Let the New Great Game begin.

It wasn't meant to be a Yalta. But a Yalta 2.0 might happen sometime in the future. At the Victory Day parade in Moscow on May 9th, celebrating the 80th anniversary of the end of the Great Patriotic War and the defeat of Nazi Germany, Putin will be the host and Xi Jinping one of the main guests. And perhaps Donald Trump will be there too. Why not put them all on a flight to Crimea and hold a Yalta 2.0 in – where else but – Yalta?

“Sweet dreams are made of this,” quoting the pop metaphysicians Eurythmics. Meanwhile, we didn’t have a Yalta, not even a Reykjavik; we had a long 4,5 hours at the royal palace of Ed-Diriyah, in the Wadi Hanifa valley. Russia and the United States finally sat down at the table to discuss things like adults – for the first time in three years.

A delightful dose of excitement was duly served – related to the parties involved in the work of “normalizing diplomatic relations.” Until three months ago – under the administration of the “White House Corpse” and his Secretary of Genocide – this possibility was as remote as a meteorite colliding with Earth (which will happen, but in the distant future).  

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio performed the superhuman feat of not collapsing in front of the powerful Lavrov, the greatest diplomat on the planet. Lavrov and Rubio agreed to create a consultation mechanism to eliminate "irritants" (American terminology) in US-Russia relations and cooperate on "issues of common geopolitical interest," according to the State Department. BRICS may not be one of them. 

This "eliminating irritants" can easily be interpreted as coded language for Trump 2.0 trying to find solutions to the tsunami of sanctions and economic warfare from the previous administration, which only produced spectacularly disastrous consequences.  

As expected, the Americans emphasized that “a single meeting is not enough to resolve the Ukrainian conflict.” Of course not. Presidential advisor Yuri Ushakov noted that Putin himself will decide “when contacts with the United States regarding Ukraine will begin,” and who the Russian negotiators will be. 

Lavrov categorically denied the existence of a “three-phase” plan for Ukraine, including a ceasefire, elections, and the signing of a final agreement. Based on a careful examination of events to date, Lavrov has always insisted that the United States “is incapable of agreements.”   

Trump's special envoy, Steve Witkoff, was positively beaming: 

“We couldn’t have imagined a better outcome for this session.” Well, Witkoff certainly followed the money – Trump’s ultimate priority – when he and the American delegation were utterly “surprised” to learn that “US companies lost $300 billion by leaving Russia,” as revealed by the CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, Kirill Dmitriev.

As with the BRICS fiasco, it seems the Trump team hasn't been doing its homework on the business front either.  

How the geoeconomic war was won 

Based on what happened in Riyadh, it's too early to boast about Washington, under Trump 2.0, declaring that Ukraine – with its tiny narco-führer – has reached its end. What remains of Ukraine will survive in one form or another, but there is no clarity whatsoever as to "what" post-war Ukraine will be like. 

Regarding Russia being at the forefront of the project for a new world order, it seems that's exactly right. A New Great Game is beginning now, light-years away from the original nineteenth-century – British – plot and much closer to how the New Great Game was imagined in the early 2010s, when the Chinese created the concept of the New Silk Roads.    

To see Washington and Russia proclaiming to "take each other's interests into account" automatically means that the Empire of Chaos is losing its power and being forced to sit at the table and listen (Lavrov highlighted the fact that we effectively heard each other).  

When both delegations emphasize that a personal meeting between Trump and Putin would be very difficult to schedule, we can interpret this, in coded language, as meaning that the US Deep State will be forced to create a palatable narrative for what is in fact a clear strategic defeat in a failed proxy war. 

Beyond the proverbial torrent of theories about Trump's true motives for approaching Russia, even generating delightful insinuations about a hallucinatory trip on a magic carpet – to the sound of Steppenwolf and Jefferson Airplane – it's quite possible that this is just a fictional journey. 

Or something far more sinister: Trump inciting the European rabble toward a new Great War against Russia before 2030, which Americans will watch from afar. 

What is certain is that Trump wants to normalize Russia to stop losing money in Ukraine – let those European suckers contribute the cash – and focus on what really matters: the technological and geoeconomic war with China, which Beijing has already won in several sectors without launching a single HIMARS, instead of focusing on the successes of the Made in China 2025 plan.  

As for the European suckers, whom Trump decidedly abhors, they gathered in Paris for a glorious counter-summit event: the League of Losers, to discuss – what else? – their Eternal Wars and what they will do to send their “peacekeeping” troops – which they don’t have, with weapons they don’t have – to Ukraine.  

That mongrel posing as a British prime minister is promising to "put boots on the ground," while the toxic Medusa von der Lugen continues to rant in her best bellicose chihuahua style. Even other rabid dogs like Poland, along with the poodles Germany, Italy, and Spain, have said "no" to the avalanche of British Dr. Martens boots.

Under the current circumstances, what happened in Riyadh was only a first step – a kind of US-Russia reconciliation, similar to the long détente from the late 60s to the mid-70s; to Gorbachev-Reagan in 1986-1989, to Gorbachev-Papa Bush in 1989-1991 (which ended with the collapse of the USSR); and to Medvedev-Obama in 2009 (which ended with the destruction of Libya).

So far, therefore, we have zero facts. Apart from those that Russian forces continue to fabricate on the battlefields of Novorossiya. These newly fabricated facts on the ground will make things even more ominous for the Americans, as the highly problematic negotiations on Ukraine will drag on for at least a few more months.  

Let's leave the last word to the sensible Lavrov: "When national interests align, we must do everything possible to unite efforts in that direction, for the sake of mutually beneficial projects, both in the geopolitical sphere and in economic matters." Lavrov is convinced that the Americans now "understand our position better." 

Is this the case – or is this just another episode of a relentless reality show? Let the New Big Game begin.

Translation by Patricia Zimbres