PUTIN ROLLS THE DICE

I want you to remember last week and keep it in the back of your mind for the rest of this war. May 17-18 2025 were the end of the middle book in this trilogy of the Russo-Ukrainian War.

I do not think Vladimir Putin has ever made so many mistakes. The negotiations in Istanbul – if you can call them that – came about because in the middle of the early hours of Sunday 11th May Putin held a random press conference at 2am announcing that he was willing to hold unconditional peace talks in Istanbul that week.

He decided to do this because the primary European leaders, Starmer, Macron, Tusk, & Merz, along with Zelensky, had managed to reach Trump and persuade him that they would all go for massive sanctions – which Trump sort of agreed to – if there was no unconditional thirty day ceasefire by Monday 19th May.

Putin thought that if he threw this spanner in the works, it would delay if not derail the implementation of the sanctions. These were to be coordinated with the US. Senator Lindsey Graham claimed to have 72 senators – well above a super majority and one that could not be vetoed – to implement ‘bone crushing’ oil, shipping and banking sanctions. However potentially bone crushing they might be, even if passed into law, they required Trump’s buy-in, because if he doesn’t order their enforcement then the law is toothless.

Trump. always looking for a way of inserting himself into the peace process, which he believes cannot happen without him (a lesson the Russians were happy to disabuse him of, but not direct to his face), grasped the Putin olive branch and in doing so appeared to undermine the Europeans and Zelensky and the threat of sanctions.

Zelensky knew before he even had to be told, that he would have to seize on Putin’s offer. Unbelievably, while Trump was busy taking bribes in the Middle East and concocting insane lies about foreign investment in America, Putin had given him an inexplicable opportunity to show Russia up for what it was.

Using the opportunity to make common cause with the new American Pope in the Vatican – whose first call was to Zelensky and whose first head of state meeting days later would also be with Zelensky, demonstrating Ukraine’s and his personal determination to seek peace opportunities, the president went to Ankara and talked with Erdogan, who has trodden a thin line between NATO, Ukraine and Putin. Frankly it’s been helpful more than it has a hindrance. Erdogan is energy dependent on Russia, but in no doubt that its geopolitical ambitions are not in the least bit in Turkey’s interests. Erdogan is fiercely opposed to Russian ownership of Crimea for one.

The Europeans were quiet about the Trump derailing of the 30 day ceasefire that he had effectively demolished without apparently understanding what he’d done. They knew what was coming, and between them and Zelensky’s team they played it quietly but effectively.

Zelensky by saying from day one he would go to Istanbul or Ankara to meet Putin instantly called Putin’s bluff. Everyone knew he would never leave Russia let alone meet Zelensky in person. The team Putin sent was senior bureaucrats, but at least three levels down from the top. And everyone knew it.

The week was filled with Russian statements preparing for the negotiations that made them nothing more than an extension of the 2022 demands for Ukraine’s capitulation. It was as if the war had not happened for the past 30 months.

In the negotiations the Russians made two things clear from the outset. 1) Ukraine must withdraw from the four current oblasts claimed by Russia – including from land that had not been occupied. All of Kherson, including the liberated area, Zaporhizia, including the city of 700,000, Luhansk and Donetsk. And if they did not, and the fighting continued, 2) Russia would not demand four oblasts, but six. They added Kharkiv and Sumy. All of that just for a ceasefire, not even a full peace treaty.

Other than agree a 1,000 man prisoner exchange, the talks broke up after two hours when the Russians left because Ukraine would not agree to their demands.

This of course was pretty much what we all expected. Was anyone anywhere shocked by the way this panned out? No. And Zelensky payed it to the hilt. There he was seeking peace, talking to the new Pope, doing the rounds, ready and waiting while Putin sat at home, seemingly oblivious to how he’d been outplayed and made to look a follower in the western media – critically keeping the western public on Ukraine’ side.

On Friday 16th May Zelensky attended the Sixth European Political Community (EPC) Summit, in Tirane, Albania. There he, Merz, Starmer, Tusk & Macron all spoke directly to Trump on the phone pointing out the way the Russians had failed to negotiate, were not taking it seriously. He, Zelensky was there and Putin a no-show. Trump of course put that down to the fact that he wasn’t there so why would Putin be? The others pushed again for the bone crushing sanctions. They use Trump’s language and points back to him so that slowly he understands Putin is playing him.

There is support inside the US administration for this approach. Rubio, Kellog and some others have been careful to phrase language in the way Trump needs to hear it. The pro-Russian and anti-Ukraine talk has almost vanished. Trump is afraid he will be seen as having been played by Putin, everyone else needs him to see that is what’s happened, but its not Trump’s stupid approach that got us here, its Putin’s wickedness.

Trump then decides again, that the problem with Putin is that he and Trump have not met. That would resolve everything. Except that Russian state media has gone from loving Trump when he was granting them concession after concession for nothing in return, to scathing criticism and declaring him an irrelevance. Putin sees no value in a meeting, despite Trump craving it.

Right now as I type, Trump is talking to Putin on the phone. As soon as its over the last person he spoke to syndrome will as usual kick in until Trump starts to grasp he’s been had gain. The Russians use phrases like, “a ceasefire will take painstaking work”. That’s code for making it drag out for a year or more and never reaching a conclusion.

Slowly he will be faced with pressure from outside and inside that he has to do something forceful if Putin is ever going to budge.

I wrote several weeks ago about an Inflection point for Russia. That Putin had made up his mind: the war must go on.

Putin has rolled the dice. He has decided that he is in a strong enough position, that this is his now or never moment. The military have persuaded him they can do it. His own view of Russia’s economy is that it can win it if he pushes it to breaking point, and somehow keeps the water boiling before the pot boils dry. It’s also about his survival now. If the war ends the economy will implode and he’ll face an army of disgruntled unpaid, low morale, no hope, no job men with guns who have nothing to do anymore.

Putin knows what he is doing. Trump does not. He is so desperate to be part of the solution he endangers the resolution of the war.

Ukraine has been spending the relatively quiet last months reforming its army into a corps structure, building up ammunition reserves and creating defences, both physical and in tactical preparation. I doubt Ukraine has ever been militarily stronger and better prepared than it is now.

An interview with a mid-level commander the other day that went mostly unnoticed outside of Ukraine – largely because it was technical and fast paced, and untranslated, told us what we had come to know. Casualty rates are no longer 1:5 in favor of Ukraine, but a minimum of 1:7 and usually exceeding 1:12.

Ukrainian technology he insisted was noticeably ahead of Russia’s on the battlefield. he actually said he had never imagined they would have so many technical advantages. Including in EW which only a year ago, was Russia’s ace card. They had air support the likes of which they had never had before. They have the best artillery. They have new tactics, new formations and an iron clad strategy that might see some land lost but would prove so debilitating Russia could never sustain its momentum.

There was a feeling of unbreakable confidence. A real belief that Ukraine believes it can break whatever Russia throws at it.

I can see it too, as I observe what they are doing in Kursk, how they handle the Russian assaults, the casualties they cause, the way they simply don’t let the Russians push themselves in to positions to make the advances they seek by stopping them before they even get going. A web of intelligence gathering and observational drone coverage so tight that as soon as the Russians move, the trap springs and their forces are decimated. This is not the Ukraine of the days when Avdivka was lost, but an Ukraine that can confidently say ‘no more’.

There will be moments when they bend like a reed and the Russians will exploit an advantage they think they see, but sooner or later Ukraine will snap the jaws shut and the Russians will face a 21st century Kursk 1943. Back then the Russians waited for the Nazis to attack them knowing they would decimate the attack. Knowing they had the ultimate advantage the tech and industry of the time gave them. The Nazi’s thought they had everything to turn the tide – just as Russia does now. They could not have been more wrong.

The showdown is coming, Russia is about to find out in the next few months what a terrible mistake it has made. Putin has nothing but his own stupid arrogance to blame.

The Europeans have remained solidly with Ukraine in dealing with Trump and Putin. It’s been hugely effective. It’s not easy keeping Trump stable, like herding cats. Putin likes to throw a spanner in the works to see what effect it has, but with the days counting down to his offensive – it’s already started in many areas – talk is meaningless to him, except for making us take longer to enact these bone crushing sanctions. Even without Trump they are coming from Europe and the UK, we have all finally had enough. Trump can play ball or walk away. Europe is at the point where it will do what it has to do without him if that’s what it takes.

Part-III of the Book of the War for Ukraine is already being written. And Ukraine will be victorious, I have always believed it. Now I feel we are moving slowly, carefully towards it.

Slava Ukraine!

The Analyst

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