Report from Moscow: Europe Is SCREWED | Larry C. Johnson

## Report from Moscow: a city at normalcy and a crisis in posture Moscow presents a striking contrast between everyday normality and the extraordinary geopolitics unfolding beyond its boulevards. The city appears bustling, orderly and comparatively secure, with cultural rhythms—restaurants, traffic, conversation—persisting despite the drone reports and headlines. Yet behind the polished surface lies a fundamental recalibration of Russia’s external posture: not merely a defensive stance but a reassessment of whether meaningful negotiation with the United States and its European partners remains possible. That shift from diplomatic engagement to strategic separation and preparation for protracted confrontation is the central thread running through the recent exchanges reported from the Russian capital. What emerges forcefully from the conversation in Moscow is an abandonment of the hope that Western states, primarily the United States, can be persuaded to accept a political settlement that preserves Russian security interests. The mood is not of panic but of resigned determination: if diplomacy is futile because its premises are unalterable, then politics will be subordinated to military and strategic realities. This is not a purely theoretical objection. It has been shaped by concrete meetings, gestures and the perception that Western policy is driven less by bargaining than by an insistence on unconditional Russian subordination. ## Dinner with Lavrov and the state of negotiations A private dinner with senior Russian diplomatic figures, including the foreign minister, crystallized the parameters Russia is now treating as non-negotiable. According to the account emerging from that exchange, Moscow retains the terms outlined publicly by its leadership in mid-2024: recognition of the post-2014 and post-2022 territorial changes that Moscow insists are now permanent (the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia and Crimea), a full halt to NATO and Western military and intelligence support for Kyiv, and the imposition of a political settlement in Ukraine that would replace the current leadership with a government Moscow deems legitimate. These are maximalist positions from a Western lens, but for Russian interlocutors they are framed as elemental security demands. Lavrov and his colleagues, the conversation indicates, are open to talks in form but uncompromising in substance. They believe any genuine settlement must start from what they describe as realities on the ground and conclude with the removal of foreign military influence from Ukrainian territory. Equally important is their skepticism about Western negotiating partners: offers made in good faith by some American figures are dismissed as unreliable because the Russians doubt Washington’s capacity or willingness to restrain its own domestic hawks and security establishment. ## Why Johnson distrusts Washington’s diplomacy A theme threaded through the exchange is deep skepticism about the United States’ intentions and internal coherence. That skepticism blends institutional critique—an assertion that elements of the U.S. national security ecosystem are committed to containment or regime change—with a cultural account of an American foreign policy elite animated by visceral hostility to Russia. The narrative portrays U.S. policy not as the expression of pragmatic bargaining but as driven by a topology of rivalries and domestic politics that prevents credible concessions. This view explains why gestures and purported deals have little traction in Moscow. The Russians, as relayed in the conversation, view U.S. diplomacy as intrinsically unreliable: even bilateral understandings brokered at the highest personal level can evaporate under domestic pressure or because Washington’s policymaking is fragmented among competing centers of influence. The result, from Moscow’s perspective, is a bargaining partner who promises, then fails to deliver—or worse, uses talks as a cover for continued pressure. That diagnosis helps explain why Russian officials describe themselves as moving beyond trust-based negotiation toward strategies that emphasize deterrence and strategic autonomy. ## Russia, Europe and the danger of a wider war The discussion conveyed a starkly sobering judgment: Russian strategists increasingly anticipate not only a prolonged struggle in Ukraine but a widening confrontation with European states. That expectation rests on several observations. European leaders, despite popular fatigue and domestic discomfort with energy disruptions, continue to signal support for Kyiv through arms deliveries and diplomatic isolation of Moscow. Political elites in Poland, the Baltic states and parts of Western Europe have pushed for sustained pressure; in the eyes of Moscow, that posture risks escalation rather than containment. The prospect of a broader Europe-Russia military clash is not presented as imminent or a product of surprise attack; rather, it is pictured as an eventuality that could arise from cumulative confrontations, proxy engagements, and reciprocal miscalculations. Russian commentators, the conversation suggests, have accepted this as a working hypothesis and are preparing accordingly. For European publics the implication is stark: political elites pursuing sustained confrontation may be aligning their societies with risks they neither fully appreciate nor have mandated. Absent a serious diplomatic rethink, the danger is that public opinion will be overridden by elite strategy, further narrowing the space for de-escalation. ## Weapons production and military preparedness: reality checks Another pillar of the exchange is a practical assessment of Western military capacity. The argument put forward is that the United States and its allies have powerful military-industrial complexes, but they face material constraints that undercut the illusion of unlimited support to Kyiv. Production bottlenecks, missile and munitions shortages, and logistical limits—especially for precision-guided weapons—are real and consequential. The picture is not of immediate collapse but of gradual attrition: stockpiles can be depleted faster than industrial capacity can replenish them, especially if demand multiplies across multiple theaters. The strategic consequence is significant. If material support for Ukraine wanes or becomes less effective, the calculus on the battlefield shifts in Moscow’s favor. Conversely, if Western industry accelerates and retools to supply sustained high volumes of munitions and air-delivered ordnance, shortages could be mitigated. Still, the conversation emphasized that preparations and intentions matter as much as hardware; Russia appears to be planning on the assumption that Western production will not close the gap in time to alter its strategic trajectory, reinforcing Moscow’s movement from negotiation to planned military resolution. ## Iran, Yemen and the limits of American air power The discussion extended beyond Europe to regional dynamics in the Middle East that complicate U.S. power projection. Iranian-backed actors in Yemen and elsewhere have demonstrated the capacity to disrupt shipping, threaten regional allies and impose costs on Western military operations. The emergence of these secondary fronts matters because they disperse American military attention and resources, creating vulnerability and constraining options in Europe. Air power—long a cornerstone of U.S. military doctrine—faces growing limitations in this contested multipolar environment. Political constraints, the risk of escalation, and anti-access/area-denial capabilities fielded by regional powers combine to restrict the effectiveness and freedom of aerial campaigns. The net effect: the United States cannot assume that air superiority will be an unchallenged tool of coercion, and the calculus of deterrence must account for regional actors who can raise the cost and complexity of intervention.

Report from Moscow: Europe Is SCREWED | Larry C. Johnson Reporting from Moscow, Larry Johnson describes his dinner with Sergei Lavrov and explains why he believes Russia has lost faith in negotiations with Washington. He and Pascal discuss Ukraine, Europe’ s confrontation with Russia, and the danger of wider war. Johnson assesses American weapons production, missile shortages, Iran and Yemen, and the economic consequences of energy disruption. They debate whether Western strategy reflects deliberate attrition or an overestimation of American power, and consider the prospects for prolonged conflict and diplomatic stalemate. Larry's Links: Sonar21: https://sonar21.com Larry C. Johnson’s Substack: https://larrycjohnson. substack.com Neutrality Studies Links: Neutrality Studies Substack: https://pascallottaz.substack.com Support Neutrality Studies: https://neutralitystudies.com/donate Neutrality Studies shop: https://neutralitystudies.com/shop Time Stamps 00:00 Larry Johnson reports from Moscow 02:48 Dinner with Lavrov and the Ukraine negotiations 08:38 Why Johnson distrusts Washington’s diplomacy 18:16 Russia, Europe and the danger of wider war 23:40 Weapons production and military preparedness 30:40 Iran, Yemen and the limits of American air power 38:40 Debt, fuel shortages and economic pressure 45:52 Attrition strategy and the limits of US power #Pascal Welcome back, everybody, to Neutrality Studies today with an update by the always super brilliant Larry Johnson. #Larry C. Johnson Larry, welcome back. Yeah. Well, I don't have my Florida shirt on. And the only cigars I have are these little things, which—I had lunch yesterday with one of the members of the Duma, Alexander Babakov, and he was hosting a group of international observers. So it included a gentleman from Argentina. Since I'd lived in Argentina, we had something to chat about. He was a porteño from Buenos Aires, and I lived in Córdoba, Córdoba West. A couple of gentlemen from Spain, a gentleman from Lebanon, one from Syria, a young woman and another gentleman from Greece, one from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Anyway, one of the people at that meeting had these little cigars, and I said, "Oh, you know." And I said, "Well, I'll take one." They said, "One? No." They gave me like six. So. #Pascal Maybe I need to explain. I mean, you're currently in Moscow, right, where you've already been for quite a while, a couple of weeks. You were there together with John Mearsheimer as well, who just -- 1 of 19 -- recently reported. And apparently, I mean, you know, the international isolation of Russia seems to be going really well, huh? #Larry C. Johnson Yeah, yeah, it is so. #Pascal Can you speak a bit to that? Like, how's Moscow now? How does life feel there? #Larry C. Johnson Well, it's like, you know, I woke up this morning to reports that there had been a massive drone strike on Moscow. I didn't hear anything, you know. So I did see there was a little bit of smoke out on the horizon. Moscow is an amazing city. It really is. It is clean. It's safe. It's just, you know, bustling with activity. The two biggest dangers in Moscow are the traffic jams—you know, you get stuck in traffic—and the food. You're going to put on weight. No, in fact, this lunch that the Duma member, Mr. Babakov, hosted yesterday was at this restaurant whose name is basically "not fish restaurant," Rybnyy. Rybnyy is not fish. It's all meat. So just the very name itself is intended as a joke, but the food was sensational. #Pascal So overall, like, life in Moscow is quite normal, although the war between Ukraine and Russia, the proxy war, is ongoing, right? What did you make of these negotiations, you know, that were happening also around the time when you probably arrived there a little bit earlier, and Kushner and Witkoff again in Moscow, Russia again entertaining them? Where are we at on that front? Yeah. #Larry C. Johnson Well, in fact, a week ago Monday, Alistair Crooke, John Mearsheimer, Judge Napolitano, and myself had dinner with Sergei Lavrov, as well as Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov. In fact, I took a Florida shirt, one of my Hawaiian shirts, so-called, and gave it to Lavrov. And it was funny because I said, "Hey, I'm known as Larry the Shirt Johnson, so I'm giving you one of my shirts." And he goes, "Is it used?" And I go, "No, it's brand new. Come on." #Pascal He accepted it? He accepted your shirt? Oh, yeah. #Larry C. Johnson -- 2 of 19 -- Yeah, yeah. So, you know, maybe one of these days, if he gets a vacation down on the Black Sea, he'll, you know, break it out and sit there and be drinking, you know, a fruit drink with an umbrella in it, you know. #Pascal And how did that dinner go? What were you talking about? How was Lavrov treating you guys? #Larry C. Johnson Yeah, great. It was a very relaxed, I'd call it relaxed and informal, just like, you know, we were at the, they call it the official residence of the foreign minister. #Pascal But he doesn't live there. It really is. #Larry C. Johnson I think it was like the intel, the home of Lavrentiy Beria during the Stalin days. So it got sort of a dark past on that front. But he was very, very open, very warm. We did a few vodka toasts. You know, I was told by another friend of mine whose father was a diplomat in the Russian diplomatic corps that during previous visits, when he was with his father overseas and Lavrov visited, that Lavrov likes a Johnnie Walker Black. So we had a good toast. Mearsheimer, you know, Mearsheimer is a hoot. I love the guy. He always asks very direct questions, nothing shy about him. You know, he came away from the dinner very clear that while Russia is— they're open to negotiation, the negotiations are still based upon the outline that Vladimir Putin presented to the Foreign Ministry in June of 2024. Hmm. And basically, it is that the West must immediately recognize the former oblasts of Ukraine as now Russian territory, which means Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, and Crimea. That these are all now permanently part of Russia. That NATO needs to get the hell out of Ukraine. That the support that the United States and the West have been providing Ukraine militarily and intelligence- wise, that needs to come to an immediate end. There needs to be elections. You're not going to have this group of Nazis running around Ukraine. They want a legitimate government. Russia hasn't backed away from that. And Lavrov, as he has said in public—you know, he wasn't revealing some deep, dark secret—but he said in the past that Trump is agreement-incapable. So they don't really view the entreaties by Kushner and Witkoff as serious. #Pascal -- 3 of 19 -- May I ask you about that one? Because Mearsheimer, a few days ago, reported about that dinner with Lavrov on his YouTube channel, and he said what surprised him the most was that apparently, in the lead-up to the Anchorage summit, where the big deal was supposed to be, you know, just the struck handshake and so on, the biggest surprise to Mearsheimer was that apparently Vladimir Putin was willing to basically end the annexation of the additional oblasts of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, where the front lines were. And that was, like, the biggest kind of concession that he didn't think was possible, but that it was apparently agreed upon. And then they flew to Anchorage and they shook hands, and then Trump couldn't deliver. Trump couldn't get the Ukrainians and the Europeans to agree to that or to stop. And the question on my mind is, why? Is that real? Because if Trump, if the United States actually switched off the information sharing and the weaponry and so on, you know, it would be over. It would be done. Yes, the U.S. is a long lever there. So there's only two possibilities. Either he couldn't pacify his own hawks, you know, around him, the deep state still runs the show, or he was lying. What do you make of that? #Larry C. Johnson I think it's both. He's lying and not able to pacify the neocons. #Larry C. Johnson Look, I've told the Russians, in my own view, I tell them the story of the frog and the scorpion. And you may be familiar with that, that the frog is sitting on the shoreline, and the scorpion comes up and says, "Hey, give me a ride to the other side of the river." And the frog says, "Well, no, you're a scorpion. You're going to sting me, and we'll die in the middle of the river." The scorpion goes, "No, I'm not. I'm not going to do that. I'd be crazy." So the frog says, "Okay," lets the scorpion climb on his back and swim it across. And in the middle of the river, the scorpion stings him, and they're sinking. He's dying. And the frog says to the scorpion, "Why did you do that?" And the scorpion says, "I'm a scorpion." I can't help myself. And I remind the Russians that the United States is the scorpion. The United States is not interested in finding a peaceful settlement with Russia because the entire conflict is contrived. And what do I mean by that? You're too young to remember the Cold War. During the Cold War, there was an active competition between the international communists that the Soviet Union represented and the capitalist West. And those competitions were played out in the war in Angola, the war in Central America, you know, the support the Soviet Union was providing to the Sandinistas, support the Soviet Union was providing to Cuba, and then, of course, the war in Afghanistan. -- 4 of 19 -- You know, those were the big three big focuses for the CIA back when I was involved: Afghanistan, Angola, Central America. And yet, during all of that, you know, we were actually—we were fighting proxy wars. And we'd just come out of Vietnam, where Russian pilots, or Soviet pilots, had flown North Vietnamese aircraft that had shot U.S. airmen down. Despite all that, we talked. And they entered into genuine agreements with the SALT Agreement, the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty, the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Agreement, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. There was, if you will, a mutual respect. We didn't agree with the Soviets, but at least there was a respect. We don't have that now. There is zero respect on the U.S. side with respect to Russia. And, you know, back in the '70s, we had a number of prominent Soviet Russian dissidents fleeing to the West. Dmitry Simes is an example. Dmitry came, you know, he was facing a prison sentence in Russia. He fled to the United States, ended up, you know, finished his PhD, became a prominent foreign policy guy in Washington, met Richard Nixon, ran the Nixon Center, which was one of the major think tanks. You had Sakharov, a nuclear scientist. You had Solzhenitsyn. Today, what we're seeing is the reverse flow. Dmitry Simes had to flee the United States, coming back to Russia in order to be safe, because he was facing political persecution in the United States for no other reason than he was providing advice to Donald Trump about Russia. No, and he wasn't even, you know, wasn't plotting a revolution, wasn't plotting violence. So we're in a situation where the United States has an irrational, unfounded hatred of Russia. And it's just, to me, it's crazy because you come here, this country, it is a Christian country. They are practicing Christians. We in the United States claim to be a Christian country, largely. Yes, there are Jews and there are Muslims, but it is primarily a Christian country. The overwhelming majority of Americans have been Christian. There should be a natural alliance there with Russia. But instead, the Russians are treated like these authoritarian monsters. And, you know, the other thing I find so fascinating about Russia is, despite that focus on Christianity, they don't have the same kind of ethnic tensions or, if you will, Islamophobia that you see in the United States. One of the biggest sort of examples of that is General Apti Alaudinov. General Alaudinov is a Chechen Muslim. He is a practicing Muslim. He is a patriot. He's a