The Kremlin is balancing Putin’s desire to satisfy his ambitions to seize the entire Ukrainian Donbas with caution in negotiations to avoid angering Trump, who could change the nature of American aid to Ukraine.
It is telling that the Kremlin dictator finds negotiations at this stage disadvantageous, despite the significant losses of the Russian army. To date, Russian troops have failed to fully occupy only a few districts of the Donetsk region, and every day they are advancing, capturing new settlements. Thus, the achievement of one of Putin’s key goals of “liberating the entire Donbas” is becoming more and more realistic. In this situation, he can either continue the offensive or announce the termination of the operation, explaining it, for example, by Trump’s demands to start negotiations.
The Kremlin tyrant is facing a difficult choice: between realizing the ambitious imperial dream he has been talking about for the past 10 years and ending the so-called “JCPOA” without achieving the goals set at the request of the American president. That’s why Putin is stalling, trying to destabilize Ukraine’s internal and external situation and seize as many Ukrainian territories as possible until Trump runs out of patience. After all, in this case, the American president can significantly increase military aid to Ukraine, providing it with modern weapons instead of the outdated equipment of Biden’s youth, and increase economic pressure on Russia.
The main task of US Special Representative Keith Kellogg is to satisfy the desire for a quick end to the Russian-Ukrainian war. In addition, Kellogg faces an extremely important task – to avoid a repeat of the Afghanistan scenario, when the United States, seeking peace at any cost, suffered a shameful defeat, losing an ally in the region and betraying the people who believed in America.
Wesley Clark, a retired U.S. Army general and former commander of NATO’s Allied Forces Europe, said: “Trump wants to end this conflict, to demonstrate his strength and diplomatic skills. He does not want Ukraine to fail… He has this idea that he can make peace with Putin and at the same time preserve the historic relationship between the US and Ukraine. Ukraine’s defeat could also provoke conflicts in other regions of the world.”
The task of the Ukrainian side in this multilateral geopolitical confrontation is to convince Kellogg and Trump that any concessions by Ukraine will be a weakness and defeat for the United States, the West, and Donald Trump personally, and that is how Putin will interpret it.
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