The Bear and the Eagle (Putin vs Trump)

The Bear and the Eagle Volume 1: The Unexpected Victory (2016–2017) 8 November 2016Trump Tower, New York City The evening began with uncertainty. Inside Trump Tower, the Republican candidate was surrounded by a tight circle of advisors. The polls, according to nearly every major outlet—The New York Times, CNN, FiveThirtyEight—had…

The Bear and the Eagle Volume 1: The Unexpected Victory (2016–2017) Washington D.C., May 2017 By mid-2017, the Trump administration was unraveling under the weight of its own contradictions. What began as an attempt to reset U.S.–Russia relations soon descended into scandal, investigation, and public suspicion. Central to the drama…

The Bear and the Eagle Volume 1: The Unexpected Victory (2016–2017) 16 July 2018Presidential Palace, Helsinki, Finland Two men, two flags, and one room that changed the world’s perception of American leadership.When Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin met in Helsinki, the geopolitical symbolism was inescapable. It was not merely a…

The Bear and the Eagle Volume 1: The Unexpected Victory (2016–2017)* November 2018 – March 2019Washington – Moscow – Kyiv – Caracas – Beijing The reverberations of the Helsinki Summit had not yet faded when the next act of the geopolitical drama began. What had been a two-man show between…

The Bear and the Eagle Volume 1: The Unexpected Victory (2016–2017)* April 2019 – December 2019Washington – Kyiv – Moscow – New York – Brussels As the Mueller Report faded from front-page headlines, a new storm gathered—one not from a courtroom, but from a phone call. If the Trump–Russia chapter…

The Bear and the Eagle Volume 1: The Unexpected Victory (2016–2017) January – November 2020Wuhan – Washington – Moscow – Minneapolis – Geneva 2020 began with threats of war and ended with mass death, economic collapse, and a contested U.S. election. In a year that would rewrite global history, the…

The Bear and the Eagle Volume 2: The Biden–Xi Reset or Rivalry (2021–2022) January – June 2021Washington – Moscow – Berlin – Geneva – Kyiv 2021 began with two symbolic moments—one in Washington, the other in Moscow—that would define the direction of East–West relations in the post-Trump era. In America,…

The Bear and the Eagle Volume 2: The Biden–Xi Reset or Rivalry (2021–2022) January – February 2022Moscow – Kyiv – Washington – Brussels – Beijing For years, the world had tolerated Russia’s slow-motion aggression in Ukraine. The 2014 annexation of Crimea, the simmering war in Donbas, and the steady erosion…

The Bear and the Eagle Volume 2: The Biden–Xi Reset or Rivalry (2021–2022) March – December 2022Washington – Moscow – Brussels – Beijing – New Delhi – Tehran As missiles exploded across Ukrainian cities, another quieter war unfolded—one fought in stock exchanges, shipping lanes, energy grids, and digital markets. The…

The Bear and the Eagle Volume 2: The Biden–Xi Reset or Rivalry (2021–2022) September 2022 – March 2023Kyiv – Kherson – Kharkiv – Moscow – Washington – Warsaw In the late months of 2022, a shift occurred—not just in the momentum of war, but in the strategic imagination of the…

The Bear and the Eagle Volume 2: The Biden–Xi Reset or Rivalry (2021–2022) January – June 2023Bakhmut – Kyiv – Moscow – Minsk – Washington – Beijing As 2023 dawned, the war in Ukraine settled into a new and brutal phase—no longer one of sweeping offensives, but of grinding attrition,…

The Bear and the Eagle Volume 2: The Biden–Xi Reset or Rivalry (2021–2022) June – September 2023Zaporizhzhia – Melitopol – Crimea – Kyiv – Moscow – Black Sea After months of anticipation, Ukraine’s 2023 counteroffensive was finally underway. It was not a blitzkrieg—it was a slow, deliberate push through the…

The Bear and the Eagle Volume 2: The Biden–Xi Reset or Rivalry (2021–2022) 23–24 June 2023Rostov-on-Don – Moscow – Voronezh – Belarus – St Petersburg For 16 months, Russia’s war in Ukraine had defined the world’s headlines.But in one dramatic 24-hour period, the battlefield shifted—from Ukraine to Russia itself. The…

The Bear and the Eagle Volume 2: The Biden–Xi Reset or Rivalry (2021–2022) October – December 2023Kyiv – Moscow – Washington – Brussels – Tel Aviv – Beijing By the final quarter of 2023, the war in Ukraine had settled into a grim rhythm: incremental gains, persistent losses, and a…

The Bear and the Eagle Volume 3: Year Three – Unfinished Wars and Uncertain Worlds (2024–2025) January – March 2024Kyiv – Moscow – Washington – Munich – Beijing – Warsaw As 2024 began, the war in Ukraine entered its third calendar year, no longer a geopolitical shock but a protracted,…

The Bear and the Eagle Volume 3: Year Three – Unfinished Wars and Uncertain Worlds (2024–2025) July – August 2024Washington D.C. – Milwaukee – Kyiv – Moscow – Brussels – Beijing – Tel Aviv In the summer of 2024, the world entered a period of political turbulence not seen since…

The Bear and the Eagle Volume 3: Year Three – Unfinished Wars and Uncertain Worlds (2024–2025) September – October 2024Washington D.C. – Kyiv – Moscow – Brussels – Atlanta – Tel Aviv – Beijing As the leaves turned in Washington and the frosts returned to the Donbas, the world moved…

The Bear and the Eagle Volume 3: Year Three – Unfinished Wars and Uncertain Worlds (2024–2025) November – December 2024Washington D.C. – Kyiv – Brussels – Moscow – Beijing – Tel Aviv – Riyadh The world held its breath on Tuesday, 5 November 2024, as the United States of America…

The Bear and the Eagle Volume 4: Year Four – A Dangerous New Order (2025) January – February 2025Washington D.C. – Moscow – Kyiv – Brussels – Beijing – Tehran – Jerusalem The dawn of 2025 was not greeted with celebration but with apprehension. Donald J. Trump’s second inauguration marked…