Today is a big day as peace negotiations are to be held in Turkey between Putin and Zelensky, only that Putin is not going to show up (I guess).
The trio Macron-Merz-Starmer has staked a significant portion of their credibility on this negotiation, both by trying to portray themselves as the facilitators and by being very tough in their words against Putin.
“If Putin doesn’t want peace, then we will force him to it” is roughly what they have said in slightly different versions.
Putin has several options to test how tough the trio really is – he could fall ill, he could have an accident, or he could simply be tough and stay at home watching Netflix, hoping that the tough trio will back down.
The Tough Trio has a few different options – they could try to dress up the pig and say that now they are hitting Russia with sanctions, increasing import tariffs on Russian raisins by a whopping 5%. It won’t fool us, and it won’t fool Putin.
Or they could express regret that Putin got tonsillitis on the same day as the meeting, wish him a speedy recovery, send flowers, and apologize, saying that anyone can get sick but there are new plans for a meeting in October.
Or they could give Ukraine a free pass to flood Russia with drones, sink the Kerch Bridge, send all the Taurus missiles, and deploy troops to the Belarus border – which would send a signal to Putin that we are starting to get impatient.
But unfortunately, the Tough Trio’s actions have a bit more variety than that – if they don’t take a tough stance against Putin today in May 2025, the risk is very high that we will take a step closer to a global conflict.
From Team Trump, there is fantastic conflicting information as usual, now Kellog has started to waver but Trump is going to Turkey today to “hang out with Zelensky and Putin.”
To me, it looks like they are keeping it open and waiting to see what Putin does…
Then it will be the same – if Putin doesn’t show up and Trump starts accusing Zelensky again, who is the one waiting for Putin, of not wanting peace – then we are heading towards increased global conflict.
Because if the West doesn’t take a tough stance, then Putin can continue to do whatever he wants, right?
He could declare a ceasefire over his parade, which Ukraine reluctantly respected because the West forced them to.
Then he could start bombing again when the West said there was a “30-day ceasefire from May 12” that everyone must respect.
Then he could propose peace talks in Turkey and not show up.
And nothing will have consequences – just like when he fooled Macron and Scholz into believing he wouldn’t start the war in 2022.
Or when in 2023 he fooled the USA into getting back all of his trapped VDV forces and stopping Ukraine from droning the oil industry or launching attacks into Russia.
Or that he can travel around to all sorts of places even though he is a wanted war criminal in The Hague.
Putin has now also prepared for a summer offensive AND has a strategic reserve against the Baltics. If the West continues to be accommodating – does anyone believe Putin won’t start this offensive?
Since January, Macron, Merz, Starmer, and Trump have essentially only stopped Ukraine from bombing refineries, halted hostilities for a month, not bombed the parade, and shown weakness towards Putin.
On May 9, Putin projected immense strength for the axis of evil, including China. If Xi and Putin had to dodge drones – not so much.
In their attempts to mediate peace, the West has ONCE AGAIN undermined Ukraine, for what time I no longer know…
Trump also halted all weapon deliveries for a few weeks, but now he blames everything on Defense Minister Hegseth đ€Łđ€Ł
Ukraine has done everything right and exactly what we asked them to do, and Putin has violated everything – and he is the aggressor engaging in genocide.
In terms of crimes against humanity, this is on par with the worst post-WW2 wars.
We’ll see, I’m not hopeful, and if it turns out that the Tough Trio turned bright red and backed down as soon as Putin made some violent gestures in the air, it will send completely wrong signals to the analysts at Frunzenskaya.
This war cannot go on indefinitely for Ukraine, and every time in three years when they start to gain a little momentum, we ruin it for them đĄ
Ukraine has offensive capacity and they intend to reclaim their country, but they are not allowed by us – quite strange, but we have already analyzed this to death.
Continuing with Thyberg
After all, there is an election in a year, and for an opposition party to have this exploding in their faces is quite high risk – hard to believe, actually?
On May 8, he received the appointment, and many newspapers reported on the press release just before lunch.
Government Offices
DI
https://www.di.se/nyheter/han-blir-ny-sakerhetsradgivare-efter-landerholm
33 minutes after the press release, an email with his pictures arrived at the government offices/ministry and to the editorial offices of newspapers.
On May 8, DN asked about the pictures, which they had been informed about, like all other editorial offices, only that they took the bait without thinking.
In the evening, Thyberg responded to DN via text message and he resigned.
I assume that the newspapers are open with the tips, and then SĂPO (Swedish Security Service) can handle their forensics.
Either we have a political scandal of epic proportions that makes Watergate seem sly, or an influence from a foreign power with contacts deep into our soft spots, as those 33 minutes are crucial here – then one has an ear to the ground about what the government offices are up to.
It was also stated in an SVT article
“Few know that the Prime Minister’s State Secretary is responsible for this appointment, so the fact that the email was sent to him indicates a good understanding of the process.”
Anyway, it seems that the first detained diplomat who “was released but still suspected,” and as SVT could report, had a possible connection to the Thyberg case, only had the name as stated in the email address. So the perpetrator managed to involve both DN and SĂPO in the influence operation.
It’s a bit exhausting.
China bought Trump coins for about 300 million USD at the same time as there was a trade meeting between the countries, and Trump promised to pause tariffs against China. A bribe that outshines the Clintons’ pay-to-play and the various board positions of the Biden family almost?
But it signals that it was crucial for China to progress in the negotiations, as otherwise they could have just gone to the media and said that Trump demanded a bribe, humiliating him a bit.
So behind the scenes in China, it might not be very cheerful right now as they sit nibbling on Peking duck?
Both China and the USA have also increased their subversive activities against each other –
-Trump seems to have had a fairly successful meeting in Saudi, he said the right things and emphasized a lot that the region should develop on its own without the constant democratization attempts from the West, and now Trump is also going to address Syria as the other MENA countries want, so that the country moves in the right direction.
-India-Pakistan will probably continue, but if nothing else, China has now strengthened its enmity with India, if it even existed, the exports to India went to zero.
-The UK got a trade deal with the USA they have long wanted, but which Trump 1 and Biden never gave them. Almost by chance, they have also taken a tough stance against China, which China does not like (link from MXT on johanno1.se)
https://omni.se/kina-varnar-storbritannien-linjerar-er-med-usa/a/dR1xLJ
-So, we really have the EU left, and China seems to have lifted the sanctions they had against our MEPs as the only news. In the pipeline is that the EU was the adult in the room and offered to buy $50 billion more from the USA, so it’s not unreasonable that behind closed doors there are demands aimed at China?
And it will be difficult for the EU to say no because China showed its teeth on May 9th and was caught sending weapons to Ukraine recently.
(One can guess that the information from Ukraine was a job ordered by the USA…).
The USA is quietly working on tightening the screws on China. We import and China exports – some of what China exports we can live without because during COVID everything came to a standstill and the world moved on, but there are other things we need.
China’s total export is jobs, and if it decreases, unemployment in the country increases.
Therefore, the USA needs to try to take down China without crashing themselves, which the first round clearly showed was not very easy as the bond market in the USA almost collapsed.
Trump is trying to go for low-hanging fruit in the USA to boost support for his policies + he is lucky with inflation. Inflation is low in the entire West now, and as usual, he takes full credit for it. Citizens are probably mostly interested in security and affordability, and if he can balance this, he can continue to put pressure on China.
Furthermore, China recently lowered interest rates, which will force the FED to lower rates – which is what Trump wants because it benefits the people. It is at 4.5% today and could thus go down, which directly “puts more money in the pocket” of the average Joe with a mortgage and a car loan?
The West managed to bring down Japan in the 90s, and with China’s situation today, it is not unreasonable to think that the USA will succeed – extremely export-dependent and a speculative real estate market.
Apparently, China is experiencing deflation, and it started right when Trump began attacking the country in February.
China has managed to compensate for reduced exports to the USA by increasing exports to ASEAN, Japan, Taiwan, Australia, and the EU.
âAmong trading partners, exports rose to Japan (7.8%), Taiwan (15.5%), Australia (5.8%), the EU (8.3%), and ASEAN (20.8%), while falling to the US (-21.0%) and South Korea (-0.3%)â.
The question is whether this is a temporary or permanent increase?
We heard that the EU was going to remove tariffs on electric cars and replace them with some kind of pricing model instead, but then it has become very quiet about it.
First of all, I am quite sure that China is manipulating everything so that they did not suffer a major setback with the USA is probably a lie – 60% of sea shipments disappeared in April to the USA, and some suggest 30%-40% less exports to the USA.
So, the decrease of 21% is probably because it has not fully taken effect yet or has been dressed up?
I think the packages from China’s Temu, etc., will continue to be dead because that one-time fee of $100 is still there (I thought it was $75). I don’t know how much of the export it is?
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c308pg239n1o
Sea shipments will soon be back to normal, but with higher prices, and that should logically lead to less consumption?
So, the exports to the USA will decrease somewhat, permanently.
As is well known, the USA would like to clip China’s wings, and if they can do it without causing a world war, it’s a win for them. But probably it will end up being a world war as a direct consequence of the attempt, and Trump will become one of history’s great war presidents instead đ
Timeline: China starts shaking on the lower deck – China dumps government bonds – the USA bond market explodes – the USA sees it as a declaration of war that China had the audacity to dump government bonds – China sees it as a declaration of war that the USA called them audacious.
Not even the USA can believe that if they try to take down China, the above chain of events will not kick off, so the USA is prepared for war but probably hopes that China will turn inward before they can engage in any major hostilities.
The analysts have probably given it a 65% probability, and Trump feels that he rarely has had such good odds, with the wind at his back đ
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