John Luker

I agree with Behr, but the silence isn’t the mystery folks think it is. Britain sees the avalanche coming and knows full well that yelling “stop!” won’t make the mountain behave. Starmer’s quiet isn’t bravery or cowardice, it’s the sound a country makes when it’s run out of good options.

Trump can cause chaos, but he can’t undo the trans-Atlantic bond. Congress, the services, and European partners are already adapting to the turbulence. The drift is significant, but the counter-forces are strong and lasting, far beyond one presidency.

Now the strategy is written down in black and white, aligned with far-right European parties and echoing Moscow’s talking points. The timing of the panic says more about Europe than the NSS.

The NSS hasn’t changed. European leaders’ tolerance for pretending it was performance art has. For years analysts flagged the trajectory, but the political class preferred to believe the alliance would auto-correct.

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If Brussels stays blindfolded while Washington freelances, Europe won’t sit quietly for long. The next decisive move may come from European capitals, not the White House, and it won’t be subtle.

And now the U.S. is negotiating through a holiday weekend while Putin doubles down on demands. That’s not a coordinated strategy, it’s a scramble, and the real question is what Europe does next if it keeps getting cut out of the loop.

Senior EU diplomats saying they’re “in the dark” about the revised peace plan is remarkable. When your closest allies don’t know what’s on the table, it means the process hasn’t stabilised, it’s drifting outside the normal guardrails.

If the leak was meant to shut down the Miami track, the key question is what follows if Trump doubles down instead.

This piece makes one thing unmistakable: the Miami back-channel isn’t an embarrassment but a symptom of a presidency that has lost the confidence of its own allies and advisers. This long-form article means the quiet parts are already being said loudly inside the system.

Panic in Trumpworld
Restraint from further backchannels
Reassertion of formal diplomacy
Europe regaining its footing
Congress demanding answers
Russia losing informational leverage

Good result all round

www.thetimes.com/world/russia...

When a former NATO DESACEUR says “Trump is our enemy’s friend,” it’s not rhetoric, it’s a strategic warning from someone who knows how fragile the alliance has become. Europe is now openly preparing for a future where US leadership is no longer guaranteed. #Witkoff

And with Bloomberg already publishing call transcripts showing how talking points were being shaped for Moscow and relayed back into the process, the timeline still has gaps. The question now is what other conversations ran alongside that channel, and who was actually tracking them.

#Witkoff

The real concern now is structural. A sanctioned conduit, a private meeting, and a Russian document all feeding into US policy language without tripping any of the usual guardrails. This isn’t just irregular diplomacy, it’s a vulnerability that needs explaining.

#Russia #Ukraine #Witkoff

With today’s Reuters piece confirming that the 28-point plan drew directly from a Russian non-paper routed through the Miami channel, the picture shifts again. A foreign draft was shaping the process long before most officials even knew the channel existed.

www.reuters.com/world/europe...

Still striking that nobody is asking the obvious: whoever leaked two Kremlin-side calls to Bloomberg clearly had sustained access to Russian senior comms. Whether that’s Western SIGINT or an unhappy insider, the back-channel wasn’t just ‘found out’, it was burned.

Who opened that door? Who monitored it? And why is the press avoiding the simplest question: what system failure let this run long enough to matter?

What’s most telling here is that everyone is dissecting the plan, but almost no one is interrogating how a sanctioned back-channel was allowed to shape it in the first place.

What’s really striking is how many people, looking at the Miami timeline on their own terms, are arriving at the same conclusions. Sometimes the story shifts simply because everyone notices the same gaps at the same moment.

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So the next questions practically ask themselves: Who removed the oversight? Who knew what was happening in real time? And how did a process this irregular get so close to becoming US policy? That’s where the story is heading now.

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The 28 point plan is almost a distraction. The real issue is how a Russian envoy ended up shaping a proposal with a private intermediary while senior officials in Washington were either sidelined or kept out of the loop entirely.

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It’s becoming clear the Miami meeting wasn’t an eccentric detour, it was a moment when the usual national security guardrails simply weren’t there. Once you see that, the rest of the story looks very different.

It’s taken a few days, but the penny is dropping: the 28-point plan wasn’t a diplomatic breakthrough, it was a case study in how effectively Moscow can work around US systems when the usual guardrails are removed.

Has Axios clarified how the document was provided to them and whether it came through U.S. officials, political operatives, or a foreign-linked intermediary?

A fair question. At the very least it raises concerns about how the document reached Axios and whether the outlet was used, intentionally or not, to give the plan an air of legitimacy. Transparency about the source would help everyone understand what happened.

Why were the State Department, the NSC, and Ukraine envoy Keith Kellogg excluded from drafting or reviewing the 28-point plan?

Who else was in the room in Miami? Was anyone from the Russian business or IC orbit present?

Who actually authored or green-lit the plan in the White House?

What I’d like to know is:
Who, by name, approved the sanctions waiver that allowed Kirill Dmitriev to enter the United States?

Did any U.S. agency formally object to Dmitriev’s involvement or the Miami meeting before it took place?

Reuters would have run many robust checks on this story before they ran it. What’s interesting to me is the usual road blocks were not there so they were empowered to publish. State, NSA, CIA, no push back? It’s the dogs that don’t bark that raise the most questions. Waiting now for leaks galore 🤔

If this is true I’m not sure folks realise the significance and possible major consequences. If it is the case then US allies will need to reappraise their intelligence relationship with the WH quickly and significantly. It could be seen now as compromised (or more compromised - allegedly).

When the Sirens Slept: What Civil Defence in Europe Can Teach the UK Why Britain’s civilian readiness is falling behind — and what we can learn from our neighbours.

And according to the PQ written reply I received from the MOD in August there are no plans other than military procurements. It’s a good job that Poland’s civilian population is much better prepared than we are after last night’s events.

open.substack.com/pub/johngl55...