David Winston Lincoln

The well-known Soviet and Russian film director and writer EDUARD TOPOL (Edmond Topelberg) has written an open letter to US President Donald Trump. "Dear Mr. President! Dear Donald! As the author of fifty books and a dozen films about Russia, I consider myself entitled to inform you before your meeting with Putin. You should know that he cannot stop the war with Ukraine, even if you give him your Mar-a-Lago villa on Palm Beach, Trump Tower in New York, and a dozen of your golf clubs. And not because he does not want to take a break from the war, but because he cannot. Since he knows Russian history not from a textbook by Medinsky, but from the real one: The return of Russian troops from Europe to Russia after the victory over Napoleon led to the anti-tsarist uprising of the Decembrists in 1825. The defeat of Russia in the Russo-Japanese War led to the revolution of 1905. The escape of a million Russian soldiers from the Russian-German front during World War I led to the abdication of Emperor Nicholas II from the throne and the February Revolution of 1917. The peace signed by Lenin with Germany allowed the Bolsheviks to shoot the entire royal family. With the return of Soviet troops from Afghanistan in February 1989, the collapse of the USSR began. Knowing this, Putin cannot end the war with Ukraine and return his troops home. Only the possibility of leaving almost its entire army in Europe as occupation troops in May 1945 helped Stalin avoid a post-war coup. That's why Putin dreams of occupying Ukraine, as well as the Baltics, Finland, Poland, etc., to keep his army away from Moscow. He remembers how 525 thousand soldiers who returned from Afghanistan in 1989 turned into bandits-afghans, terrorizing the entire population of the USSR. And he knows what will happen if one and a half million soldiers who are able to professionally kill, rob, and rape return from the Ukrainian front. The war with Ukraine allowed Putin to get rid of two million of his most active opponents, whom he forced to flee from Russia, and the rest of the young Russian men he either drove to the front or recruited into the punitive services. Today, any war - with Ukraine, with the Baltics, with NATO - and with anyone else - is the best way to force Russia to submit to Putin and his junta. Unfortunately, none of your advisors will explain this to you before meeting with Putin, but you can check my arguments with Jack Matlock and Michael McFaul. I don't want Putin, a gangster, thief, and murderer of millions of people, to continue brazenly fooling you, lying, and deceiving my President. Of course, I'm not a military expert or a political scientist, but I'm a writer with a good memory. I remember how Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and Pope John Paul II managed to bring the price of oil down to $9 a barrel, gave the Afghans "Stingers," and thereby stopped Moscow's capture of Afghanistan and destroyed the USSR. If you want to stop Putin and imperial ambitions, at least half of the Russian population, you need to do the same thing—lower the price of oil to at least $25 a barrel and give Ukraine the weapons that will help it crush the aggressor. As for your desire to establish American-Russian partnership business relations, not in words, but in practice, this can happen in a hundred years or, in general, never. If you're interested in why, call me, I'll explain. Respectfully, EDWARD TOPOLE, a citizen of the USA and Israel.