Donald Trump is in a desperate hurry to achieve some success by resolving the two sanguinary international crises he is juggling, even as US stock markets slide because of his combative tariffs. Juggling used to be part of showbusiness.
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.
Meanwhile, the Americans presented the Russians with ceasefire proposals which the Ukrainians had endorsed under duress. Vladimir Putin even managed to see Witkoff on Thursday night, after a wearisome day spent pretending to be interested in the dully servile pensées of Belarusian autocrat Alexander Lukashenko.
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.
While Putin was careful to welcome Trump’s efforts, he said there needed to be many more talks about talks, each session dedicated to detailed issues which the Trump camp has not even put on paper. One can imagine Putin’s aides Sergey Lavrov, Yuri Ushakov and Sergey Naryshkin relishing the task.
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.
Does he really want a full-blown bust-up with China and India, by imposing secondary sanctions on these eager customers for Russian oil and gas? How would a fall in the price impact a US fracking industry which works on very tight margins, and which he sees as one of the main drivers of economic growth? How would the big oil interests who poured big money into Trump’s campaign regard such a move?
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.
In truth, Putin is in no rush to agree a ceasefire, which would only benefit Ukraine, whose troops are being hounded out of the Kursk salient by Russian forces which are now conducting reconnaissance and sabotage missions on the side of the border near the Ukrainian city of Sumy.
square PATRICK COCKBURN
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.
The Russians also want Ukraine to withdraw its forces from its eastern “Donbas” oblasts, which Russia has conspicuously failed to fully occupy after three years of fighting. Any deal about these “new territories” is impossible, Russia says, because they are now integral constitutionally-mandated parts of the Russian Federation. Imagine how long the Duma might dwell on undoing that.
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.
An intrepid Western intelligence agency got its hands recently on a February paper by a Russian think tank closely connected with the country’s FSB security agency. This calls for the total dismantlement of Ukraine’s “current regime”, which they hold responsible for the persecution of ethnic Russians and the “extermination” of Russian language and culture.
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.
Why would China or Russia allow someone as erratic and unstable as Trump to interfere with a proven relationship which is predictable and beneficial to both sides? Why not continue to draw more of the Global South, and in China’s case, an increasing number of Europeans, if not into their camp then into a kind of neutrality vis-à-vis the US?
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.
Putin will not deliver his response to the US-Ukraine ceasefire proposal until after his talks with Lukashenko conclude. One can’t help feeling that Mr Witkoff will be flying back to Washington clutching a few straws to compensate for the big “nyet”.
Trump will have to realise that peace cannot be achieved in one or a hundred days.
Michael Burleigh is senior fellow at LSE Ideas
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( The Art of the Deal, by Vladimir Putin )
Also on site :
- EU queen Ursula preached transparency – then did backdoor deals with Big Pharma
- Robert Irwin Goes Red Carpet Official With Lucky Lady: 'It's a Big Step'
- Walmart Is Selling an 'Amazing' $55 Portable Closet for Just $30, and Shoppers Say It's 'Easy to Assemble'