LOS ANGELES.–Demanding more conditions before he can sign on to a ceasefire deal, 72-year-old Russian President Vladimir Putin can’t accept the current conditions agreed to in talks in Saudi Arabia by America and the Russian Federation. Putin knows that 78-year-old President Trump is sincere in his desire for rapprochement with the United States. So, one aspect of Putin’s conditions for peace in Ukraine has already been satisfied knowing that Trump no longer support proxy war with the Kremlin. But Putin needs more reassurance before he can sign a ceasefire deal to end the active war in Ukraine. He needs Ukraine to agree to remain neutral, not seek in the future to be part of the NATO Western security alliance. Putin also needs to know that the U.S. and European Union no longer supply Ukraine copious amounts of lethal weapons with which to battle the Kremlin.
So far, ceasefire talks have not dealt with the thorny issues of whether Ukraine’s 47-year-old President Volodymyr Zelensky would give up his plans of one day join NATO. NATO has said that Ukraine would fit the criteria in the future for membership, just not now while it’s actively involved in a war with Russia, but, more importantly, has no real track record as a democratic nation. Zelensky has used the democracy label in Ukraine to sell the war to former President Joe Biden and the European Union. He claims Ukraine is a fledgling democracy winning the support from Washington and Brussels. But whether or not Ukraine would meet its future obligation as a democratic nation, including holding free elections, is anyone’s guess. NATO isn’t sure that Ukraine has established itself as a democratic nation. Whatever the criteria for NATO membership, Putin wants it ruled out.
No Western nation should doubt that Putin wants the basic causes of the war discussed openly, including the Feb. 22, 2014 CIA-backed Maiden Revolution that toppled the duly elected Kremlin-backed Kiev government of Viktor Yanukovych. While Yanukovych is long since history, Putin wants to know that there are no more coups in the offing to change to rules of the game. When the Kiev coup happened in 2014, it forced Putin to annex the Crimean Peninsula to defend his military assets under long-term lease in Crimea. Whatever backers of the pro-Western coup, Kiev knew there would repercussions with Russia. When the war broke out in Donbas, with Russia defending Russian-speaking enclaves in Donetsk and Luhansk, Kiev acted surprised. Attempts to settle the war in Donbas failed with Minsk 1 and Minsk 2 protocols, promising independence for the Russian-speaking areas.
Putin has not rejected the U.S. ceasefire proposals only asked the more conditions be met before the Kremlin can sign on to any peace deal. “We take the models and the solutions proposed by the Americans very seriously, but we can’t accept it all in its current form,” said Sergei Rybakov, long-term specialist in U.S.-Russian relations. Rybakov rejects the analysis of German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock who said the ceasefire talks were stalemated. Rybakov just said that more work needed to get done to complete the peace process. “As far as we can see, there’s no place in them today for our main demand, namely to solve the problems related to the root causes of this conflict. It is completely absent, and that must be overcome,” Rybakov said, sounding hopeful that things could get done. One thing has been completed that Trump no longer supports proxy war with the Kremlin.
Ending Biden’s proxy war policy is a big part of the root causes of the Ukraine War because Putin said that arming Ukraine to the teeth was unacceptable to the Kremlin. Putin wants to control four regions in Ukraine that it’s taken since the Feb. 24, 2022 start of the three-year-plus war. Zelensky has not said whether or not he would cede the entirety of Kherson, Zaporizhizhia, Donetsk and Luhansk to the Russian Federation. Putin also wants curbs on the size of the Ukrainian military, something where’s there’s room for compromise. But taking the land it’s already seized during the three-year conflict is a prerequisite for peace for the Kremlin. Putin wants to know that Ukraine will never against attack inside the Russian Federation, something that been happening for months. Biden gave Kiev the green light to use U.S. weapons to attack inside Russian territory.
Trump has gotten over one of the main obstacles to a ceasefire and peace deal in reassuring Putin that the U.S. under his leadership wants to restore normal diplomatic relations. There’s still much resistance in the European Union to resume normal diplomatic relations with the Russia Federation with the EU insisting that Russia must leave all Ukrainian territory before it resumes normal diplomatic relations. Trump has not made that a condition for the U.S. ending its economic sanctions against Moscow. Trump knows he has more cooperation from Putin than he does from Zelensky in terms of working on a peace deal. As long as the EU pretends that it supports Zelensky’s war with the Kremlin, it’s going to be difficult to get Putin to sign on to any ceasefire or peace deal. But unlike the pessimism in Brussels, Trump is optimistic that he can get both sides to the table.
About the Author
John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.
