Russia is dictating to the US by this point – and a supine Trump is letting it happen
WASHINGTON DC – With each passing day, the Kremlin is taking further steps to make it apparent that Donald Trump’s initiative to end the war in Ukraine is dead as a dodo. One week after Russian President Vladimir Putin’s triumphant arrival in Alaska for his summit meeting with the American leader, the Russians have now systematically torched every possible avenue for progress.
On Thursday, while Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov insisted that Putin “has repeatedly said that he is ready to meet” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, he immediately produced a raft of fresh obstacles to ensure any prospect of a direct encounter between the two men is derailed.
Meeting India’s foreign minister in Moscow, Lavrov proclaimed: “Putin is ready to meet with Zelensky only if all issues that require discussion at the highest level are well worked out”. He then suggested that one of those issues might even be the legal right of Zelensky to engage in negotiations with the Russians.
“In the event of signing agreements with Ukraine”, he said, “it will be necessary to resolve the issue of the legitimacy of the signatory from Kyiv”.
That’s a reference to Moscow’s repeated insistence that Ukraine’s election, delayed since last year because the country has come under continuing Russian attack, has left Zelensky with no mandate to remain in office. Taken to its logical conclusion, Lavrov was indicating there will be no bilateral meeting with Putin until Zelensky either wins a fresh mandate, or his successor is in place.
Meanwhile, former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev engaged in a scorched-earth effort to incinerate any suggestion that British troops or forces from other European members of Nato will play any role in peacekeeping operations whenever the war war is over.
“Russia does not accept any Nato troops in Ukraine under the guise of ‘peacekeepers’”, he said on Wednesday night. “It does not need such ‘security guarantees’”, he insisted.
That will come as a shock to US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff. Only last weekend, he told CNN that there had been a “breakthrough” at the Alaska summit, where he alleged that Putin had agreed to “effectively offer Article 5-like language” modelled on Nato’s charter to govern the presence of European peacekeepers in Ukraine. The Russians have now dismissed that assertion entirely, rejecting not only the concept of American boots on the ground, but the boots of Washington’s Nato allies as well.
Lavrov said the United Nations Security Council, which gives Russia a veto, should be the only body that determines the composition of peacekeeping forces. Citing talks that took place between low-level Ukrainian and Russian delegations in Istanbul in April 2022, he called for security guarantees that would protect Russia from Ukrainian attack, rather than the imposition of a peacekeeping force aimed primarily at protecting Ukraine from any rekindling of Russia’s aggression. Any other approach, he said, would be “simply unworkable”.
The audacity of such a demand – note, it’s not even a request – from an aggressive and repeatedly, demonstrably treacherous invader is breathtaking.
Trump’s contribution to the discussion on Thursday consisted of a message posted on his social media account hours after Russian missiles destroyed an American-owned electronics factory in western Ukraine. “It is very hard, if not impossible to win a war without attacking an invaders country [sic]”, he wrote, comparing Ukraine to “a great team in sports that has a fantastic defense, but it not allowed to play offense. There is no chance of WINNING.”
Appearing to encourage Ukraine to invade Russian territory, he put the blame for the country’s plight at former President Joe Biden’s door. “Crooked and grossly incompetent, Joe Biden would not let Ukraine FIGHT BACK, only DEFEND”, wrote the President who – on the campaign trail – threatened to end all US support for Kyiv.
Of course, he neglected to note that he had so far shown no inclination either to allow Ukraine to use US-supplied long-range missiles to hit Moscow or St Petersburg. And Ukraine has not yet made any headway securing Trump’s support for new US-made Patriot missiles that Zelensky argues are key to his country’s future.
Moscow certainly appeared to read Trump’s message as an effort to inflame the situation. On Thursday, Putin “congratulated workers and veterans” in a message marking the 80th anniversary of the country’s nuclear industry. “Their professionalism and dedicated work”, he noted, had created “a reliable nuclear shield for the Motherland”.
