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December 31, 2024 - 5:00pm
Vladimir Putin has seemed unusually amenable of late. In November, Kremlin sources revealed the Russian President’s openness to discussing a ceasefire deal and, earlier this month, Putin said he was ready to compromise over Ukraine in talks with incoming US president Donald Trump.
Putin’s enthusiasm for negotiation seems puzzling. Why bargain when you are winning? Russian forces are making battlefield progress, Moscow has men and missiles from North Korea, and Trump has dismissed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as “the greatest salesman on earth”. These propitious circumstances may explain why, while claiming to have no preconditions for negotiations, Putin is already not taking the prospect seriously.
At his end-of-year press conference, Putin asserted that he would only sign agreements with the Ukrainian parliament and its chair, in line with the Kremlin’s claim that overdue elections have rendered Zelensky’s presidency illegitimate. The Russian President added that his counterpart in Kyiv would need to be re-elected for Moscow to talk to him.
The practical complications are clear: Ukrainian MPs would have to take the time to organise themselves and agree ceasefire terms across party lines, with the numbers involved presenting greater opportunities for Russian manipulation. That is before one considers the challenges of holding elections when voters are abroad or at the front. Additionally, Putin last week said he would be open to Slovakia’s offer to hold peace talks. These would presumably be hosted by Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico, who has drawn Kyiv’s ire for his friendly relations with the Kremlin.
From the West’s perspective, this is Russia’s most dangerous available strategy: Putin making positive signals but slowing the process with delays and arbitrary or unacceptable demands. The Kremlin’s hope would be to push forward on the battlefield as the Western focus switches from supplying weapons to supporting negotiations, with aid commitments to Kyiv thrown into limbo by doubts about the longevity of the conflict.
So how to get Russia to the negotiating table? Trump’s plan is to increase arms to Ukraine should Putin refuse. However, previous efforts have suffered logistical obstacles and the move could prove unpopular with his MAGA base. Another solution proposed by analysts is penalties for procrastination, with further sanctions on Moscow and more weapons deliveries to Kyiv for every month without a deal. Yet the Kremlin has proven it can work around sanctions, and Putin knows that the true peril for Ukraine is not running out of weapons but running out of men, making discussion from Trump’s camp of “arming Ukraine to the teeth” actually rather toothless.
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Subscribe“Trump has dismissed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as “the greatest salesman on earth”. ”
Dismissive? From the guy who wrote The Art of the Deal?
Sounds like a compliment to me, even if not intended.
Of course it was a compliment.
The problem is working out what he was/is actually selling.
It can’t be victory over Russia; possibly it’s just doing as he’s told by the West, while Ukraine and its people are destroyed, impoverished and increasingly indebted…to the West.
A. Strictly speaking, all of Europe is indebted to the US. So what?
B. If Ukraine and its people surrender to Russia, they will not be destroyed, ruined, enslaved?
A. The interest payments diminish the amount available for rather more useful purposes. Possibly you are unaware of this.
B. They already are but not to Russia. Again, possibly you hadn’t noticed. I’m sure at least some of them have.
It seems you didn’t hear what was happening in the outskirts of Kyiv or how Mariupol was bombed. Quite selective deafness.
You are also unfamiliar with the fact that the troops that invaded Ukraine in 2022 had lists of those who had to be “neutralized” first, and who second, at their intended locations. Fine.
Your responses frequently have no relevance to the point which has been made, as in this case.
That reinforces my view that you are a computer programme with various set responses triggered by a number of words, with some limited human intervention. When there is no set response you fall back on the “atrocity” response, or personal abuse, both in evidence here.
In order that your controllers/creators may be aware, (not that they care, your presence here being the point…), I am fully aware of ALL allegations made by all sides. No doubt some, probably many, are true.
My view remains that, as Mearsheimer said, and says, Ukraine is being used by Neocons in a proxy war with Russia. Unfortunately they are “playing chicken” with a nuclear power which currently has a reasonably stable leadership, but that is unlikely to last.
As for the USA, it is run by Neocons for their own benefit, not that of the US people. Trump will probably be ignored by them as last time.
In the final analysis, apart from Ukraine, it is Europe which has lost in this war, and will continue to do so, despite the pompous but hollow perorations of its “leaders”. And if, as is a very realistic possibility, nukes are eventually used it is Europe which will end up as a smoking, irradiated ruin not the USA.
The situation is much more dangerous than the Cuban Crisis.
Rather than edit, an addition..
Unlike the Cuban Missile Crisis, the West has no leaders of substance in charge whatsoever…only self serving mediocrities.
For the information of the upvoters of MC –
“Accusation in a mirror is a false claim that accuses the target of something that the perpetrator is doing or intends to do. Drawing on the ideas of Joseph Goebbels … “impute to enemies exactly what they and their own party are planning to do”
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Trump always effusively compliments the person he is negotiating against or who has some control over his ability to free-wheel. That is why he says nice things about Putin, Xi, Kim, all of them… while putting in their pace people who he does not think can be problems–like most European “leaders.” And you can tell how he views those relationships changing day by day by the level of compliments, dismissiveness, or insults he throws out.
That is how the game is played in Manhattan real estate mega-projects, where he developed his craft. It seems unfamiliar to the idiots currently running and opining on foreign policy throughout the West, but people like Putin know what they are seeing because while the details differ, as an overall approach to negotiations it goes back to the Bronze Age.
Negotiations are a little like playing chess. You prepare for a chess game, but you can’t plan out an entire game. Too much depends on what your opponent does. You have to make your first move, and watch the game unfold from there.
Negotiations are the same way. Better not to overprepare, or to telegraph your plans to your opponent. You keep them guessing. Telling the other side beforehand what you will and will not do is a bad move, unless you do it to deceive. Be agile instead of locking yourself into a plan.
Donald Trump is an experienced and talented negotiator. Look at what he did with Kim Jong Un to try to rein in North Korea. He was patient, letting things unfold over years. He did not get locked into a plan — indeed, when Kim Jong Un turned down his best offer, he walked away from the deal, satisfied with his best alternative to a negotiated agreement.
Articles like this are not much of a guide to how negotiations are going to go. No one knows now, or can know, what the best outcome will be. The important thing is to start negotiating, for the chess players to start making moves. That won’t happen until January 20. Hasten the day.
Secrecy is absolutely crucial. A successful negotiation involves each side making unpalatable concessions. Which those are, and the respective quid pro quo, requires painstaking feeling-out and haggling. Ultimately, it is only the comprehensive package that matters, and each side must have the opportunity to align its various internal factions to accept the package.
Which in turn means that each side must have enough trust in the other side to maintain the niceties of diplomacy. Unfortunately, the West has fullthroatedly rejected diplomacy, and our internal politics have regressed into juvenile posturing, so this does not bode well for an actual peace.
Separately, and to push back on your proposition that negotiations are like playing chess – in a sense yes, of course, but there are crucial differences to chess.
In chess, you cannot hide your moves or the rank of the piece you are moving. Your game plan might be hidden, but you cannot hide any movement of any of your pieces.
Also in chess, the effectiveness of each piece is binary – if a pawn is in range of the queen, the pawn can take the queen.
In chess, you must move on your turn. You cannot pass.
The point of chess as a game was obviously to develop tactical thinking, and the lessons the game teaches are no doubt valuable for diplomacy as well. But let’s not forget that there are additional layers to diplomacy.
Let’s remember that Russia was willing to agree to a deal Ukraine had proposed, negotiated and initialled in Istanbul in April 2022, weeks after Russia had invaded.
Let’s also remember that it was the Western guarantors of the Minsk Accords who admitted that there had never been any good-faith will to implement them.
On Western urging, Ukraine was pressured to abandon the Istanbul Deal. Since then Zelensky has been peddling his “Peace Formula”, which essentially calls for an unconditional surrender of Russia and withdrawal from all formerly Ukrainian territories, including Crimea. So long as that remains the official position endorsed by Ukraine’s sponsors, Putin’s talk about compromise is cheap.
Russia has since summer 2022 applied exactly the suggested formula: Penalties for procrastination. And, as both Putin and Lavrov have emphasised in the past days, Russia has plenty more where that came from.
Since then Zelensky has been peddling his “Peace Formula”, which essentially calls for an unconditional surrender of Russia and withdrawal from all formerly Ukrainian territories, including Crimea.
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I had never suspected before that the demand that the aggressor leave the territories he has captured is called a demand for unconditional surrender.
Bit of a reality check for you then…
Let me clarify, are you also proposing to use the term “unconditional surrender” in this case?
I never understood that “not an inch eastwards” meant as far East as the Russian border…an education for us both then..
As a man who has lived in Russia and Ukraine, I know where the border between Russia and Ukraine is. As a man who has crossed this border many times, I know that it is not only a line on the ground, people are different on both sides of the border.
So try to educate yourself. I am educated enough.
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But you did not answer my simple and clear question about the term “surrender”. Why? Are you afraid?
The definition of “aggressor” is not as straightforward as you might like it to be. In the context of “indivisible security” (which is the concept agreed in and underlying the 1975 Helsinki Final Act), the party attempting to change the security architecture is behaving aggressively.
Of course, and separately, the UN Charter prohibits the use of force to resolve conflicts.
On the other hand, the UN decided that each UN member has a “responsibility to protect” if it becomes aware of any acts of genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, or crimes against humanity.
Also, the UN Charter guarantees to each people a right of self-determination, and of collective self-defence. On the other hand, the self-defence must be confined to defence, and must not be abused to justify excessive force or overreach.
Western countries have also argued that there is a right of humanitarian intervention, including by force if that is deemed necessary. NATO has used force of war to that end. This is not an accepted provision of international law.
You may not, and probably do not, agree with most or any of this, but it does not change the fact that in international law, things are … complicated.
That is, it was Ukraine that invaded Russia, bombed its capital, robbed, raped, and killed residents of the capital’s suburbs.
Ukraine has been shelling Donbas. This was a violation of the Minsk agreements.
Since February 17, 2022, the shelling has increased by an order of magnitude (10 times). Which usually signals artillery preparations for an invasion.
That is Ukraine instead of de-escalating the situation deliberately increased tensions.
In response, Russia recognized the independence of Donetsk and Lugansk on February 22.
A mutual defense agreement was concluded. And since Ukraine continued shelling, the mutual defense treaty was enforced on February 24.
So yes, Russia is defending the allied states in full compliance with international law on collective self-defense.
It’s an odd position to take if you are losing the war, especially if you are utterly dependent on other countries to keep your economy afloat. And gosh, suddenly Zelensky totally changes his position and propises a deal. And the West…ignores him. And yet why should Zelensky insist in keeping the eastern provinces which Ukraine has been shelling for 8 years now. They still refuse old age pensions to the inhabitants. Despite the righteous wrath and incredulity of the comnentariat, it is possible to lose a war, and certainly possible to lose some territory, as Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria and Slovakia found out in 1945.
Oh my God, this thread is a collection of unscare idiots.
I only noted the fact of using stupid terms that are completely inconsistent with what is happening:
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I had never suspected before that the demand that the aggressor leave the territories he has captured is called a demand for unconditional surrender
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And what do I see? A complete degradation of thought activity. However, in your world of the mentally damaged intellectuals, this is quite natural. After all, it is completely natural for you to seriously discuss the problem of trans women’s participation in women’s sports. It’s just me, a fool, who thinks that the question of men’s participation in women’s sports is idiotic.
They have been shelling invading Russian forces in these territories, not the territories themselves. Unlike Russia, Ukraine goes for military targets.
*according to Ukrainian reports
That old chestnut?
The U.S. along with the UK fired missiles into Russia, a nuclear armed, sovereign nation. We have no leverage left.
This piece is naive and unhistorical to the point of absurdity.
Of course, Russia is interested in negotiating when it is winning, and of course when its maximum positions are not met it will continue fighting in order to improve its advantage, while Ukraine and the West will hope to make some relative gains to improve their situation. All continuing until one side decides it would rather live with what is on offer than continue the fighting. In the Korean War, there were more months of fighting and more casualties while negotiations were underway at Panmunjon, than in the earlier mobile war that resulted in near-static front lines back near where it all began on the 38th Parallel.
Virtually every war that has ended through real negotiations, since the dawn of history, has ended that way; the only alternatives are when one side utterly collapses and sues for peace (think, World War 1 in the West), or where one side’s goal is the total surrender of the other (World War 2); the Napoleonic Wars being a bit of both. Wars where both sides will survive with regimes more or less intact, but one is enhanced while the other is diminished, always see this dynamic, and we should expect nothing else.
Your post is a very good summary of all that is wrong with the Western perception of history, war, diplomacy, and negotiation.
In WW I, the German front had not “utterly collapsed”. German High Command agreed to the armistice in November 1918 in the belief that the peace treaty would follow the principles outlined by President Wilson. The Treaty of Versailles was, of course, completely contrary to those principles, which laid the ground for WW II.
In WW II, both allies were dismayed by Roosevelt’s declaration that the Allies’ aim was Germany’s unconditional surrender. Both Stalin and Churchill understood that aim to mean a much longer and much bloodier war than would have otherwise been likely.
Both in Korea and in Vietnam, negotiations began long before there was a cease-fire. In Korea, the US was able to force a cease-fire because the US threatened nuclear war, which the Soviet Union was not (yet) prepared for. Vietnam was of course a US defeat – to join the long list of subsequent illustrious defeats including Afghanistan and Iraq II (the US did score big wins against Panama and Grenada, just to provide balance).
During the Napoleonic Wars, scores of polities vanished, never again to resurface as international law subjects. If your point is that Metternich’s concept of the “concert of nations” included France, then “yes”, it is a lesson the fire-breathing Lilliputians that are at the forefront of the EU’s warmongering would do well to heed. But their focus is on the breakup and pillaging of Russia, while the “concert of nations” concept appears to be very much in line with the pronouncements of both Putin and Lavrov.
‘EU warmongering’ = ‘helping Ukraine defend itself against a revanchist Russia.’
Russia’s ‘victory’ appears marginal at best. Think of the long term costs to its economy and birth rate.
Compared to the cost to the Ukraine’s economy and birth rate?
Missing the point. Russia is the aggressor. Ukraine chose to defend itself. Western investment, while it won’t replace the human cost, will ensure its recovery long term. Not so Russia.
*The West is the aggressor – Russia is defending itself. The West has no money even for itself, Russia is developing.
Russia attacked Ukraine, a sovereign country that has no ability to attack Russia successfully given Russia’s nuclear arsenal. This is just obvious.
Bethany, did not you not get the memo? It is well known and publicised that Trump and Zelenskyy have met (several times) to talk about peace in Ukraine. Zelenskyy is willing. But not so well publicised that Trump has also had a chat with Putin about peace in Ukraine. It did not go well. In fact, it SO did not go so well that Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, denied they talked at all – and then nude pics of Evanka appeared on Russian media just to show Trump that Putin is not pleased with Trump’s attitude.
Russia winning the war…? Let us talk again next month.
Interesting points. The nude pictures were of Melania Trump, though, not Ivanka Trump.