Today's Supposed To Be The Final Day Of Trump's Ukraine Ceasefire...
What happened? Meet Russian Journalist Farida Rustamova....
Whatever else he may be, Trump is a genius at flooding the zone. I know I am not the only person whose mind is addled right now due to the speed and volume of executive orders and pronouncements tumbling out of the White House. There’s no time to give each startling development the focus and attention it deserves, because right on its heels there’s something fresher, bolder - and more frightening.
I disagree - most respectfully - with Trump biographer Michael Wolff, Monday’s guest, who said during our interview that he believes the modus operandi behind the cacophony of sound coming out of the White House is chaotic and disorganized. I’d posit that, based on my reporting - with the exception of the flip-flop on tariffs, which was clearly unanticipated - the messaging is highly organized with the precise objective of making our heads spin. The chaos is real - but it’s us who are bumping up and down in the turbulence, not Trump.
With all that in mind, I want to refocus today’s newsletter on Russia - precisely because it’s gotten buried amid the current bombardment of directives testing our Constitution.
Today ought to be a day of global historical importance: the final day of the 30-day “ceasefire” Trump proudly told us he had brokered between Russia and Ukraine as a prelude to peace talks, and which Ukraine agreed to on March 11th. It was supposed to begin on March 18th after a phone call between Trump and Putin.
Except. Wait. There has been no ceasefire.
Despite Trump’s gymnastic back-bending, including shutting off weapons and intelligence to Ukraine and exempting Russia from tariffs, Putin has essentially ignored him and has carried on attacking Ukraine.
Trump has been left sputtering words like “horrible” and “mistake” in the aftermath. Special envoy Steve Witkoff appeared back from a five hour meeting with Vladimir Putin last Friday describing it as “compelling”…to which Ukraine’s leader Vlodymyr Zelensky has just retorted during a meeting in Paris that Witkoff is “spreading Russian narratives.” Zelensky has reiterated he will not begin peace talks without a ceasefire….
At the risk of pointing out the obvious: if this were a competitive reality TV Show (and, in many way, it is), this is one battle over which the Trump team might be looking dangerously like the “Losers”.
Against this backdrop, I want you all to meet a most impressive Russian journalist Farida Rustamova, 33, whom I had the pleasure of meeting last week in New York. Farida has reported in her Substack newsletter, Faridaily that in March Putin held a private meeting in which he told Russia’s tycoons not to panic: he’s got no intention of rapidly ending anything, especially not a war that keeps him atop of Russia’s government. Instead, he reassured his people: he is most successfully stringing along Trump.
Farida tells me he’s even ingeniously moved the timetable of the Kremlin around - now beginning meetings in the afternoons so as to close the seven hour time difference between Moscow and Washington, DC, to give him the advantage of speed to react to anything Trump does or says.
Farida’s personal story, is all too familiar: she is an independent journalist, who has worked in Moscow for outlets including the BBC, Meduza, RBC, and TV Rain the alma mater of Mikhail Zygar, my fellow substacker and frequent guest.
But, once the Russian government made it illegal to talk about “the war” - something she had already reported on - she was forced to leave Moscow in February of 2022, first moving to Georgia, and later, when that became unsafe, to Germany.
Her reporting is difficult. She has sources deep within the bowels of the Kremlin and hitherto her focus has been on delivering her reporting to Russians who are starved of news that is not state propaganda.
I met her at the tail end of her first ever visit to New York on a Klebnikov Fellowship, set up by Musa Train Klebnikov, the American widow of Paul Klebnikov, the Forbes journalist who was murdered in Moscow on July 9th 1994.
Part of the rationale behind the trip was to meet people who could brainstorm and help her figure out how to try to amplify her reporting for Western audiences.
So, tomorrow morning she and I will do a live video chat at 11am E.S.T.
We will talk about what she’s hearing from deep inside the Russian government and how Putin is politicizing Trump to his own advantage. In other words, we will talk about things that US Envoy Witkoff is NOT talking about.
Tune in tomorrow morning!
Interesting