Posted originally on CTH on May 27, 2025 | Sundance

Following last week’s phone call between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, there is currently a multi-nation prisoner exchange in the works being coordinated with ‘seven’ (looks like six to me) nations.

NBC has some details on the dynamic [SEE HERE] which includes this paragraph: “The massive deal, cut among seven nations, involved 24 people, including five Germans and seven Russian citizens held in Russia, and eight Russians imprisoned in the U.S., Germany, Slovenia, Norway and Poland.”

This comes amid some rather complicated -to untangle- western media gaslighting around the dynamic of U.S-Russia relations.  However, if you cut through the chaff and countermeasures assigned within the prose, there are cautious indications to be optimistic.

Remember, President Trump’s emissary Steven Witkoff and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio have spent a great deal of time, literal facetime, with both Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.  Lavrov seems to have a good take on the Trump dynamic overall within this statement attributed to him by TASS, the Russian news agency.

“He sees some of the Europeans are working to sabotage his efforts [on peace]… of course, he gets emotional, and, of course, as someone who does not like anything to stand in the way of his noble goals, he looks at it a certain way,” Lavrov said, according to Russian news outlet Tass.

Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov is calm and cool overall when considering the European effort to ramp up conflict.  Peskov is noting that U.K, French and German missiles would still need to utilize USA micro-chips, and advance satellite tracking, within any deployed missile targeting systems.

“The thing is, any European weapon has US-made spare parts. According to the rules of military-technical cooperation, every country must give permission to use a French projectile with a US microchip inside. This is how this system works,” the Kremlin representative explained.

“Well, in general, yes, certainly,” Peskov replied to a comment that the Americans cannot be unaware about the deployment of European weapons. (link)

We’ll keep watching…. After all, how did that neocon effort work out for Mike Waltz?