Putin Is Using Ukraine Talks to Secure His Regime, Russia’s Economy and Great-Power Status

Many articles have exposed the incompetence and ignorance of Donald Trump and his chosen emissaries Jared Kushner and Steven Witkoff regarding the Russian aggression against Ukraine.  Indeed, none of them can bring themselves to call this war aggression, not to mention genocide which it is. Trump’s demand that Ukraine stop attacking Russian refineries, a tactic that has proven to be eminently successful in crippling Russia’s economy and logistics, was quickly and rightly shown to be an attempt at scapegoating Ukraine for his own malfeasance in the war against Iran.  Yet few, if any, of these accounts have paid attention to what Vladimir Putin seeks to gain through these negotiations.

One of the most telling indicators of the Trump team’s incompetence is its members habitual refrain that we are really close to a three-sided negotiation that would bring Kyiv, Moscow, and Washington into talks aiming at ending the war, clearly at Ukraine’s expense.  In those supposed negotiations Washington and Moscow would then combine to coerce Kyiv to surrender territory that Moscow has not and probably cannot conquer.  Nevertheless, Moscow consistently denies these claims and insists on first dealing with what it calls the root causes of the war.  Those are Ukraine’s existence as a sovereign democratic state with acknowledged territories and guaranteed security, and NATO’s enlargement after 1997 if not 1989.  Those latter issues were clearly spelled out in Moscow’s 2021 ultimatum to NATO.

Trump and his emissaries are clearly ignorant or contemptuous of these issues and their implications.  But they are no less unaware of Putin’s larger objectives beyond restoring the Russian empire and fracturing the Trans-Atlantic Alliance – an objective which the Trump Administration seems intent on promoting as well.  It is clear from press reports that Putin believes, despite enormous evidence to the contrary, that he is winning and that all he need do is ratchet up the pressure militarily on Ukraine and Europe, and continue to beguile the Trump Administration to get his way.  But his ambitions go beyond those grandiose fantasies.  Putin, perhaps with good reason, believes that if he settles for anything less than decisive victory he and his whole system, his life’s work, will be swept away.  In his own words he said that “they will hang me.”.  Thus beyond “Regathering Russian lands” and restoring the empire, he has, in classic Russian fashion, made continuation of his revived version of patrimonial Muscovite autocracy contingent on the restoration of Russia’s erstwhile empire.

Equally importantly, if not as grandiose an objective is the economic advantage he hopes to gain.  Like his predecessors he is supposedly offering all kinds of economic benefits including an alleged $12 trillion deal that is totally unrealizable to the Administration in return for its services in trampling upon Ukraine.  Access to the Arctic, energy and raw materials, and possibly also rare earths are among the supposed gains that will come to Trump, his family, emissaries, and retainers.  However, Moscow is selling this “dead horse” for the third time in a century.  Lenin did this in the 1920s with the New Economic Policy (NEP) and Yeltsin’s team followed suit in the 1990s.  Both times these experiments ended badly for Western firms and governments.  And, assuming the continuation of Putinism, we can safely predict a similar outcome in any third round of this game.  Meanwhile this economic infusion would not only rescue Russia’s economy, it will also provide more opportunities for Putin’s entourage to make more money for they believe they can never be too rich.

Lastly the tie to Washington will also enable Russia’s elite to confirm their lasting obsession – not too strong a word – with being recognized as a great global power, in some sense equal to the U.S. and Beijing. Although nothing can fully satisfy this obsession; that outcome is as close as one can get to realizing it. it can leverage that situation to make it the swing party vis-à-vis both the U.S. and China.   Indeed, one of the primary purposes of Russia’s original gravitation to China was and perhaps remains the belief that this relationship with China would then induce the U.S. to take Russia and its interests more seriously.  However, this dialogue would do nothing to eliminate the sources of China’s dominance over Russia for geography shows that no Russian government, whatever its nature, can afford an antagonistic relationship with China.

However, none of these Russian goals will enhance international order or security.  Instead, they will entice Russia into further military adventures beyond Ukraine and its still non-kinetic though escalating war with Europe.  Catherine the Great remarked that she could only defend her frontiers by expanding them, and Putin, who sees himself as a modern Tsar, fully adheres to that approach.  While experts know all these facts and arguments quite well; this expertise appears to be lost on Trump, Witkoff, and Kushner.  But if they continue to insist on disregarding Putin’s game and ambitions, we, and they will have to the price of their ignorance and incompetence.

About Author: Stephen Blank is a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI), where he works in the Eurasia Program. He is a longtime analyst of Russian foreign and security policy and has published more than 900 articles and monographs.