No one in Russia was expected for two months for Donald Trump to announce so many concessions to the Kremlin and humble live to the Ukrainian Volodimir Zelenski. But the perfect idyll among US president and Vladimir Putin has suddenly vanished with Washington’s proposal of a 30 -day truce accompanied by a rearmed kyiv. Many Russians now convince themselves that the denosted United States remains the usual enemy. The Kremlin will take time to respond. But it will be difficult to content Trump at the same time, to which the Ukrainian issue is urgent to take off, and hundreds of thousands of Russians who have sacrificed their lives for the Putin crusade in Ukraine.
“We are open to dialogue with the new US administration about the Ukrainian conflict. The most important thing is to end the deep causes of this crisis. We will fight for the interests of Russia, of the Russian people, this is the objective and meaning of the special military operation, ”said the president on February 23, a day before the third anniversary of the war. “We will not give up what our is,” Putin again promised last week to the widows and mothers of their soldiers. The president visited a command center on the Kursk region on Wednesday by surprise. He dressed in a military uniform, an unusual stamp in the president, just when he has the truce offer on the table. There he commissioned his army to crush what remains of the Ukrainian forces that invaded Kursk in August, according to Efe, and where Russia claims to have regained control of 86% of the occupied territory.
The Russian authorities and their propaganda have caught the glove released by Washington. Only a few politicians have dared to point out that Trump’s proposal contradicts, a priori, The Kremlin rhetoric in recent months in favor of achieving each and every one of its objectives in Ukraine. “Any agreement will be with our conditions, not with the Americans,” said the vice president of the Federation Council, the Senate, Kostantín Kosachev, before arguing that the Russian troops carry the initiative on the battlefield.
The spokeswoman of the Foreign Ministry, María Zajárova, has insinuated in turn that Moscow will decide what is convenient without taking into account the rest of the actors in the conflict. “The position of Russia is not formed abroad through the agreements or efforts of other parts. Russia’s position is formed within the Russian Federation, ”he said in an interview.
Russian government sources cited by Reuters and Bloomberg agencies consider it difficult for Putin to accept a truce that would benefit Ukraine more than Russia. “Putin is in a strong position because Russia is offensive,” said one of Reuters contacts. “They have disguised the resumption of rearmament with an offer of high fire,” added another source.
Putin prepared his economy for a long war for a long time. The political scientist Iván Preobrazhenski believes that the Kremlin seeks concessions in this negotiation phase, such as hindering the ukraine defensive capacity or that kyiv recognizes the occupied territories, but will not renounce its final objective, to have Ukraine within its sphere of influence. “I think Putin has not yet decided if she will start full -fledged peace negotiations. Probably, it is not sure if the war ends, ”the analyst told this newspaper last week.
‘Yes, but’
“Russia’s response to the proposal of Alto El Fuego should not be Nobut Yes, but”, Thinks the exassor of Putin Dmitri Markov on his Telegram channel. “That is, accept the 30 -day fire on the condition that an embargo is introduced to the supply of weapons to Ukraine during the same period,” explains the expert.
Markov does not finish opting for what the Russian president will take. The expert emphasizes that several factors play against the truce. Among them, that Russia advances in the front, “there is no confidence in the West” and Putin and all Russian leaders “have said many times that Russia needs lasting peace, not a truce.” In favor of Alto, fire would be, according to the analyst, the lifting of sanctions and that Trump “wants peace and can be done with him.”
The Russian president has always spoken abstractly about the objectives of his “special military operation” in order to justify his victory in the future, whatever his scope. His great 2022 offensive threatened kyiv, Odesa and Járkov before his failure. Today, his troops are evicting the Ukrainian forces of Kursk, Russian territory, while the campaign in eastern Ukraine stagnates for months and has not reached Pokrovsk. In any case, Putin has suggested that he wants the total demilitarization of Ukraine and a government related to the Kremlin – what he calls decay, although he considered legitimate the elections that Petró Poroshenko won in 2014 and Zelenski in 2019.
The issue for Kremlin is that with Trump suddenly has a politician who shares in some way his nineteenth -century vision of the world: the great powers use other countries as if they were pieces on the board and not sovereign states. Ukraine is, like Greenland, Panama, the Arctic or Eastern Europe, a part of the great game, the expression with which Rudyard Kipling defined the game between the Russian Empire and WK United Kingdom for colonizing Central Asia.
The Kremlin does not want to anger Trump. And the negotiations have been divided between the discussion about the future of Ukraine, on the one hand, and Russian-American relations by another. The US president announced Wednesday that a delegation was heading to Moscow. Six members of the Russian government have told the Independent newspaper The Moscow Times that Russia wants to close a personal encounter between Trump and Putin in a third country between April or May. “Washington could lose motivation [hacia Moscú]. In the White House, opponents have become more active to us, and Europeans try to deter Trump, ”said one of the sources to the newspaper.
However, the United States is still the enemy that Putin has so far blamed the war unleashed against Ukraine. The rhetoric against Washington, the return of Russia to the status of nuclear power that challenges you to you to the Americans, has been the leitmotiv of the unit around Putin. A new “betrayal” of Trump after making concessions would greatly damage the image of the Russian leader before the nationalists. It should be remembered that Trump was acclaimed by the Kremlin in 2016 and then denied by hardening the sanctions.
A couple of months ago Kremlin instructed its propaganda media to applaud the approach of the new US administration, according to several employees to the independent media ViTrtska. However, American truce proposal has been too much for nationalism and Z channelsRussian bloggers and war correspondents have fierce the idea.
“Get your peace initiatives in the ass now. Last year the conditions for a fire were given and you responded with an invasion, ”Alexánder Kots corresponded to half a million followers told kyiv. “Then we will say that they cheated us,” added another war correspondent, Borís Rozhin.
“Washington is resuming its military support for the Ukrainian Armed Forces. That is, once again he directly declares his participation in the war against Russia, ”said Proguerra blogger Alexéi Zhivov. Other influential channels cataloged the truce as “strategic error” because it would not benefit the Russian army at all and allow Ukraine to reinforce in Donbás.
Beyond the weapons, some Russian military analysts fear that a truce will serve Ukraine to recompose your staff. “The White House wants to give the Armed Forces of Ukraine time to replenish their losses and have the opportunity to attack again,” he warns of his 1.1 million followers the Archangel Spetsnaz channel, to which he adds: “They have suffered losses both in Donbás and in the Kursk region. How can Zelenski demand peace in its own terms when the initiative has been in our hands for a long time? ”
