyahu and Trump.
19:35We've actually heard this before, and it turned out to be nothing.
19:40Let's make it clear.
19:41Trump's buttocks are stamped and owned by Adelson and the IPAC lobby in the United States.
19:50That's Trump's Israel first foreign policy.
19:53Well, I mean, you know, we'll see how this goes.
19:56I mean, this is something that surfaced a few days ago.
19:59You know, George, you know, you have writers in the New York Times saying this government in Israel is not our ally.
20:05I mean, you know, it's hard to disagree with Mark about the donors.
20:08But, I mean, this came out of the Israeli press, too, which, you know, where Trump is at odds with Netanyahu.
20:17Trump fired his national security advisor, which I'm sure he was loathe to do so early on.
20:22But, I mean, is there something here?
20:24I mean, there's a lot of smoke.
20:25Is there any fire?
20:26I think there is.
20:27I think these are all a number of quite significant moves.
20:32I mean, the story is he's now broken off direct communications with Netanyahu.
20:39And when the firing or, you know, shuffling off of Waltz happened, the White House put out that what really irked Trump was that Waltz was plotting behind Trump's back
20:55to get the United States involved in the bombing of Iran.
21:01Now, Trump does not like people going around behind his back, and he doesn't like Netanyahu doing this.
21:09So he clearly is very angry with Netanyahu.
21:12Last time when he went on in 2017 on this trip to the Middle East and a visit to Saudi Arabia, he also visited Israel.
21:20And he's not visiting Israel this time.
21:24And there is talk that he's going to bring up the issue of a Palestinian state.
21:29Now, we don't know what the borders are, nonetheless.
21:33That would be something that would be very, very annoying to Netanyahu, because earlier on, Trump seemed to be moving away from the whole two-state solution.
21:44But if he does bring up, you know, a Palestinian state, that is clearly then distinguishing himself from Netanyahu.
21:53And, you know, I don't think he needs the—he has no ideological commitment to Israel.
22:00He never has.
22:01The donors were important to him in his first term because he needed their money for re-election.
22:06He's not seeking re-election now, so he doesn't need adults and money now.
22:10He can actually think about the Middle East free of any of the pressure.
22:16And the story is—there's another one, maybe that hasn't been confirmed—APAC has been shuffled off from Mar-a-Lago.
22:23Basically, APAC isn't getting anywhere in Mar-a-Lago.
22:27So, we'll have to see whether it's significant.
22:31I don't think Trump really wants to go down the path of bombing Iran.
22:37I mean, he sees—
22:38Well, that's my next—
22:40Okay, go ahead.
22:41That's my next question, you know, because, Mark, you said that Trump, okay, he loves to be adored.
22:46He wants to be the emperor of the world and all.
22:49We all know that, okay?
22:50And he loves money being thrown—because he probably thinks it's his money, you know, investment in the United States.
22:57But, I mean, is he going there to campaign for war against Iran?
23:01Because the countries that he's visiting, they don't want a war with Iran.
23:05Yeah, they don't.
23:06And I think part of it may be getting their agreement that if it comes, that they will at least give the U.S., you know, flight out of the military bases and so forth, even if they don't directly participate in it.
23:23Now, as of two weeks ago, I was sure that it wasn't in Iran's or the U.S.'s, the Trump administration's interest for a war with Iran, right?
23:32They have other priorities.
23:34They're stuck in Ukraine.
23:36They want to pivot to China.
23:37And they're happy, I think, to let Israel do whatever it wants to the Palestinians, right?
23:42But they don't want to get involved.
23:44However, the Trump administration's absolutely absurd demands for their nuclear deal demand over the last week that Iran give up its civilian nuclear power program, which it's entitled to under international law in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, and stop all support for any Shiite axis of resistance groups in the Middle East.
24:09Because the U.S. is allowed to arm proxies, but Iran is not.
24:12I mean, that's the deal.
24:14That is, I mean, unless Trump backs away from that, which he has done from other things, but that's a path to war.
24:21Demands like that are a path to war.
24:23And if Trump really doesn't want to bomb Iran, then he should probably stop making social media posts screaming like a child in all capital letters, I will bomb Iran.
24:35I mean, seriously.
24:36Yeah, well, and George, I mean, it has a – this is turning into the dog that, you know, it's always the sky is falling, the sky is falling, but Trump's going to have to come to some kind of decision.
24:52And I think that's what a lot of the – part of this is it's going to be about.
24:55I mean, just exactly what is this administration's policy?
24:58They want to know.
24:59Well, that's it, but, I mean, when it comes to the civilian nuclear program, there is a real – quite easy way that they can get out of it.
25:07All they can say is, well, Iran can have nuclear enrichment as long as it's under the oversight of the IAEA.
25:16And then if he gets that, I think Iran would probably agree to that.
25:20Then he can say, hey, I've gone beyond the JCPOA.
25:22I mean, Obama didn't have that.
25:24I have that.
25:24It's under the IAEA oversight.
25:27After all, Saudi Arabia would also – if Saudi Arabia does have the full enrichment fuel cycle, it would also be under the offices of the IAEA.
25:37So he can do that.
25:38And the question of, you know, all the ballistic missiles and the support for the Shiites, Trump is saying the only thing – he has said a number of times, the only thing I care about is that Iran doesn't have nuclear weapons.
25:51And even –
25:53We've run out of time, gentlemen.
25:56It doesn't have nuclear weapons.
25:57The problem is, is that can anybody trust Donald Trump considering he walked away from a nuclear agreement before?
26:03All right, gentlemen, that's all the time we have.
26:05I want to thank my guests in Moscow and in Budapest.
26:07And, of course, I want to thank our viewers for watching us here at RGC.
26:10See you next time.
26:10Remember, crosstalk rules.