Feb. 21—President Trump’s special envoy to the Ukraine crisis, Gen. (ret.) Keith Kellogg has arrived in Kiev. He will have meetings with Ukrainian regime leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy and top military commanders, reported AP. Kellogg said his visit was “a chance to have some good, substantial talks.” Kellogg’s first meeting was with the head Ukraine dictator Volodymyr Zelenskyy's,  Andriy Yermak. While accusing Russia of disinformation, Yermak spun his own tale. “It is important how this war will end. I personally told Keith Kellogg about this,” he said on Telegram, Ukrinform reported. “Russia always manipulates information, attempts to sow discord and lies to divide us. The principle of ‘nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine’ is key. We are interested in the United States being on the side of truth and justice, and it is on our side. We are interested in a strategic, long-term and comprehensive partnership with the United States. Ukraine needs security guarantees, defense and economic partnership.” “We understand the need for security guarantees,” Kellogg said in comments carried by Ukrainian public broadcaster Suspilne Novyny on his arrival at Kiev train station. “It’s very clear to us the importance of the sovereignty of this nation and the independence of this nation as well. … Part of my mission is to sit and listen.” Kellogg said he would convey what he learns on his visit to President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio “and ensure that we get this one right.” 

Feb. 21—Russian President Vladimir Putin responded to reporters’ questions on Feb. 19 regarding the talks in Saudi Arabia between high-level Russian and U.S. delegations, and a few other matters. Regarding the U.S.-Russia talks in Riyadh, Kommersant quoted him as saying, "I value these talks highly. They produced results. The American participants were entirely different people, they were open to a process of unimpeded discussion, without any judgment about what has been done in the past. “We agreed to resume the work of diplomatic missions in a normal manner. The constant expulsion of diplomats from Washington and Moscow does not lead to anything good.” In response to questions about a possible mediator between the two countries, Putin responded: "Someone wants to be a mediator between Russia and the United States? This is probably an excessive demand. The work continues and the outlook is good. “In the next couple of days, I plan to call Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud and thank him for organizing Russian-American negotiations in Riyadh.” Commenting on a possible upcoming meeting with President Trump: “I would be happy to meet Donald, we haven’t seen each other for a long time. We don’t have any close relations, but still, in previous years, during the four years when he was president, we met and discussed our country-to-country relations a lot. “It will take some time. I am not ready to tell you how much time it will take, but it’s our desire to hold such a meeting, and I would like to have it. But, I repeat, it requires preparation.” On the Russian-Ukrainian conflict: “When Mr. Trump was a candidate for the US presidency, he spoke about timeframes, fairly short timeframes for settling, say, the Ukrainian crisis. But after he began to receive information as an elected President from the intelligence services and so on, he changed his position, he said: yes, it will take six months…. “As for the negotiation process, President Trump told me during a telephone conversation, and I can confirm this, that, of course, the United States assumes that the negotiation process will take place with the participation of both Russia and Ukraine. No one is excluding Ukraine from this process.” Putin also held a lengthy press conference online today with participants all over the Russian Federation. These largely dealt with domestic matters. He was asked, however, what pictures he had in his office. He responded that in one office he had only an icon, and in the other only a bust of Mikhail Lomonosov, the first ethnic Russian involved in scientific endeavors and the founder of the first Russian institutions in chemistry and mineralogy. 

Feb. 21—U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance responded to Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s recent public attacks on President Donald Trump, which included pronouncing that Trump “lives in this disinformation space” of Russian propaganda. Vance delivered the stern warning in a Fe.b 18 interview with the National Pulse, in which he described Zelenskyy’s approach as “disgraceful” and counterproductive, emphasizing that such tactics could jeopardize Ukraine’s relationship with its most crucial ally. “This is not a good way to deal with President Trump,” he said pointedly. “Zelenskyy is getting really bad advice, and I don’t know from whom,” Vance said. “He’s not dealing with Joe Biden and the Biden administration anymore. He’s dealing with Donald Trump and the Trump administration…. The idea that he’s going to litigate his disagreements with the president in the public square…. This is not a good way to deal with President Trump. Of course, the Ukrainians are going to have their perspective. The way to surface that is in a private discussion with American diplomats…. he’s attacking the only reason [Donald Trump] this country exists, publicly, right now. And it’s disgraceful. And it’s not something that is going to move the President of the United States. In fact, it’s going to have the opposite effect.” Vance reaffirmed Trump’s policy on Ukraine: the war must end. He further asserted that U.S. policy now requires that Ukraine have elections. “The President won the election. He won it convincingly. And he’s made clear that American policy is to stop the killing and bring the war to a close,” Vance said. Trump, he said, “has an incredible amount of sympathy and admiration for the people of Ukraine. He wants the killing to stop because he doesn’t want innocent Ukrainians to keep losing their lives. So I think he very much thinks about this from the perspective, not just, of course, of his obligations to the United States, but also he just. He wants the brutality and the killing to stop.” Further, Trump “has said the goal of administration policy is to end the conflict,” Vance stressed. “So now, you know that has to happen. Right. Zelenskyy has to take that seriously. Our European allies have to take that seriously. That is the goal of administration policy. You’re not going to move the President away from that goal. You’re not going to change his mind, certainly not by attacking him publicly in the media.”

Feb. 21—Russia’s leading news agency TASS interviewed Helga Zepp- LaRouche, the founder of the Schiller Institute Feb. 19 on her evaluation of the significance of the just-concluded discussions in Riyadh between high-level diplomats from the U.S. and Russia. TASS published their report under the headline “U.S.-Russia Negotiations To Help Create Inclusive Security Architecture—Expert,” with the subhead: “The pathway laid out how to approach all problems on the table by taking into account the interest of all sides is very hopeful,” Helga Zepp-LaRouche said. The TASS article included the following quotes: WASHINGTON, February 19. /TASS/. The Russian-U.S. discussions in Riyadh are a historic turning point that will help create an inclusive security framework in the world, said Helga Zepp-LaRouche, founder of the International Schiller Institute. “The outcome of this long-awaited meeting between the high-ranking delegations from Russia and the U.S. represents a relief for the entire world. The pathway laid out how to approach all problems on the table by taking into account the interest of all sides is very hopeful,” she told TASS. “This was a game changer moment in history and hopefully a first step towards an all inclusive security and development architecture, which overcomes the disease of geopolitics forever.” “There was no reason to invite the participation of the Europeans at this stage of the discussion, given the fact that they had at no point since the beginning of the war, which according to Jens Stoltenberg started in 2014, tried to find a diplomatic solution to the conflict,” she said. “Even after it was clear that their aim to ‘ruin Russia’ had failed, there was no moment of reflection or change of mind. Even at the recent Munich Security Conference, the unrelenting Russophobia prevailed, led as usual by the British.” “If this Russophobia is kept up, it will lead to a split-up of the EU, where the countries who want peaceful relations with Russia, will possibly disassociate themselves,” the expert said. “Given the fact that the Ukraine conflict is the result of a proxy war between NATO and Russia, it makes total sense, that it would be the U.S. as the dominant force in NATO and Russia would sit down at the negotiating table, and that the proxy forces come in at a later point.”

Feb. 20—Hamas this morning returned coffins containing the bodies of four Israelis killed while in captivity. These included three members of the Bibas family, the two young red headed sons, Ariel and Kfir, and their mother Shiri, whose faces had adorned many posters urging the Israeli government, headed by the butcher of Gaza, Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu, to complete the deal to obtain the freedom of all the hostages. The coffins were whisked away to the Abu Kabir Forensic Institute in Tel Aviv to confirm their identities, as Bibi tried to keep the images from searing into the public consciousness, which has grown angry and impatient with Bibi’s unwillingness to commit to the terms of the hostage/ceasefire deal, brokered by the Trump administration. (Tonight,, a spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said that Shiri Bibas body had not been returned, that the remains in what Hamas labeled as her coffin were not hers. This was "a gross violation" of the terms of the agreement, demanding the immediate return of her body. Hamas has not yet commented on the report.) When Hamas turns over six living hostages Feb. 22, and then the bodies of 4 additional deceased hostages next week, they will have completed Phase 1 of the deal ahead of schedule. While Netanyahu has tried to claim that this was the result of the pressure put on Hamas by his demand, backed by President Donald Trump, that all the hostages be returned immediately, or “the gates of hell” will open on Hamas, informed sources say that something else was in play. Hamas believes that by completing Phase 1 of the deal early, it will turn up the pressure on Bibi to allow his team to finally begin negotiations in earnest. These sources say that the forensic investigation of the bodies of the returned dead hostages is likely to show that they were not killed by Hamas, but by the relentless Israeli bombardment, which if true, will only further inflame opinion against Netanyahu. Also, Trump’s straight-talking Special Envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff arrived in Israel this week to deliver a blunt message to Netanyahu: The President wants the terms of Phase 2 of the deal negotiated and that Trump knows that Bibi is stalling and even opposes this. The President will only back a resumption of the war if Hamas violates the ceasefire—and this had better not be caused by Bibi staging a provocation. He told Netanyahu that he wants negotiations to get under way by the end of the week. Bibi might be confused by such statements, in light of the President demanding the release of all hostages by Feb. 15, a deadline that came and went with Hamas merely complying with the terms of Phase 1 of the deal by releasing three hostages. Bibi had immediately stated that he too wanted to see all the hostages released. “Witkoff and Trump are playing Bibi for the desperate sucker he is,” a source close to the White House stated. “First they get him to state that the release of all the hostages is his priority, then Witkoff goes on national television and says that the only way to achieve this is through implementing the full deal to its full term.” The source was referring to a Fox News interview Feb. 16 with Witkoff. First, he made it clear that there is going to be a Phase 2, because he and President Trump want there to be one. “Phase 2 is a little more complicated than Phase 1,” he said. “But Phase 2 is absolutely going to begin.” Writing in Haaretz Feb. 17, analyst Chiam Lewinson explained how Witkoff, with Trump’s full backing, is putting the screws to Bibi: “[Witkoff] added that he had spoken by phone that morning with Netanyahu, the Qatari Prime Minister and the Director of Egyptian intelligence, and ‘we had very, very productive and constructive calls this morning about the sequencing of [Stage] 2, setting forth positions on both sides, so we can understand … where we are today, and then continuing talks this week at a location to be determined so that we can figure out how we get to the end of [Stage] 2 successfully.’ “He noted that Stage 2 would include the release of living hostages like Edan Alexander as well as bodies, so that their families could mourn properly. ‘It includes all of those people. It is just a little bit more intricate and complicated in terms of how we bring the two sides together on this because Phase 2 contemplates an end of the war, but it also contemplates Hamas not being involved in the government and being gone from Gaza. So, we’ve got to square those two things.’” There is work being done that appears to have made progress on this problem. Sources report that U.S. intelligence believes that Hamas can be split into a more accommodating political wing; and a military arm, which could be induced with some payments of money, to leave Gaza. Egypt and the Saudis have been discussing such a possibility and have leaked that Hamas might agree to renounce its control of Gaza at the end of the Phase 1 of the deal, as a condition to start Phase 2. Meanwhile, Hamas has come with a plan for Phase 2 that would release all the hostages at once in exchange for a permanent end to all fighting and a commitment to begin the reconstruction of Gaza, with the population remaining on site. That latter statement about reconstruction coheres with the terms of a soon-to-be-released Arab-Egyptian proposal. In that same interview on Fox News, Witkoff said in so many words what most serious thinkers and analysts have known from the beginning: there never really was and there is not any now a “Trump Plan” for removal of Palestinians from Gaza, their relocation to some yet-to-be-determined location, and the U.S. redevelopment of Gaza into the ‘Riviera of the Mediterranean.’ It was all a ruse, designed to provoke the Arabs in particular to come up with a better plan, and take ownership of the problem. “As usual,” Witkoff said, Trump “comes out saying something new and unique, and gets attacked for it.… But it also encourages a lot of conversation. So now we have the Egyptians saying they have a plan. The Jordanians are saying they have a plan. And people are actually engaging in really important, cogent discussion about what ought to happen there.” Noting that Trump, like Witkoff himself, comes from the world of real estate, he said the President’s position is “Why are we going to necessarily default to a policy prescription … where the same policy prescription has been implemented for the last four or five decades, and hasn’t worked? Maybe we need to explore new policy prescriptions that ultimately provide a better life for Gazans and Palestinians.” Reporting on the interview, Lewinson writes: “And that effort to jump-start the conversation has worked, Witkoff argued. ‘Look at the discourse that’s now happening today. We’re actually engaging in a productive conversation around what is best for Gaza and how do we make people’s lives better.’” Lewinson reports that Bibi was totally “blindsided” by Witkoff’s statements, causing him to flail about, but finally announce that he would send negotiators to Doha, Qatar to discuss Phase 2. At a State Security Cabinet meeting Feb. 18 on the matter, sources report that Bibi was peppered by his lunatic racist Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich about what he should make of the U.S. position. “Are they really going to take over Gaza and kick out the Palestinians? Will they really support us to go in and exterminate Hamas?” “Ask Witkoff,” he was told. The cabinet offered no direction for the negotiators. Writing in Haaretz today analyst Amir Tobon states: "Since October 7, Netanyahu and his lackeys have blamed a long list of people and institutions for the failures of that day, as well as for the prolonged suffering of the hostages. They blamed the hostages' families for holding protests in favor of their release; they blamed the media in Israel and abroad for focusing on the hostages; they blamed then-U.S. President Biden, and later U.S. President Trump and his special envoy, Steve Witkoff; and now their latest targets are the Mossad and Shin Bet chiefs. Only one man, it seems, has nothing at all to do with October 7, and bears no responsibility for anything at all – the man who has been the prime minister of Israel more than 90 percent of the time since the year 2009."  “Bibi finds himself between a rock and hard place,” said a source. “If he does not restart the war, he loses Smotrich, and his government may be finished, even as the trials for his corruption close in on him. If he sends the Israel Defense Forces back into Gaza, especially with Hamas appearing to make concessions, he will cause the death of the hostages, lose further support from the Israeli people, and lose the support of his so-called “good friend” Trump. He has been going around justifying radical action of implementing the phantasm that was the Trump Plan. Now, he sees that this was a hoax and Trump and Witkoff have played him for a sucker. The master of manipulation has been out manipulated. I love it!”

Feb. 20—A meeting of American and Russian officials Feb. 18 at the Diriyah Palace in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to discuss a process and plan for ending NATO’s very bloody war in Ukraine, marked a new beginning for a diplomacy that rejects geopolitical alliances like NATO, in favor of superpower discussion to achieve a shared objective. The meeting, according to reports, lasted some four and half hours, and was a free-ranging discussion of what it would take to secure a peace deal and end the slaughter, which has claimed a million lives on both sides. NATO and its sock puppet Ukrainian dictator Volodymyr Zelenskyy expressed dismay and even anger that Europe and Kyiv were not given a seat at the table, and that President Donald Trump and his team, which had first engineered a phone call last week between the President and Russian President Vladimir Putin, were prepared to develop on their own a peace plan, in discussion with Russia. For more than two years, a central feature of NATO strategy, slavishly followed by the dithering old fool who was the U.S. President, Sleepy Joe Biden, was to try to make Russia a pariah state, sanctioned by the U.S. and NATO, kept out of international fora, and even expelled from the G-8. Trump has personally smashed this policy, engaging Russia with respect for its superpower status, and trying to find common ground to work together on numerous issues, including ending the wars in Ukraine and Southwest Asia. “This is a radical change,” said a source familiar with the President’s thinking. “Trump believes that the ‘Big Boys,’—the United States, Russia, and China—have a special responsibility to get things right for the good of everyone—to stop wars, to work for global cooperation, and to offer aid and assistance when that is needed. They can disagree on things and on how to get specific objectives right, but in the end they must work together. Trump does not and will not see these three nations as enemies, but rather as a special kind of friend, because of their great power status to do good, or bad—to blow up the whole damn world. One might call them ‘the Three Policemen.’ “The funny thing is, that this concept, with the same nations involved, and perhaps adding the Brits, was exactly how President Franklin Roosevelt saw America securing the peace at the end of World War II,” said the source. “FDR had created the United Nations as a global forum where polices and ideas could be discussed and implemented, but he still saw the Four Policemen (China, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States) as the way to secure the peace, for all of the world. FDR was against the creation of blocs and alliances that were eventually pitted against each other. He would have been opposed to NATO, because, had he lived, Russia would have been both part of Europe and part of Asia, and would not have been forced to create a paranoid bloc to protect itself. “He probably does not know this, but Trump’s concept of global diplomacy parallels FDR’s,” the source continued. “Trump has a clear idea of how the process will work and he doesn’t want to involve other nations, including Ukraine, until he works out some parameters with the Russians. He is fully aware that the war in Ukraine was started by NATO and its puppet regime in Kyiv with the insane objective of destroying Russia and Putin. It was a losing strategy from the get-go. So, Trump will consult with NATO and Ukraine, but they are not controlling him nor the outcome of this process.” Seeing the direction that this is taking, Zelenskyy pushed back against the Riyadh meeting and the process, stopping just short of calling a meeting between Trump and Putin “illegitimate.” “Decisions on how to end the war in Ukraine cannot be made without Ukraine, nor can any conditions be imposed,” Zelenskyy said, according to The Hill. “We were not invited to this Russian-American meeting in Saudi Arabia. It was a surprise for us, [and] I think for many others as well.” Zelenskyy told Newsmax Feb. 14 that Trump “has [to] make a deal, not with Putin, [but] with us, and then pressure Putin. Because any negotiations without us, we will never accept, because the war is in Ukraine, not somewhere [else].” “I have the power to end this war, and I think it’s going very well,” Trump said during a news briefing Feb. 18 from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. “But today I heard, ‘Oh well, we weren’t invited.’ Well, you’ve [Zelenskyy] been there for three years.… You should have never started it. You could have made a deal. I could have made a deal for Ukraine that would have given them almost all of the land, everything, almost all of the land, and no people would have been killed, and no city would have been demolished and not one dome would have been knocked down, but they chose not to do it that way.” “I like him personally,” Trump said of Zelenskyy. “He’s fine, but I don’t care about ‘personally.’ I care about getting the job done. You have leadership that’s allowed a war to go on that should have never even happened, even without the United States. “Look, we had a president [Democrat Joe Biden] who was grossly incompetent. He had no idea what he was doing. He said some very stupid things like going in for portions and all of the things. He made a lot of bad statements, but he [was] grossly incompetent, and I think everyone knew that this is something that should have never happened.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters in Saudi Arabia that any final agreement must be acceptable to Ukraine and Europe, as well as to Russia, according to The Hill. Don’t expect to see Zelenskyy at the table with the “Big Boys” until the outlines of a deal are agreed to. Trump is on schedule of the leaked, so-called Trump Peace Plan, which called for a phone call with Putin, and then a meeting in Riyadh to set the process in motion. According to that schedule, leaked to the Ukrainian press last month, the next things that will happen are a Trump-Putin meeting, most likely in Saudi Arabia and a phone call between Putin and the little Ukrainian dictator. After that comes the terms of a ceasefire which would go into effect on Easter Sunday (April 20). During this time, there would be a face-to-face meeting between Zelenskyy and Putin. In the final phase of this process, which will also lay out how the deal will be guaranteed and policed and how Ukraine will be rebuilt, the final terms will all be agreed upon, and will be announced on May 9—the 80th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany. This an ambitious schedule but Trump thinks it is workable. Trump said yesterday that he thought the talks with Russia in Riyadh—which marked a dramatic shift in relations between the countries since the war started Feb. 24, 2022—went well and that he’s “much more confident” that either a ceasefire or peace deal can be reached. “Russia wants to do something,” Trump said. “They want to stop the savage barbarianism. What’s going on over there, soldiers are being killed by the thousands on a weekly basis. It’s ridiculous. And they’re not American soldiers. They’re Russian soldiers and they’re Ukrainian soldiers largely, although a lot of [North] Koreans have been killed, as you know. But we want to end it. It’s a senseless war. It should have never happened, would have never happened if I was president. And it’s a shame to see it.” Meanwhile, Zelenskyy, under pressure from Trump, as well as internally, is starting to behave like a "cornered rat," as the Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council Dimitry Medvedev observed and warned against a possible staged provocation by Zelenskyy to sabotage the momentum for peace. But sources with knowledge of the internal pressure on NATO's dictator say that his options are limited. They report that Trump's call for elections also reflects the feeling in the leadership of the Ukranian Armed Forces, who have had backchannel discussions with their Russian counterparts for months—discussions that Zelenskyy has been unable to shut down. Zelenskyy bristled at Trump's "interference" in Ukranian internal affairs, saying that the President was living in a "Russian disinformation space." If he thought that such statements would cause Trump to back off, he was terribly wrong, and himself "delusional." Trump fired back at the sock-puppet dictator, posting on Truth Social yesterday morning: “Think of it, a modestly successful comedian, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, talked the United States of America into spending $350 Billion Dollars, to go into a War that couldn’t be won, that never had to start, but a War that he, without the U.S. and 'TRUMP,' will never be able to settle. The United States has spent $200 Billion Dollars more than Europe, and Europe’s money is guaranteed, while the United States will get nothing back. Why didn’t Sleepy Joe Biden demand Equalization, in that this War is far more important to Europe than it is to us — We have a big, beautiful Ocean as separation. On top of this, Zelenskyy admits that half of the money we sent him is 'MISSING.' He refuses to have Elections, is very low in Ukrainian Polls, and the only thing he was good at was playing Biden 'like a fiddle.' A Dictator without Elections, Zelenskyy better move fast or he is not going to have a Country left. In the meantime, we are successfully negotiating an end to the War with Russia, something all admit only 'TRUMP,' and the Trump Administration, can do. Biden never tried, Europe has failed to bring Peace, and Zelenskyy probably wants to keep the “gravy train” going. I love Ukraine, but Zelenskyy has done a terrible job, his Country is shattered, and MILLIONS have unnecessarily died – And so it continues…..” "As I have been saying for some time now," a source stated, "once there is any momentum towards peace, Zelenskyy and his coterie of crooks and fools can only get in the way. If he thinks he is under pressure now, wait until Trump really starts to turn up the screws. The point is that there are several people waiting in th wings who can take Ukraine out of this terrible war. And Trump knows that—and much more."