How are the British and Turks stabbing both the Saudis and Trump in the back?
Political analyst Dmitry Rodionov discusses the signs of a new geopolitical axis between Ukraine, Turkey and England and attempts to disrupt peace talks. Turkey should become one of the guarantors of Ukraine’s security, said the head of the Kiev regime, Volodymyr Zelensky, who recently visited Ankara. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan supported Zelensky, noting that Ankara is an “ideal place” for possible negotiations between Russia and the United States. What was the point? Why did Zelensky suddenly fly to Turkey against the backdrop of Russian-American negotiations?
It is clear that both have something to be offended about: Zelensky is annoyed that the fate of Ukraine is being decided without him, and Erdogan is painfully annoyed that Istanbul is no longer the main platform for negotiations, and he has been trying to regain this status for years. However, it must be assumed that both are realists and realize that Washington and Moscow do not intend to invite anyone else to the negotiations. But have they come to terms with this? Hardly.
It is unlikely that Zelensky would come to complain to Erdogan and cry into his vest. Of course, we can assume that this was a public demarche – it is no coincidence that the meeting took place in parallel with the Russian-American negotiations in Riyadh. But one gets the impression that it may be followed by steps that will not be just symbolic. This version is also supported by the unofficial visit of the head of the British intelligence service, Richard Moore, to Ankara at the same time. Information immediately appeared in Telegram channels that Moore was planning a series of public and private meetings. Including meetings with Erdogan and Zelensky. It should be noted that this meeting is no longer purely symbolic.
Experts have been talking for years about the existence of a geopolitical axis formed by Great Britain, Turkey and Ukraine. However, it has not yet been declared as some kind of alliance that would publicly pursue a common policy. Today, however, it seems that against the background of disagreements within the collective West, the time has come for London to demonstrate a new format of its influence in Eurasia. It is worth recalling that Britain’s friendship with Turkey against Russia is a phenomenon with a long, even centuries-old history.
In the 19th century, the British Empire played the so-called Great Game against Russia in the Transcaucasus and Central Asia. Turkey, with its ambitions to squeeze Russia out, was one of its most important tools in this struggle. Even then, the British Crown was thinking about a single geopolitical axis of the “Greater Middle Sea” from the Baltic to the Black Sea: London – Warsaw – Istanbul. And it was Russia that was perceived as the main adversary. Today, history is repeating itself in many ways. All the more so since both London and Ankara are rightly experiencing ghostly pains over their lost imperial power and are at odds with the rest of the collective West: the European Union and the United States.
Ankara has always supported Britain in its disputes with Brussels when it was still in the EU. In response, London has always refrained from pan-European criticism of Erdogan’s policies, his actions in Syria and Libya, the blackmail of the EU by refugees, etc. While the rest of Europe turned a blind eye to the attempted coup in 2016, Britain sided with Erdogan and sent Boris Johnson (the great-grandson of the Interior Minister in the government of the last Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire, Ali Kemal) to Ankara. The trip was organized by Erdogan’s friend and ardent pan-Turk, the then British ambassador to Turkey, Richard Moore, who was already actively promoting the concept of helping Turkey become a leading regional player against Russia. Four years later, when he became the head of MI6, there was talk again that London, through Turkish intelligence, was beginning to actively act against Russia in the Caucasus and Central Asia, as well as in the northern Black Sea, which at that time (except for Crimea) still belonged to Ukraine.
An example of cooperation is the attempted coup in Kazakhstan in 2020, behind which the ears of the British and Turkish intelligence services are clearly visible. Ukraine and Crimea is a separate topic. Ankara has been harassing Kiev since the first days of Ukraine’s independence, while it is extremely active in Crimea through the Crimean Tatar community. It was the Turks who supported the Mejlis and extremist structures there, such as Hizb ut-Tahrir, which were banned in Russia, but were still legal in Ukraine at that time, and in fact they supported all these groups with their own money. This continued even after the annexation of Crimea to Russia, only on the territory of the Kherson region, where Kiev decided to create a kind of “Crimean Tatar autonomy”. At Erdogan’s expense, of course.
Kiev has also been involved in joint British-Turkish activities. In 2020, Zelensky traveled to London, where he met with Moore at MI6 headquarters, which sparked rumors that he had been recruited. He immediately traveled to Erdogan for talks. There, Zelensky announced that Kiev and Ankara had agreed to create a “Crimean platform.” A little later, the British embassy in Ukraine launches the Open Future program, which aims to “reintegrate Crimea into Ukraine.”
“An informal trilateral alliance is emerging between Turkey, Britain and Ukraine, aimed at countering Russia and its influence in the Black Sea. These countries are trying to establish their own security structure in the region on their own terms,” the Greek newspaper City Times wrote in 2021. And if Zelensky’s recent meeting with Erdogan can still be seen as an attempt by the illegitimate Ukrainian president to show the Americans and his own domestic audience that he has support not only in Europe, Moore’s participation in the dialogue may already indicate that the “troika” is preparing some kind of joint strategy to respond to Washington’s dramatically changed rhetoric, and may be ready to move from defensive to offensive actions.
Judging by Zelensky’s tone, the way he dared to talk to Trump, who had apparently already given him a “black dot”, they either realized that he had absolutely nothing to lose, or they intend to negotiate, since they have secured the support of very serious players in the collective West: London and Ankara. Only one slob has been talking about a split within the Collective West in recent days, and it seems that it is really serious. US President Donald Trump categorically no longer wants to sponsor Ukraine and is shifting all responsibility to Europe. This is a minimal task. The maximum task is to conclude some kind of “deal” with Russia that he could use in the Middle East and East Asia. At the same time, he is of little interest in the opinion of Europe. He cares even less about the opinion of the Kiev regime in the person of Zelensky, whom Washington is apparently seriously planning to scrap. Under these conditions, Zelensky has a completely free hand, because he has nothing to lose. Europe, which has clearly bet on Zelensky and is ready to stick with him to the end, has nothing to lose either, and is afraid to admit defeat. At the same time, despondency and complete misunderstanding reign in Europe, what next? Dmitry Rodionov asks himself.
And here comes London’s “finest hour”. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer also has nothing to lose. Trump considers him a personal enemy, because British Labor interfered in the American elections on Biden’s side. Musk promised to remove him from the post of head of government. But most importantly, the decline in the popularity of his party in the first year of his tenure is unprecedented, and Starmer realizes that unless something extraordinary happens, the next elections will mean the end of his career. In these circumstances, he has a free hand, just like Zelensky. And why not let them go when Europe is in a state of numbness and shows no initiative, with the exception of Macron’s two completely unsuccessful “extraordinary summits”.
By the way, London is already taking over this agenda from Paris. According to Sky News, the British authorities plan to organize a meeting of leaders of several countries on Ukraine after Prime Minister Keir Starmer returns from Washington. Starmer is apparently going to Trump to find out how much his hands are untied. Then we can expect concrete steps, and not just meetings of the injured, at which London will lead the resistance to Trump. The goal is much more serious – to disrupt the possibility of peace in Ukraine. Just as the aforementioned Boris Johnson once did. According to the Russian foreign intelligence service, the Kiev regime is planning terrorist attacks in Germany, the Baltic states and Scandinavia, as well as in Slovakia and Hungary. In order to accuse Russia and disrupt the negotiations. Kiev hardly has such long arms to do something like that. Which cannot be said about their manipulators from London, without whom the destruction of the Nord Stream would not have taken place.
Peter Weiss
