Kyiv, Ukraine – United States President Donald Trump sounded jubilant on Monday when he introduced the start of direct talks between Ukraine and Russia.
“Russia and Ukraine will instantly begin negotiations in direction of a ceasefire, and, extra importantly, carry an END to the struggle,” Trump wrote on his Reality Social community.
The assertion appeared to suit Trump’s art-of-the-deal canon – it will carry a few quick and environment friendly peace settlement to Europe’s hottest armed battle since World Battle II and would profit international safety.
However European and Ukrainian observers interviewed by Al Jazeera, together with a former Russian diplomat and a Ukrainian high ex-military official, mentioned by agreeing to renew the direct talks that had been deserted in 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin scored a taciturn diplomatic conquer Trump.
They mentioned Putin has thwarted a ceasefire that his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has been insisting upon for months, and excluded Washington from the negotiations.
The Russian chief is more likely to drag the talks on indefinitely whereas amassing tens of 1000’s of latest servicemen, in a bid to carve out extra Ukrainian territory till rains and snow cease this 12 months’s offensive, they mentioned.
Furthermore, by seemingly bending to Trump’s calls for to speak with Kyiv immediately, Putin has escaped additional US sanctions – whereas creating an phantasm of talks.
“Putin primarily makes use of Trump simply to create an image that Putin or Russia are prepared to barter,” Anton Shekhovtsov, head of the Centre for Democratic Integrity, a Vienna-based assume tank, informed Al Jazeera.
Nevertheless, the “solely factor that Russia is able to negotiate is the capitulation of Ukraine, nothing else,” he mentioned.
“I don’t see what Putin can speak with Zelenskyy about, [as] Putin doesn’t think about Zelenskyy an individual worthy of communication,” he added. “I don’t see any progress right here.”
Putin has for years dismissed Zelenskyy as a “political puppet” whose “neo-Nazi junta” allegedly forces naturally pro-Russian Ukrainians to simply accept harmful Western values.
On Monday night time, after a two-hour telephone dialog with Trump, Putin appeared on Russian tv to thank Trump for “his help in resuming direct talks” and to declare the Kremlin’s intention to work out a “memorandum of the long run accord” and a “doable ceasefire”.
‘Moscow doesn’t need actual talks with Kyiv’
A former Russian diplomat who stop his Ministry of Overseas Affairs job to protest towards Moscow’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine known as Putin’s readiness an “imitation”.
“The talks gained’t be talks as a result of Moscow doesn’t need actual talks with Kyiv,” Boris Bondarev informed Al Jazeera.
To Putin, “Ukraine is however a software, a proxy, a satellite tv for pc that doesn’t determine a factor by itself.”
That’s the reason Putin appointed Vladimir Medinsky, a former tradition minister, as lead negotiator, he mentioned.
Medinsky, who has authored historical past books criticised for factual inaccuracy, has not sounded diplomatic to date.
On Could 16, he threatened that the struggle would final “so long as it takes” and informed Ukrainian diplomats that Russia fought Sweden for 21 years in 1700-21 to occupy at this time’s Baltic states and construct its new imperial capital, St Petersburg, on former Swedish lands.
Thus, the peace course of Trump introduced as his accomplishment is in actual fact “the principle factor Putin achieved”, Bondarev mentioned.
“That is an imitation so that somebody within the West thinks that the peace course of has begun, and that’s why there’s no want to assist Ukraine, to strain Putin and to impose new sanctions,” he mentioned.
Putin additionally managed to flee a lull in hostilities that might have helped Ukrainian forces to fortify their positions alongside the 1,100km (700-mile) entrance line, based on Nikolay Mitrokhin, a researcher at Germany’s Bremen College.
“Apparently, Putin succeeded in nullifying a really disadvantageous initiative by Zelenskyy to right away begin a 30 days-long ceasefire,” he informed Al Jazeera.
Whereas negotiating, clarifying and delaying the talks, Putin could attempt to seize extra land in jap and northern Ukraine and even restore the large Kakhovka Dam that used to provide water to annexed Crimea earlier than being destroyed in 2023, he mentioned.
In the meantime, Moscow has conscripted 160,000 servicemen and retains recruiting some 50,000 troopers month-to-month, partly due to the supply of hefty enlistment bonuses, based on Ihor Romanenko, former deputy chief of Ukraine’s normal workers.
“They are going to must be skilled at the very least somewhat in order that they don’t die that shortly, and so by the top of June, [Moscow] could amass a brand new useful resource,” he informed Al Jazeera.
‘Trump agreed with Putin’: Professional-Russia observers
Europe was unimpressed by what Trump and Putin agreed upon and launched the seventeenth spherical of sanctions towards Moscow on Tuesday.
Brussels and London mentioned the sanctions would goal Moscow’s “shadow fleet” of tankers, the monetary establishments that assist Moscow keep away from earlier sanctions, and the availability chains for Russian arms producers.
Nevertheless, the European sanctions will probably be much less efficient with out US measures as Putin “acts within the divide-and-rule approach”, Romanenko mentioned.
“He needed everybody [in the West] to step apart from Ukraine, in order that there aren’t any arms provides, after which he might perform one more imperial takeover” of Ukrainian territories, he concluded.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio mentioned on Tuesday that Trump is reluctant to slap new sanctions on Russia.
“If, in actual fact, it’s clear that the Russians aren’t all in favour of a peace deal they usually simply wish to maintain combating a struggle, it could very nicely come to that time,” Rubio informed the US Senate.
He additionally insisted Putin “hasn’t gotten a single concession” from Trump.
In the meantime, pro-Kremlin observers are ecstatic.
“These had been very profitable talks. They might lead to Ukrainian regime’s pressured acceptance of Russia’s situations, and thus peace will probably be reached,” Moscow-based analyst Sergey Markov wrote on Telegram on Monday.
“The Ukrainian regime and European leaders are shocked by the talks, they think about them a catastrophe for Ukraine. They assume that Trump agreed with Putin on nearly all the things,” he wrote.