Russian President Vladimir Putin received Donald Trump’s chief negotiator on Ukraine, Steve Witkoff, in Saint Petersburg on Wednesday. According to Moscow, it was agreed that trilateral talks between Russia, Ukraine and the US would resume. Witkoff had met with European representatives and Volodymyr Zelensky in Oslo before heading to Saint Petersburg. The media discuss the prospects of a peaceful resolution against the backdrop of Trump’s new hard line on Ukraine.
Kremlin giving no sign of being ready to negotiate
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Future meetings are also unlikely to yield any tangible results, The Spectator (UK) observes:
“There has been nothing to suggest yet that the Russian president is genuinely ready to make a deal or concede on his war aims. ... Facing the prospect of brutal midterm results for the Republicans in two weeks’ time, Trump is desperate for a win with Russia. Putin can sense this and appears to be using this to play for time ahead of a winter in which he hopes to make substantial progress on subjugating Ukraine. Not for the first time, it is Zelensky who is being forced to jump through hoops and show willing in the hope that doing so will save his country from a stitch-up by an enemy and supposed ally.”
Encouraged to escalate
The US’s policies of recent weeks are having repercussions across the world, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Germany) points out:
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“Putin and his inner circle are convinced that in the war against Ukraine and their struggle against the West as a whole, they will firstly have the greater staying power, and secondly be able to play the Americans and Europeans off against one another. Everything the American leadership has done in recent weeks confirms this belief. Consequently, the prospect of a ceasefire, not to mention peace in Ukraine, has become even more remote. Instead, the Kremlin is likely to feel emboldened to escalate the conflict even further. ‘Restoring justice of Russians’ takes place above all on the battlefield, Putin’s foreign minister has said.”
Moscow can take its time
Unlike Trump, Putin is not in a hurry, notes Corriere della Sera (Italy):
“For five years now, Vladimir Putin seems to have been applying the old Russian proverb ‘The slower you go, the further you’ll get’ to a war that he originally thought would last no more than two weeks. … So Putin is biding his time, waiting to see how events unfold and what happens with the elections in the US and Europe – and taking whatever he can get without making any concessions. He has the chance to achieve in Washington what he is unable to achieve on the front line; but he also knows that this window of opportunity could be closed again by a single social media post in the middle of the night. ... What the Russian president needs to work out now is whether the path available to Trump will be long enough.”
Trump wanted Putin to win all along
The US President’s supposedly new stance on the war in Ukraine is not really new at all, argues Dagens Nyheter (Sweden):
“Some interpret this as the US changing sides with regard to Ukraine, and it’s easy to understand why Zelensky feels betrayed. Yet this development is nothing new. The difference is that Trump is no longer making a secret of what he has wanted all along: for Russia and his friend Vladimir Putin to win the war. ... Trump’s eagerness to help Putin now is particularly good news for the Kremlin. Russia is in a bad way, both on the front line and at home, where all its oil depots are burning. So it’s good that it has an ally in the White House.”
What is going on in his mind?
Experts will continue to puzzle over the US president’s policy on Ukraine, says Ilta-Sanomat (Finland):
“A clear intention can certainly be discerned behind Trump’s confused remarks on Ukraine and Russia. He wants to take credit for bringing about peace. But does anyone still believe he could actually achieve such a thing? After all this, can anyone still trust Trump’s word when it comes, for example, to security guarantees for Ukraine, which are a key safeguard for peace? ... When the war in Ukraine eventually ends and Trump is no longer president, a lot will be written about current events. Perhaps the most important question then will be: what on earth was going through Trump’s mind? It won’t make for pleasant reading.”