PUTIN PLAYS HIS OPENING GAMBIT FOR PEACE TALKS

It was not a surprise that Putin would start to play games as he begins the maneuvering of the chess pieces on the peace talks board.

We have had in no particular order:

1. We are winning why do we need to talk?
2. I am happy to sit down with the US President and discuss peace.
3. We are waiting for signals from the Americans to have a phone call.
4. There are prerequisites to our talks if they happen, that we don’t give anything up, Ukraine can’t join NATO, Ukraine has to give up what we say it has to, and its army must be reduced to 50,000.
5. I am happy to have peace talks with Ukraine – but I won’t sit down with Zelensky because his government is illegitimate. Option 1: Because they are nazis, Option 2: because they are un-elected and his term has expired.
6. We are willing to discuss peace provided the realities on the ground are taken into consideration .

All of the above have been rolled out several times this year alone. Are they posturing? do they have any merit? How might they be realistic or a problem? Will we ever again see Putin and Zelensky in a room shaking hands and signing a peace accord while a leering US president looks on?

1. WE ARE WINNING, WHY DO WE NEED TO TALK?

There is some merit to this statement, despite its arrogance. On the ground, despite the state of the Russian army they do keep advancing into Ukraine. It’s a high loss agonizing campaign, grinding down Russia far more than it is Ukraine. Neither though is in a position to win outright on the ground and both of them know it.

Despite trying its best to trash the Ukrainian electricity grid and power generation, Russia has failed to bring Ukraine down. In fact it is far from doing so, alternative sources of energy, including from Poland & Romania, an extraordinary development in decentralized power systems from local domestic diesel generators through to solar panels and farms, they have all contributed to preventing the catastrophe Russia sought.

Meanwhile, Ukraine has stepped up its drone and missile war on Russia and is taking it to a new level. January 2025 is one of the worst months Russia has ever suffered from long range drone attacks. Oil refineries have been decimated, along with transit points for oil, storage and distribution, ammunition depots and command centers, repair points and logistics centers. When your economic wheels are already jumping off the tacks, inflation flying higher, interest rates crippling business, forced loans making the banking sector increasingly unstable, labor shortages, currency instability, low oil prices, your tanker fleet largely sanctioned out of use, things aren’t looking quite so well as you might like to make out.

So yes, maybe talking might be an option, just in case things go really wrong.

2. I AM HAPPY TO SIT DOWN WITH THE US PRESIDENT AND DISCUSS PEACE

Well of course you are. It will get you back into the public limelight, show the world you’re still a force to be reckoned with, and you’ll be back at the top table like nothing ever happened. Besides you know this president, you got him elected in term one, and you made him say things that embarrassed everyone, even himself, he even sided with you against his own intelligence services at Helsinki. One quick word in his ear, one special level of flattery, and you think you can make it all go your way. Before too long you’ll be back in the Oval Office while he tells you secrets.

There’s just one teeny weeny problem. This time Vladimir Vladimirovich, he thinks you’re the weak one. You failed to conquer Ukraine in three days. You still haven’t done it in three years and he knows how much you’ve spent, how many men you’ve killed, and how much it’s still costing you. And you still haven’t won. Because you’re a loser. And what does 47 hate most of all? Losers.

You also think that by discussing directly with 47, you can do things the old fashioned way, like Potsdam in 1945. Slice up spheres of influence, who gets what in the new multi-polar world. You think this way it can keep the Ukrainians out of the room, and like Munich in 1938 the Great Powers will slice up their victim without him even having a say. Do you really think Ukraine will let that happen? Do you think the Americans will? Because if you do you’re going to be sorely mistaken.

3. WE ARE WAITING FOR SIGNALS FROM THE AMERICANS TO HAVE A PHONE CALL

“Did the President call?”

“No”.

Keeping you waiting are they? Making you not so high on their priority list as you think you ought to be? Why do you think that is exactly? Perhaps it’s because they are still sending three 747 freighters a day of military aid to Ukraine, let alone the sea containers and vehicle transports. Perhaps they’re waiting to see how deep the tanker sanctions dig? Or how much the Ukrainians can take out of your weapons factories, electronics plants, oil refineries and so on and on….but don’t worry I’m sure they’ll talk to you when it suits them.

4. There are prerequisites to our talks if they happen, that we don’t give anything up, Ukraine can’t join NATO, Ukraine has to give up what we say it has to, and its army must be reduced to 50,000.

Or what? No deal? Okay. So we’ll just bolster Ukraine with an unlimited Lend-Lease deal that will give them more modern equipment than they might know what to do with. That’s going to cost you time, money, effort, that economy of yours is already hot enough to melt Siberia. Have a not so nice day.

There’s only one answer to these demands. No. You don’t get to choose or impose any of those options, but in reality yes you do occupy a good deal of ground. We’ll all agree to a withdrawal line perhaps 5km behind where you are and they are. That’s it. History can take care of the rest.

To which they will argue, “but these four oblasts are part of Russia, it says so in our constitution”. The only answer is to laugh in their faces and tell them they shouldn’t have been so arrogant to do that back in November 2022 when they hadn’t even come close to winning the war. It looked stupid then because they hadn’t won and they still haven’t. So why would anyone pay any attention to it or give it any credence?

If you have pre-requisites you have to be speaking from a hand so strong the other side feels it must comply. Ukraine will not agree to that and nor would Washington I suspect, expect them to. Besides you don’t have that much of a hand. You’re not at the gates of Kyiv, hell its taken you a year to reach the gates of Pokrovsk and the cost in men and roubles has been shocking. What exactly do you have right now that makes anyone feel compelled to accept your ‘pre-requisites’?

Ultimately there can be only one or two reasons you want to play this card; you don’t want to talk at all really so asking for the impossible ensures no talks. Or, its part of the I want 500% of what I really want so that you can negotiate me down to 250% strategy – and I still get more than I would have taken if you pushed the point.

Any suggestion from the Russian side they really mean this means they’re not being serious. Walk away.

5. I am happy to have peace talks with Ukraine – but I won’t sit down with Zelensky

Putin labels the Kyiv regime as ‘nazi’. He doesn’t want to be seen negotiating with that type of person. That of course is all of his own making and imagination (well Dougin’s imagination anyway). It’s just another way of delegitimizing Ukraine and its government, and another attempt to bypass President Zelensky and also a way of calling out to those who oppose him in Ukraine, to do something about him.

The ironies of which Putin will be well aware of, is that President Zelensky is Jewish, a descendant of a handful of families who survived years of pogroms in Imperial Russia, communist oppression and discrimination, the Holodomor, the the SS death squads, and more discrimination and oppression by the later Soviet Union. President Zelensky is often accused by the Russians as being out of his term, which ended in May 2024, if it was peace time. However the Ukrainian constitution bars elections in wartime. Zelensky has promised them within 90 days of the day the war ends.

These elections past and future are real. They won’t be faked like Putin’s. Zelensky is infinitely more legitimate than Putin under any examination of the standards of elections.

The only reason to play this hand is to delay and obfuscate. Besides which why does he assume Zelensky would sit down with him? I would not in his shoes.

6. We are willing to discuss peace provided the realities on the ground are taken into consideration.

This on its own is probably the most sensible of the cards to play. There are realities – Russia has seized a lot of land and it keeps gaining more. However the Ukrainians are still in Kursk despite tens of thousands of deaths trying to pries them out.

Russia seems to be implying that it gets what it has taken. On points of principle for the West and for Ukraine, that would be a hard pill to swallow. It means an authoritarian has gained a conquest by the use of military power. That is not a precedent anyone wants to set and it will embolden the Chinese in their approaching war with Taiwan.

Unless Ukraine is in a place to suddenly turn the tide and mount an offensive so effective the Russians can be rolled back, some degree of land concession seems inevitable. Many think most Ukrainians have reached that conclusion themselves however much they despise the idea.

However it does seem Russia won’t hand back anything, they want what they’ve got and the people who live there to stay. Ukraine seems to think this is a point of negotiation, which is why they keep holding on to Kursk.

The question is, is Putin using this as a precondition before talks begin? Because if he is then either again, he is delaying and obfuscating because he still thinks he’s winning and fighting will lead to greater gains. Or, if this is a precondition to even starting talks, then there are no talks to have because I don’t believe Ukraine would concede that point.

Putins best outcome is to undermine Ukraine and Zelensky with the American Administration and get them to stop aid. He needs to turn the Ukrainians into the bad guys. The statement in the title is probably his best single way of trialing that tactic.

CONCLUSION

Putin’s statements are all designed to sound one way while comprehensively leaving us with multiple interpretations. They’re all designed to make him look good and everyone else bad, and leave plenty of room for interpretation, depending on your politics or view. Everything that comes out of the Kremlin to do with talks now has to be parsed for its real meanings – and they will never be simple. The Russians are master negotiators, many of their diplomats have been around for decades.

In the Cold War Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko was in the foreign ministers position from 1957 to 1985 and had worked there since 1939, Lavrov is just another example of long term inhabitant having been there since 2004 as foreign minister. These men know all there is to know and have outlived every one of their western opposition. That’s what made them so useful.

On the other hand the new US administration is filled with conspiracy theorists, political appointees with no expertise, has fired the State Department permanent officials who know what goes on, and replaced them with more dimwitted psychophants and political agenda grinders. Only Rubio has a clue and he’s never negotiated with Russians. Keith Kellogg has some chance at first, but if he fails to deliver? Who knows.

Ukraine however knows its own mind. And it knows Russians.

If there are to be talks, it’s going to get very complicated, and the new American administration isn’t good with patience, complexities or subtlety. It’s going to be a roller coaster. Putin however will not and cannot have everything he wants.

The Analyst

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