If Trump’s amateur billionaire envoys meet an obstacle in Ukraine and Russia, they can switch media focus to Israel, Hamas and Gaza, as Trump appears to be doing right now. Property tycoon Steve Witkoff flew from Qatar to Moscow this week, dropping off a proposal in Israel to extend the current Gaza ceasefire in return for a very scaled back Hamas hostage release. No more fiery talk of unleashing hell there, it seems.
The Russian “nyet, but maybe” response to the 30-day ceasefire proposal they were offered was as predictable as frost in Siberia. In essence, Putin slowed down Trump’s clock.
True, in the mildest of terms, at least compared with his thuggish treatment of Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump has aired the thought that he could crush Russia’s economy with sanctions, which don’t seem to have achieved such effects in three years. The only economic moves that he could make have major drawbacks, and he has made it impossible for himself to send more arms to Ukraine.
Putin knows those concerns very well, which is why he publicly toys with allowing US access to Russian critical minerals and a return of big oil to the Arctic and Siberia. So confident is he of Trump’s gullibility that he has solicited the opinions of his own industrial oligarchs on which US sanctions they would like to see lifted or scrapped first.
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Starmer's peace plan means little - Trump holds the real power
Read MorePutin has joined other senior Russian figures in establishing their own primary red lines. Russia says it will never tolerate Nato troops acting as peacekeepers in any part of Ukraine. They want the West to stop arming Kyiv, even as they continue to receive arms and technology from Iran, North Korea and China.
But the Russians are also insistent that any ceasefire and peace negotiations – which they say must be a continuum rather than in serial stages – must above all address the “root causes” of what they do not call a war despite a million or so casualties on both sides.
It may have been prepared for the Russian negotiating team which went to Saudi Arabia, since it specifies the creation of buffer zones in the north and south of Ukraine, including around Odesa and Crimea. It also stresses the strategic goal of splitting the US from both the EU and China, something Trump is managing singlehandedly, even as he tries a preposterous “reverse Nixon” to divide the Eurasian allies.
So expect more talks about talks and the reward (for Trump) of a call or two with Putin, with stasis in Gaza, even as America First becomes America Last as Trump drops one of the many clubs he has in the air – namely the promise of an economic golden age for ordinary Americans. Soon he might find he is juggling chainsaws.
Trump will have to realise that peace cannot be achieved in one or a hundred days.
Michael Burleigh is senior fellow at LSE Ideas
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