Today marks 3 years since the start of the war in Ukraine. The new US President Donald Trump has threatened to end the conflict. What kind of diplomacy are we observing… Career diplomat Ognyan Garkov speaks to FACT.
- Mr. Garkov, three years since the start of the Russia - Ukraine war. Did Donald Trump have to come to power in the US for things to move forward on a diplomatic level?
- It seems that someone with a more decisive position should have come. The previous US government in the person of President Biden and the Democrats were part of the “deep state“.
In general, the “deep state“ is the brainchild of the Democrats and now Trump will try to get rid of it if he is not “blown away again”.
The Biden government pursued such a policy. Brussels and the three ladies - Ursula von der Leyen (President of the EC), Roberta Mezzola (President of the EP) and Kaia Kallas (”Foreign Minister” of the EU - were respectively influenced by this. These are people in leading positions in the EU, but I will refrain from commenting on them. I will give one example. I once gave an assessment (for internal use, with a resolution) of a coded message signed by a lady ambassador of Bulgaria to Germany, prepared by her deputy (now deputy minister). It was a 5-page coded message that was copied from a newspaper!? That was absolutely unacceptable then, I don't know how it is now. But to this day I still "get a kick out of both of them". I had written that sometimes it's better for women to be doing dishes and looking after the stove than to be doing such work.
- Will Trump stop the war as he threatened?
- Trump acts like a cowboy - in Bulgarian, a cowherd. He tells the truth cynically, as he understands it. A pure cowboy statement – open, cynical, mentoring.
- And whoever doesn't like this, let him get angry…
- Yes, the arrogant tone of an arrogant mentor towards Europe. Europe for Trump is a Euro-Atlantic proletariat. He speaks to Europe as a colonizer towards a vassal. Our people are not used to this. He insulted Europeans, the Sorosoid right - including in our country, etc. Trump simply told them the truth. For him, the USA is above everything. He doesn't care about anything else. Can you tell your allies to give you Greenland, the Panama Canal, for Canada to become a state, for the Gulf of Mexico to be renamed the Gulf of America? Trump is a populist majoritarian. This is good for that part of the oligarchy that is behind him.
- What level of diplomacy do we observe, after the US first talks with Russia, and then invites Ukraine and the EU to the table?
- Trump mocks his allies and wants everything to go through as a business deal.
In reality, the US controls Europe through NATO.
The US pays most of the maintenance and thus makes the EU dependent. This is the reason why Trump wants EU countries to increase their defense budgets.
- Is it possible to negotiate with Russia from a position of strength at all. We heard Trump say that he will impose new sanctions if Putin does not sit down at the negotiating table…
- The US and Russia are so tied up that it cannot be done. We simply do not know what the truth is about Alaska, for example. According to pro-Russian and neutral information sources, in 1857 negotiations were held to lease Alaska for 99-100 years. In 1886, Alaska officially passed under the patrimony of the United States. But it was declared a state of the United States in 1959 under Khrushchev. In January 2024, Putin issued a decree to create lists of stolen and seized inheritances, property and assets of the Russian Federation! A briefing at the State Department quickly followed. The United States denies having a problem with Alaska, having owned it completely legally.
But the speed with which they reacted to the decree of the Russian president shows anxiety and concern.
There is something else that is also shrouded in fog, so to speak. There is information that the US Federal Reserve was made with 496 tons of Russian gold. This is an agreement between Tsar Alexander II and Abraham Lincoln. The Tsar supported Lincoln militarily and diplomatically in the North-South War and took steps to provide financial support through a common gold fund. Lincoln was for the North, and Rothschild for the South. Lincoln was assassinated in 1865 by the “deep state“ because he did not allow the Federal Reserve to be given to Rothschild and his family. They wanted it to become a private bank, and Lincoln said – no. Along these lines, he relied on military support from Alexander II (assassinated in 1882). It is also not known after that the truth of how and what Stalin got along with Roosevelt and Churchill.
- Who is in what position. Everyone says they want peace, but how can we imagine it?
- The war can be ended based on personal relationships. In practice, Putin and Trump are very similar. They want to go down in history with something. Putin wants to return as much as he can from the USSR. And Trump, where he can take something.
For example, the EU should bend over backwards for Greenland, take the Panama Canal…
The EU can be influenced through NATO, because the EU is currently in a weaker position. In Germany, for example, there is a deeply secret treaty called the “Chancellor Act“ from May 27, 1949, which is valid for 150 years to come. For example, Angela Merkel, as an ex-GDR woman, apparently does not know it. Information about this act was not reported in Germany, but in Austria, and that by a retired former head of the Military Counterintelligence of the Federal Republic of Germany years later, but without showing the treaty itself. If official figures are to be believed, the US now has 78,000 soldiers in Europe, 37,000 of them in Germany, 10,000 in Poland and elsewhere. Trump wants the EU to pay for its security.
Information is also being leaked that Germany has saved at least 3 trillion euros by not spending 2-5% of its GDP on defense…
This is how Germany has maintained its higher standard of living.
- But is Trump predictable…
- We'll see, but one thing is clear. The “Deep State“ in the US, which is closer to the Democrats, was not so extreme with its allies in Europe.
- And Trump is also setting the agenda in the EU. He spoke with Putin, and then we saw two quick meetings at Macron's initiative in Paris on the topic of security …
- Let's not forget that Europe's attitude towards Trump in different countries is different. The Poles are more likely to listen to him, but there are 10,000 US soldiers in their country. The Baltic states are very sensitive about the US-Russia issue. They also support him. And on the other hand, we have complicated countries like Germany, France, Great Britain, etc. These are countries with high self-esteem, but in Great Britain, for example, they never wanted to understand that the US was stronger than them after World War II. And now they are trying to do something.
- What kind of international politics are we witnessing?
- International politics has two forms - force and diplomacy. Russia, the US and China know this very well. And in this line of thought, from the very beginning of the conflict in Ukraine, we - I mean Bulgaria, in my opinion, we should have taken a neutral position. Yes, to provide them with humanitarian aid in the military conflict, for example, but that's it!!! Trump wants America to be #1. Everything else is secondary to him.