OPINION: Putin’s Negotiation Strategy May be Predictable, But He is Playing it Well

The meagre results of last Tuesday’s 90-minute phone call speak volumes. The 30-day ceasefire on energy infrastructure is an old initiative that was under discussion between Russia and Ukraine before last summer’s incursion by Ukrainian forces into Russia’s Kursk Region. 

By giving little ground, Putin has signaled that he is ready to dance a long, slow tango with Trump while the Russian army continues its battlefield advances. 

Putin’s strategy is to use ceasefire negotiations as a tool to accelerate victory. This requires setting conditions that will later become part of a final agreement.  

The Kremlin’s press statement on the call betrays one striking example. Putin underlined to Trump the need to stop military assistance to and intelligence sharing to Ukraine to prevent an “escalation of the conflict and work towards resolving it by political-diplomatic means”. 

Trump was clearly not yet ready to make this concession even if he recently stopped both military aid and intelligence provision to persuade Kyiv to accept a ceasefire.  

Nevertheless, Putin has put down a marker to which he will return. He has set the expectation that the U.S. must show leadership by stopping all military support for Ukraine. 

Unlike Trump, Putin is not in a hurry. He needs to do just enough to make Trump believe that he is committed to finding a negotiated end to the war. 

He can carry on fighting for several months without additional pain secure in the knowledge that Ukraine’s fighting reserves are set to dwindle from early summer since it is highly unlikely that Trump will agree to another military aid package for Kyiv. Europe will struggle to fill the gap. 

By agreeing to a quick restoration of bilateral relations with the US and embracing the idea of co-operation in the Middle East, Putin is creating goodwill with the White House that can disguise his refusal to compromise. 

Why would he think of anything other than achieving his maximal goals when relations with the U.S. have shifted from deeply antagonistic under Joe Biden to unimaginably friendly under Trump? Conditions could not be more favorable. 

First, Trump is ill-disposed to Ukraine. He is ready to negotiate over the heads of Ukraine and its European partners and, if necessary, bully Volodymyr Zelensky into accepting U.S. requirements for the talks.  

Second, Trump attaches little importance to relations with traditional allies of NATO and is not committed to NATO. Russia extracting a commitment from the Administration that Ukraine will not join NATO did not require any concession in return. Putin was pushing on an open door.  

Third, Trump craves a Nobel Peace Prize and needs to demonstrate that his efforts have brought about a durable peace. He does not care about a just settlement for Ukraine. This creates the opportunity for Putin to impose conditions that will weaken Ukraine’s ability to resist over the long term. Priorities include limiting the size of the Ukrainian army and preventing the deployment of European forces on Ukrainian territory. 

Fourth, Democrats in the U.S. and are paralyzed by their election defeat and have fallen silent in response to Trump’s assault on the Federal government and the readiness to jettison U.S. hard and soft power positions built up over decades. Moderate Republicans appear scared to put their heads over the parapet and challenge Trump’s apparent readiness to cozy up to Putin and sacrifice Ukraine. 

Fifth, the Trump Administration is comfortable with great powers dictating terms to smaller countries while Trump has questioned the borders of allies. To paraphrase Margaret Thatcher’s description of Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet leader to be, this is a man Putin can do business with. 

The net result is that the Russian president is in the extraordinary position where he sees the opportunity to entrust his American peer with imposing a Russian-designed peace settlement on Ukraine. 

But he still has to overcome two obstacles.  

The first is the determination of part of Ukrainian society to reject a Russian peace deal and keep fighting. Second, is the readiness of a “coalition of the willing” led by France and the UK, to continue to provide economic and military support to Ukraine. 

Putin may believe he can break the will of Ukrainians to fight by insisting on the holding of elections within a defined period after a ceasefire comes into force. The goal would be to bring to power political forces that see no alternative to close relations with Russia for Ukraine’s survival. 

At the same time, he can present European countries committed to supporting Ukraine as sabotaging peace in the hope that Trump will threaten to turn America’s economic fire on them as punishment. 

Putin has strong cards and is so far playing them confidently and competently. 

This opinion article by John Lough is reprinted from TVP World. See the original here. 

John Lough is a senior research fellow at the London-based New Eurasian Strategies Centre (NEST). 

The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.