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Yahoo
7 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Opinion - The Donbas is a poisoned chalice that neither Russia nor Ukraine should want
Whichever side in the Russo-Ukrainian War wins the Donbas loses the war. That is the savage and largely unacknowledged irony at the core of the struggle over the Donbas — a territory that has recently come to occupy center stage in President Trump's post-summit thinking about how to end the war. Inasmuch as Russia has occupied most of the industrial basin known as the Donbas since its first invasion of Ukraine in 2014 — and is highly unlikely to be driven from that territory anytime soon — Russia has already lost the war, regardless of how long it continues and whether or not a U.S.-brokered ceasefire or peace becomes a reality. The Donbas was the industrial powerhouse of the Soviet Union for decades, but the region was already going into decline by the 1970s and 1980s. When Ukraine became independent in 1991, it inherited what had largely become a value-destroying territory. The Donbas fed the corrupt appetites of local politicians, oligarchs and organized crime. Its working-class residents claimed to have an exalted status belied by a wretched reality. As the economist Anders Aslund put it in 2015, 'The Donbas is a rust belt of old mines, steel mills and chemical factories. Almost all the coal mines and chemical factories are inactive … The rebels have blown up railway bridges, complicating bulk transportation.' In 2016, Aslund estimated that it would cost some $20 billion to revive the Donbas. By 2025, the estimated cost of Ukraine's reconstruction had zoomed upward to $524 billion, a 26-fold increase. Much of that money would need to go to the Donbas, where most of the heaviest fighting has taken place. A reasonable guesstimate of how much it would cost to rebuild just the Donbas today is $200 billion — nearly one-tenth of Russia's reported annual GDP and slightly more than Ukraine's. If the fighting continues indefinitely, that sum will surely double or even triple. Neither Ukraine nor Russia has that kind of cash. It is conceivable that Vladimir Putin's fascist regime could squeeze some money out of its subjects, but Ukraine's democracy could not. Fixing the Donbas would bankrupt either state, especially as the international community and business are unlikely to offer much in the way of assistance. But the burden of owning the Donbas isn't just financial. It is also demographic, environmental and political. According to Aslund, writing in 2016, 'Ukraine claims 1.2 million internally displaced persons, while Russia reports half a million refugees from the Donbas, and the United Nations estimates that some 100,000 have fled elsewhere. If these numbers are reasonably correct, 1.8 million have fled and 1.5 million remain. Apart from some 45,000 fighters, the remaining population largely consists of pensioners and the destitute.' This was the Donbas 10 years ago. We don't know how many people fled after the full-scale Russian invasion of 2022, but the numbers must be substantial. In addition, the armed militias that served in the phony Luhansk and Donetsk 'People's Republics' were thrown at the front and suffered enormous losses. Whatever its exact size, the Donbas's overwhelmingly aged and impoverished population can hardly be the basis of an economic boom. And how many refugees will return? How many people will move there from other parts of Ukraine or Russia if and when peace is attained? The questions are largely rhetorical, especially as the Donbas is an environmental hell hole. According to the Conflict and Environment Observatory, the fighting since 2014 has 'created a risk of environmental emergencies and will leave a lasting legacy of groundwater contamination from flooded coal mines.' Moreover, 'following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, hundreds of environmentally sensitive sites have been caught up in the conflict.' The Donbas will also become the site of endless political instability. If Ukraine inherits the territory, pro-Russian elements, in cahoots with the Russian security services, are sure to stage provocations, assassinate local officials, sabotage plants and so on. If Russia keeps the Donbas, Ukraine is sure to engage in equally subversive activities. How fair and free elections could take place under such conditions is anybody's guess. Despite these similarities, there is one fundamental difference. Putin's fascist regime will thrive on repression and violence; Ukraine's democracy won't. Indeed, while Putin can crush whatever opposition he encounters, Ukraine will have to mollify and integrate it — a test it failed before 2014 and one that it is unlikely to pass after years of war. Will failing this test make Ukraine more or less likely to overcome existing hurdles and join the European Union and NATO? Again, the question is rhetorical. The Donbas's transformation into a permanent source of instability will have at least two negative consequences for Putin. It will divert Russia's coercive resources from other, equally unstable parts of the Russian Federation. It will also encourage some non-Russian regions — the north Caucasus comes immediately to mind — to press for greater autonomy and less Kremlin oversight. France and the German states fought for centuries over Alsace-Lorraine and the Rhineland. That made some sense, since both regions were economically, politically and socially developed. Not so the Donbas. It is a black hole and will remain so for years to come. For better or for worse, neither Ukraine nor Russia can just turn their backs on the territory without violating their constitutions and courting mass demonstrations. Of course, as far as Putin is concerned, a constitution is just a piece of paper. Even so, to abandon the Donbas would be to admit defeat and experience political suicide. Ditto for Ukraine and its president, Volodymyr Zelensky. If winning means losing, does losing mean winning? Regardless of how they answer that question and what the terms of a possible peace deal might be, Ukrainians may take some consolation from the fact that, thanks to Putin's heady territorial ambitions, Russia will be stuck with that black hole for years to come. Indeed, Russia itself will progressively come to resemble the Donbas. That could be Ukraine's greatest victory. Alexander J. Motyl is a professor of political science at Rutgers University-Newark. A specialist on Ukraine, Russia and the USSR, and on nationalism, revolutions, empires and theory, he is the author of 10 books of nonfiction, as well as 'Imperial Ends: The Decay, Collapse, and Revival of Empires' and 'Why Empires Reemerge: Imperial Collapse and Imperial Revival in Comparative Perspective.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Solve the daily Crossword
The Hill
9 hours ago
- Business
- The Hill
The Donbas is a poisoned chalice that neither Russia nor Ukraine should want
Whichever side in the Russo-Ukrainian War wins the Donbas loses the war. That is the savage and largely unacknowledged irony at the core of the struggle over the Donbas — a territory that has recently come to occupy center stage in President Trump's post-summit thinking about how to end the war. Inasmuch as Russia has occupied most of the industrial basin known as the Donbas since its first invasion of Ukraine in 2014 — and is highly unlikely to be driven from that territory anytime soon — Russia has already lost the war, regardless of how long it continues and whether or not a U.S.-brokered ceasefire or peace becomes a reality. The Donbas was the industrial powerhouse of the Soviet Union for decades, but the region was already going into decline by the 1970s and 1980s. When Ukraine became independent in 1991, it inherited what had largely become a value-destroying territory. The Donbas fed the corrupt appetites of local politicians, oligarchs and organized crime. Its working-class residents claimed to have an exalted status belied by a wretched reality. As the economist Anders Aslund put it in 2015, 'The Donbas is a rust belt of old mines, steel mills and chemical factories. Almost all the coal mines and chemical factories are inactive … The rebels have blown up railway bridges, complicating bulk transportation.' In 2016, Aslund estimated that it would cost some $20 billion to revive the Donbas. By 2025, the estimated cost of Ukraine's reconstruction had zoomed upward to $524 billion, a 26-fold increase. Much of that money would need to go to the Donbas, where most of the heaviest fighting has taken place. A reasonable guesstimate of how much it would cost to rebuild just the Donbas today is $200 billion — nearly one-tenth of Russia's reported annual GDP and slightly more than Ukraine's. If the fighting continues indefinitely, that sum will surely double or even triple. Neither Ukraine nor Russia has that kind of cash. It is conceivable that Vladimir Putin's fascist regime could squeeze some money out of its subjects, but Ukraine's democracy could not. Fixing the Donbas would bankrupt either state, especially as the international community and business are unlikely to offer much in the way of assistance. But the burden of owning the Donbas isn't just financial. It is also demographic, environmental and political. According to Aslund, writing in 2016, 'Ukraine claims 1.2 million internally displaced persons, while Russia reports half a million refugees from the Donbas, and the United Nations estimates that some 100,000 have fled elsewhere. If these numbers are reasonably correct, 1.8 million have fled and 1.5 million remain. Apart from some 45,000 fighters, the remaining population largely consists of pensioners and the destitute.' This was the Donbas 10 years ago. We don't know how many people fled after the full-scale Russian invasion of 2022, but the numbers must be substantial. In addition, the armed militias that served in the phony Luhansk and Donetsk 'People's Republics' were thrown at the front and suffered enormous losses. Whatever its exact size, the Donbas's overwhelmingly aged and impoverished population can hardly be the basis of an economic boom. And how many refugees will return? How many people will move there from other parts of Ukraine or Russia if and when peace is attained? The questions are largely rhetorical, especially as the Donbas is an environmental hell hole. According to the Conflict and Environment Observatory, the fighting since 2014 has 'created a risk of environmental emergencies and will leave a lasting legacy of groundwater contamination from flooded coal mines.' Moreover, 'following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, hundreds of environmentally sensitive sites have been caught up in the conflict.' The Donbas will also become the site of endless political instability. If Ukraine inherits the territory, pro-Russian elements, in cahoots with the Russian security services, are sure to stage provocations, assassinate local officials, sabotage plants and so on. If Russia keeps the Donbas, Ukraine is sure to engage in equally subversive activities. How fair and free elections could take place under such conditions is anybody's guess. Despite these similarities, there is one fundamental difference. Putin's fascist regime will thrive on repression and violence; Ukraine's democracy won't. Indeed, while Putin can crush whatever opposition he encounters, Ukraine will have to mollify and integrate it — a test it failed before 2014 and one that it is unlikely to pass after years of war. Will failing this test make Ukraine more or less likely to overcome existing hurdles and join the European Union and NATO? Again, the question is rhetorical. The Donbas's transformation into a permanent source of instability will have at least two negative consequences for Putin. It will divert Russia's coercive resources from other, equally unstable parts of the Russian Federation. It will also encourage some non-Russian regions — the north Caucasus comes immediately to mind — to press for greater autonomy and less Kremlin oversight. France and the German states fought for centuries over Alsace-Lorraine and the Rhineland. That made some sense, since both regions were economically, politically and socially developed. Not so the Donbas. It is a black hole and will remain so for years to come. For better or for worse, neither Ukraine nor Russia can just turn their backs on the territory without violating their constitutions and courting mass demonstrations. Of course, as far as Putin is concerned, a constitution is just a piece of paper. Even so, to abandon the Donbas would be to admit defeat and experience political suicide. Ditto for Ukraine and its president, Volodymyr Zelensky. If winning means losing, does losing mean winning? Regardless of how they answer that question and what the terms of a possible peace deal might be, Ukrainians may take some consolation from the fact that, thanks to Putin's heady territorial ambitions, Russia will be stuck with that black hole for years to come. Indeed, Russia itself will progressively come to resemble the Donbas. That could be Ukraine's greatest victory. Alexander J. Motyl is a professor of political science at Rutgers University-Newark. A specialist on Ukraine, Russia and the USSR, and on nationalism, revolutions, empires and theory, he is the author of 10 books of nonfiction, as well as ' Imperial Ends: The Decay, Collapse, and Revival of Empires' and ' Why Empires Reemerge: Imperial Collapse and Imperial Revival in Comparative Perspective.'
The Hill
12-08-2025
- Politics
- The Hill
Trump has the cards as Putin's Russia is falling apart
President Trump is scheduled to meet Friday with Vladimir Putin in Alaska to discuss the Russo-Ukrainian War and possible ways of ending it. Trump, who was supposed to impose ruinous secondary sanctions on Aug. 8 but did not (shades of TACO?), apparently has hopes of coming to some sort of agreement. He will be sorely disappointed, as Putin's openly and persistently declared war aims and views of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky preclude compromise. Putin has accused Zelensky of being an illegitimate president, even though Zelensky won a fair and free election in 2019, and Ukraine's constitution expressly permits elections to be suspended at a time of war. The truly illegitimate president is of course Putin, who has been elected in rigged ballots several times, most recently in 2024. This matters only because Putin has indicated that he won't sign any official documents with Zelensky, inasmuch as the Ukrainian leader is supposedly not a real president. If Zelensky attends the Alaska summit, any agreement that is reached — however unlikely such an eventuality — will remain without Putin's signature and thus have no importance. Seen in this light, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov's Aug. 4 comment that 'Putin is ready to meet with Zelensky after preparatory work at the expert level,' while sounding at first glance like a concession, must be taken with a huge grain of salt. Equally important, Peskov's reference to preparatory work is meaningless if Putin continues to demand Ukraine's capitulation, dismemberment and transformation into a Russian colony. A recent article by a Russian propagandist suggests that the Kremlin may even have Ukraine's total annihilation in mind. The headline reads, 'There is no other option: no one should remain alive in Ukraine.' A clearer statement of genocidal intent could not possibly be made. Just as clearly, this maximalist demand brooks no compromise and dooms all 'preparatory work' to meaningless verbiage masking the Kremlin's 'final solution' to the Ukrainian 'problem.' The bottom line is that Putin will not and cannot negotiate in good faith, whether in Alaska or elsewhere. Which means that he will be willing to seek something resembling an end to the fighting only if he is forced to do so. Trump could bring about such a result by arming Ukraine and enabling it to stop and push back Russia's incremental territorial advances. Russian elites who know that Putin has led his country — and their own fortunes — to disaster could also follow in the historical footsteps of many Russian leaders and stage a coup. This scenario seems unlikely, but the reality is that a coup may be the only thing keeping Russia from disintegration. The choice facing Russian elites is simple: Russia or Putin? If they opt for Russia, then Putin must go. If they opt for Putin, then Russia will go down the toilet. Janusz Bugajski, a senior fellow at the Jamestown Foundation, convincingly argues that Russia may be facing an imminent demise. 'Russian officials are sounding increasingly alarmed and even paranoid in their public statements about the future of their country,' he writes. 'What may appear to be political paranoia or an attempt to mobilize citizens behind the regime is not necessarily based on imagined enemies. It reveals the official realization that numerous negative trends are converging on Russia and that the current regime, and even the state itself, may be running out of time.' 'Three overarching fears preoccupy Russian officialdom: losing the war, economic collapse, and state fracture,' writes Bugajski. 'The prospect of all three occurring soon looms on the horizon.' Putin, Peskov and the Kremlin's propagandists would dispute Bugajski's analysis and insist that all is well with the war, economy and state. One expects nothing less from them, but the reality is markedly different. Russia has lost over a million soldiers and is largely dependent on North Korea for ammunition and manpower. The militarized Russian economy is crushing the consumer economy, which is headed for stagflation. And elite discontent with Putin and rising ethno-regionalism bodes ill for the integrity of the state. Indeed, Putin's Russia looks more and more like Leonid Brezhnev's Soviet Union. And we know how that ended. If Zelensky, Trump and Putin do in fact meet, the Ukrainian and American presidents should remember that, as long as Ukraine enjoys the support of the U.S., they and not Putin have the far better cards. Alexander J. Motyl is a professor of political science at Rutgers University-Newark. A specialist on Ukraine, Russia and the USSR, and on nationalism, revolutions, empires and theory, he is the author of 10 books of nonfiction, as well as ' Imperial Ends: The Decay, Collapse, and Revival of Empires' and ' Why Empires Reemerge
The Diplomat
01-07-2025
- Business
- The Diplomat
How Russia Used Kyrgyzstan to Reopen Its Financial Escape Routes
Last week's exposure by the Financial Times of the A7A5 crypto laundering scheme in Kyrgyzstan is not just another regional headline. It is a real-time case study in how Russia continues to evolve its sanctions evasion toolkit, and how digital assets, when funneled through structurally weak jurisdictions, offer a near-frictionless escape route from Western financial enforcement. A7A5 is believed to have processed over $9.3 billion in transactional volume through Grinex within just four months of its launch, making it one of the most significant crypto-based financial conduits exposed in the region to date. Grinex, the sole exchange handling A7A5, was founded just weeks after U.S. sanctions dismantled Russia's Garantex platform. The timing and its transactional design raise credible concerns that Grinex may be operating as a successor or derivative entity. The scale and velocity of A7A5's flows, paired with Grinex's structural similarity to Garantex, suggest that this was not opportunistic activity, but a continuation of an already-rehearsed sanctions bypass framework. What mattered more than the sum, however, was the architecture behind it. Informal agent networks, multi-hop transfers, and front companies disguised as digital finance entities were used to quietly move rubles out of the Russian economy and into offshore wallets, using Kyrgyzstan's regulatory ambiguity as a shield. To Western analysts, A7A5 may read as an isolated event. It isn't. It is the latest node in a sanctions evasion playbook that has been in live development since 2014, and in full operational swing since the first wave of post-invasion sanctions from the Russo-Ukrainian War in 2022. Russia's digital workaround has matured with each new enforcement package. Every time the West designates another bank, shuts another correspondent line, or adds another set of export controls, Russia doesn't shut down; it adapts. That adaptation has a pattern: identify the weakest link in the regional regulatory chain, insert financial actors with minimal transparency requirements, and move capital using mechanisms that sit just outside the reach of traditional sanctions enforcement. In the early months of the Ukraine invasion, crypto flows between Russian wallets and high-volume offshore exchanges surged. Stablecoin conversions, particularly into Tether, provided a quick way to exit rubles and re-enter dollar-denominated ecosystems, often through the same backchannels previously used for capital flight and illicit procurement. U.S. officials issued warnings. FinCEN flagged the risk. But no unified enforcement regime followed. Russia's sanctioned entities simply shifted to platforms operating in low-oversight jurisdictions. Sanctions enforcement, built for fiat transactions and paper trails, simply didn't keep pace. Kyrgyzstan became useful because it offered something rare: a structurally dollarized, Russian-aligned economy with weak oversight and fast-growing digital asset adoption. That mix is combustible. Russian nationals were able to embed themselves in the Kyrgyz financial system using shell firms, local intermediaries, and front exchanges like A7A5. Crypto platforms operating in the country did not operate entirely in the dark, but they did operate without robust transparency obligations. And where legal clarity existed, enforcement capacity often did not. This isn't an indictment of Kyrgyzstan. It is a recognition of how Russia identifies and exploits fragility. And it is consistent with how Russia has treated crypto more broadly. Despite years of antagonism toward the technology from the Central Bank of Russia, the state quietly shifted its posture after Western sanctions intensified. Moscow understood that in a globally fragmented financial landscape, full decoupling from the dollar was less important than building survivable channels. Cryptocurrency, with its transnational nature and decentralized verification layers, provided a temporary bridge out of isolation. It wasn't the scale of crypto liquidity that mattered to Russian operators; it was the optionality. As long as the ruble could be converted into tokens outside OFAC oversight and re-enter the fiat system through sympathetic or indifferent jurisdictions, the architecture held. That architecture isn't accidental. Russian-linked actors have moved aggressively into developing crypto mining capacity, not just within Russia but in satellite states and gray market territories. Kyrgyzstan has quietly become a host for much of this activity, not necessarily with formal state approval, but with the same plausible deniability that protects trade-based laundering operations. Mining isn't simply about creating new coins; it's about embedding capital infrastructure in jurisdictions where energy is cheap, oversight is minimal, and law enforcement cooperation with Western partners is spotty at best. There are deeper strategic threads here. Russia's approach to sanctions circumvention isn't just reactive. It is exploratory. Each jurisdiction tested becomes a data point: How long can a laundering operation run before detection? What KYC (Know Your Customer) gaps can be exploited before platforms are pressured into de-risking? What legal thresholds delay extradition or asset freezes? A7A5 answered some of these questions in real time, which makes it a valuable case study, not for its novelty, but for its predictability. Compare this to other jurisdictions. In Venezuela, state-linked actors used crypto to shield oil revenue flows, circumventing U.S. sanctions by accepting digital assets directly and laundering them through opaque custodial services. In Iran, cryptocurrency was used to settle trade, with blockchain analytics revealing wash trading patterns that masked origin points. Kyrgyzstan is now positioned within that same ecosystem, not as a state sponsor of evasion, but as a permissive environment Russia can operate within. The effect is the same. One of the most telling public revelations of Russia's crypto-fueled evasion came with the June 9, 2025, U.S. indictment of Russian national Iurii Gugnin. Prosecutors accused him of using his New York-based firm, Evita Pay (Evita Investments Inc.), to funnel over $530 million through U.S. banks and cryptocurrency exchanges between June 2023 and January 2025. The DOJ alleges that Gugnin worked directly with clients tied to sanctioned Russian banks, including Sberbank, VTB, and Alfa‑Bank, converting rubles into stablecoins like Tether and moving them into U.S. financial institutions while disguising their origin. Notably, these flows were coordinated to support procurement of sensitive U.S. technology, including servers bound for Russia's Rosatom, underscoring that crypto is a force multiplier, not a substitute, for traditional evasion methods. A7A5 reflects the same evasive infrastructure sketched out in the Gugnin indictment, but now operational at scale through third-country channels. The Western failure here is not just technical; it is conceptual. Sanctions enforcement continues to rely on static lists of named entities and accounts when evasion networks are built to morph and reroute at every point of friction. Designating A7A5 or similar exchanges may stop one node, but it does nothing to the network. That network is resilient because it's informal, distributed, and populated by actors with limited exposure to Western legal risk. It thrives in the seams between enforcement frameworks, and it adapts faster than interagency coordination can. The other failure is in timeline awareness. Financial crime enforcement still moves on monthly or quarterly cycles. But crypto-based evasion schemes can be much faster. The A7A5 case reportedly involved billions of rubles worth of transactions before it was flagged. That's not a minor breach; that's a full blown rupture. And the longer these cycles go undetected, the more normalized they become. Even more concerning is the integration of these crypto rails into legacy financial infrastructure. Small banks in Eastern Europe or the Caucasus can also act as fiat endpoints for crypto conversion. Once funds are off-chain and back in the banking system, they become indistinguishable from legitimate capital, especially if layered through local firms or backstopped by physical trade documents. The problem then isn't just detection but classification. Investigators must prove not only that capital moved through illicit channels, but that it did so with evasive intent. That's a high bar when paperwork is clean and counterparties are nominally independent. Kyrgyzstan's legal and financial infrastructure is simply not equipped to manage that complexity. Nor is it alone in that. Across much of Central Asia, the systems built for traditional compliance are being asked to monitor multi-layered crypto flows, often without access to blockchain forensic tools or the legal mandates to compel reporting. This creates a gap, a large one, between what is theoretically enforceable and what is operationally viable. Russia knows that gap exists and it is actively navigating through it. What this means going forward is simple but uncomfortable. Western deterrence, if still anchored to financial controls, must now be built with the assumption that crypto-enabled evasion is no longer peripheral. It's central. And it's not speculative. The technical capacity, jurisdictional playbook, and institutional willingness already exist. What matters now is the response. Policymakers should resist the temptation to treat A7A5 as an anomaly. Instead, they should treat it as a visibility point into a much broader campaign. That campaign includes mining infrastructure, exchange ownership obfuscation, third-country wallet laundering, and pseudo-legal export schemes. Russia's financial escape routes are digital, distributed, and evolving. Countering them will take more than another sanctions list. It will take the recognition that financial enforcement is no longer about ownership. It's about access, velocity, and adaptability. If the West can't keep up on those terms, it will lose the one arena where it still holds asymmetric power. A7A5 was a warning. The next breach may not come with any public disclosure at all.
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Why Washington failed to end the Russo-Ukrainian War
In the early 19th century, one of the founding fathers of modern war studies, the Prussian general and military historian Carl von Clausewitz, commented on the Napoleonic Wars: "The conqueror is always peace-loving; he would much prefer to march into our state calmly." This remains an observation that applies to most military aggressions. Yet, Clausewitz's basic idea was ignored by most Europeans in their interpretation of Moscow's behaviour after the start of the Russo-Ukrainian War in 2014. Much of European diplomacy and commentary until 2022 instead built on the assumption that the Kremlin's public insistence on the peacefulness of its intentions towards Kyiv implies that one can and should negotiate and moderate Russian aims and behaviour in Ukraine. This inapt premise ignored that Russian President Vladimir Putin merely preferred Ukraine's non-violent takeover to an uncertain future military campaign against Kyiv. When, eleven years ago, Russia annexed Ukraine's Crimea and covertly invaded eastern Ukraine, the war as such had no benefits for Putin and his entourage. Instead, a hybrid subversion of Ukraine by Russian agents and proxy forces, rather than a violent occupation of most of the Ukrainian lands by tens of thousands of regular Russian troops, was the preferred method. During the last three years, however, the role of Russia's - now full-scale - military invasion of Ukraine for Putin's regime has changed. One the one side, the war itself has acquired a stabilizing function for the Russian political system that relies on an increasingly extremist ideology, militarized economy and mobilized society. On the other side, most European politicians, diplomats and experts now have fewer illusions about Putin's putative love for peace than they had a decade ago. In contrast, the hitherto largely adequate perception of Moscow's strategy in Washington has been replaced, since January 2025, by an escapist approach to the Russo-Ukrainian War. Read also: 'It's all a farce' — Ukrainian soldiers on Russia's 'smokescreen' peace talks in Istanbul The degree of the new U.S. administration's political naivety, moral indifference and diplomatic dilettantism, during its first four months in office, has been astonishing. Even in view of the aberrations during Trump's first presidency of 2017-2021, the inadequacy of the last months' statements and actions by the White House regarding the Russo-Ukrainian War has triggered shockwaves in Europe and elsewhere. One suspects that not only strategic infantilism, but also political respect and even personal sympathy, in the Trump administration, for Putin, have been driving the recent zigzags of the U.S. Four months of American shuttle diplomacy and mediation attempts have achieved only little. The results of this week's two-hour conversation between Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump have also been meagre. To be sure, the two presidents spoke, after their telephone talk, of success. Yet, there are no tangible outcomes of the intense trilateral negotiations between Washington, Moscow, and Kyiv, and of the direct interactions between the U.S. and Russian presidents. Putin made it clear that there would not be any ceasefire soon. Russian imperialism will not be neutralized by negotiations, compromises, or concessions. Trump announced that there should be direct negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, as if the two countries had not been negotiating with each other, in different formats, for more than eleven years already. In his comment about Monday's phone call, Putin, in fact, engaged in a trolling of Ukraine, the U.S., and the entire West in two ways. First, the term that Russia has recently introduced and Putin used to label the primary aim to be achieved in upcoming negotiations is "memorandum." Everybody familiar with the history of post-Soviet Russo-Ukrainian relations will know that there exists already a historic security-related "memorandum" signed by Moscow and Kyiv (as well as Washington and London) at Hungary's capital more than 30 years ago. In the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, Moscow guaranteed, in exchange for Kyiv's agreement to hand over all of its nuclear warheads to Russia, that it would not attack Ukraine. Washington and London too assured Kyiv that they respect the Ukrainian borders and sovereignty. After Moscow has been demonstratively trampling the letter and spirit of the Budapest Memorandum for eleven years, the Kremlin is now offering to sign another Russo-Ukrainian "memorandum." Second, Putin did not exclude, after speaking to Trump, that future negotiations with Kyiv may lead to a truce. Yet, the Russian president added that, "if appropriate agreements are reached," a "possible ceasefire" would only be "for a certain period of time." Even if the negotiations are successful, the armistice will be merely temporary. That caveat by Putin is an apt admission: The Russian war economy and population's military mobilization are now so far advanced that they cannot be easily stopped. Moscow is not any longer able to abruptly discontinue warfighting. What would happen to Russia's hundreds of thousands of enlisted soldiers, large-scale weapons production, and routine bellicose as well as intense Ukrainophobic campaigns in many spheres of Russian social life (education, media, culture etc.), if there is suddenly a permanent peace? These and similar signals from Moscow allow only one conclusion: To end the Russo-Ukrainian War, Russia needs to experience a humiliating defeat on the battlefield. The lesson from the past is, moreover, that Russian military failures have triggered domestic liberalization, such as the Great Reforms after the Crimean War of 1854-1856, or the introduction of semi-constitutionalism following the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905. One of the determinants of Glasnost and Perestroika was the disastrous failure of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979-1989. Russian imperialism will not be neutralized by negotiations, compromises, or concessions. Instead, such approaches only promote further foreign adventurism in Moscow and military escalation along Russia's borders. The Kremlin will one day end Russia's expansionist wars as well as genocidal terror against civilians in Ukraine and elsewhere. Yet for that to happen, the Russian people first need to start believing that such behaviour cannot lead to victory, may trigger internal collapse, and will be resolutely punished. Submit an Opinion Read also: 'There we go again' — For war-weary Europe, Trump-Putin call yet another signal to 'wake up' We've been working hard to bring you independent, locally-sourced news from Ukraine. Consider supporting the Kyiv Independent.
