Putin's Ukraine war dilemma

With all the positives coming out of the Jeddah talks about a 30-day ceasefire in Ukraine, there is only one question that needs to be answered: will President Putin be interested in any sort of deal right now? President Trump is convinced that Putin wants peace. But if the Russian leader really wants to bring his war to an end, will he do so on America’s terms or wait until he has fulfilled one of his main objectives which is the total subjugation of the four provinces in eastern Ukraine that he claimed he had annexed in the first seven months of the invasion. At a ceremony in St George’s Hall at the Kremlin in September, 2022, Putin declared that Russia now had four new regions – Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. The residents of these regions, he said, were “our citizens for ever”. Even though the Russian invasion troops had only partially occupied these regions, Putin made it clear he considered the annexations were a fait accompli and demanded Kyiv agree to an immediate ceasefire. Nearly 30 months later, Putin has still not won control over every scrap of land in these four regions. For example, Russian troops have failed to hold on to the cities of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. Kherson, a gateway to Moscow-annexed Crimea, fell to the Russians in March, 2022 but was liberated by Ukrainian forces on 11 November, the same year. Ukraine controls Zaporizhzhia but the Russians seized and occupied the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. This is unfinished business for Putin. When Trump became president and the two leaders, “old friends”, had a relationship-warming 90-minute chat on the phone, Putin must have concluded that his plans for eastern Ukraine might actually bear fruit. AfterTrump fell out with Volodymyr Zelensky last month and announced a suspension of military aid and partial withdrawal of intelligence-sharing, the Russian leader will surely have instructed his commanders on the battlefield to go all out to seize back Kherson and fully occupy the four regions he already considered Russian territory. So, does he have any incentive to play ball after Marco Rubio, US secretary of state, emerged from the nine-hour discussions in Jeddah with Zelensky’s negotiators armed with the 30-day ceasefire offer, and throwing down the gauntlet to Moscow? “The ball is now in Russia’s court. It’s going to be up to them to say yes or no,” Rubio said. Putin won’t have much time to make up his mind. Trump said he would give Putin a ring this week and he is reportedly sending his heavyweight, tough-guy billionaire special envoy Steve Witkoff to Moscow to have a face-to-face with the Russian president. Witkoff has a reputation for never taking no for an answer. When Benjamin Netanyahu baulked at meeting him to talk about a ceasefire in Gaza because the day selected by Witkoff was the Sabbath, the Trump man just told him he would be coming and that was it. Netanyahu caved. The chances are that Putin will play along with Trump’s quest for peace in Ukraine because there is an unstoppable momentum to end the fighting, and his strategic partner in Beijing is supportive of a deal. However, what will rub Putin the wrong way is if the 30-day ceasefire agreed by Zelensky’s negotiators in Jeddah is followed by a proposal to freeze the battlefield frontlines as they stand today. Russian troops have been making territorial gains in the east, albeit limited, in recent weeks. Had Trump’s suspension of military aid and intelligence-sharing been maintained for any length of time, Putin might have had the opportunity to attempt a spring offensive to occupy more if not all of the four “annexed” regions. This is where Trump has played an astute card. The 30-day ceasefire proposal came with a promise to reinstate both US military aid and intelligence-sharing for the Kyiv government, effectively telling Putin that America is back on side with its European coalition partners and Zelensky will get what he wants to defend against Russian aggression. That just might make a difference in Putin’s calculations. Important, too, for him is the transformation in relations with the White House, a dramatic change in opportunities for Moscow after years of enduring a Cold War-style freeze. Putin is never going to break his partnership with China, whatever Trump is hoping for by wooing the Russian president. But it makes eminent sense for Putin to have a pick-up-the-phone relationship with Trump to give him the world-stage status he lost after ordering the invasion of Ukraine in February, 2022. So, all in all, Putin will gain more by accepting the 30-day ceasefire offer, provided the terms of any future peace settlement follow to the letter the demands he has been making repeatedly over the last three years. He may not persuade Trump and Zelensky to hand him the four regions he has painted red on his map of Ukraine . But if can get Trump to scrap all thought of Ukraine joining Nato and see even a limited pullback of alliance forces from eastern Europe, perhaps he might be tempted to place his signature on a settlement document. However, there are many unknowns: will Putin compromise on those four regions in eastern Ukraine? Will he even consider doing a deal while Zelensky is the leader in Kyiv? And would Nato ever agree to withdraw any of its forward-located forces from the alliance’s member nations closest to Russia’s borders?