Earlier this month, Russia launched an expensive intercontinental ballistic missile "Oreshnik" at a target in Lviv. The "Oreshnik" is a highly effective but also very expensive missile, and from a cost-benefit analysis perspective, its use in Ukraine makes absolutely no sense. In fact, reports indicate relatively limited damage. Therefore, the deployment of the "Oreshnik" seems more like a PR stunt, probably intended to signal to the Trump administration that Russia is generally unhappy with the state of world affairs - Trump's actions in Venezuela, the seizure of a Russian ship in the North Atlantic, plus the new wave of protests in Iran.
Russia will undoubtedly see active US intervention in Iran - in a sense, this is already happening, given last year's US air strikes on Iran and Trump's warnings to the regime in Tehran not to use excessive force against demonstrators.
From Moscow's perspective, US actions, even under Trump, seem to follow a very familiar Western scenario of artificial regime change targeting Putin's authoritarian friends and allies, writes Timothy Garton Ash, a British historian, analyst and professor of European studies at Oxford, in his blog. In this sense, Maduro’s fall seems to be just the latest in a series of Western interventions against Moscow-friendly regimes, starting with Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein, Assad, Yanukovych, even Nasrallah in Lebanon.
I have often said that Putin wakes up every morning thinking about how he can screw up Ukraine and bring it back into Russia’s orbit. That is Putin’s number one priority. But there is another thing that would make Putin wake up in a cold sweat: the prospect of another autocrat being overthrown, and that other autocrat turning out to be himself.
The irony is that Putin himself is already well advanced in regime change operations throughout the West, whether it is funding Brexit, Trump 16, Georgescu, Orban, Fico, Le Pen, "Alternative for Germany" and others. But Trump’s actions against Maduro seem too painful for Putin, especially given that Iran and Cuba are already firmly in the crosshairs.
I doubt that all of this will make Putin more willing to make a peace deal in Ukraine. While Putin is eager to save his own skin or “ass,” I still think Ukraine is too emotional an issue to let go of for now. Of course, with Trump’s goal of $50 per barrel oil hurting the Russian economy, the situation for Putin’s war machine is complicated. But at the same time, I think Trump is offering Putin enough to make him think that a complete victory over Ukraine is just around the corner.
First, there is Trump’s half-hearted approach to Ukraine, which seems aimed at offering Putin immediate concessions while simultaneously insulting and pushing Zelensky to compromise. Second, there is a shortage of military supplies for Ukraine - I understand that the US-supplied Inceptor missiles are in critical shortage. Putin is well aware of this, so he believes that one last winter campaign against Ukraine's critical infrastructure will finally break the back of the Kiev administration.
Third, Trump's latest efforts to pressure Denmark over Greenland appear to be driving a knife to the very heart of NATO. Trump's latest social media post, titled "Lack of Truth", further angered public opinion in Europe - he dismissed the inability of US allies to stand up for the US. It was literally spitting on the grave of the thousands of Europeans who died in response to the US call after 9/11 to invoke NATO’s Article 5 defense clause. They died supporting US adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Most European allies would not say this publicly, but they now doubt that if European NATO allies were attacked, the US under Trump would come to their defense.
Trump claims that his drive to force European NATO countries to spend more on defense has breathed new life into NATO, but to me it feels more like the kiss of death from Trump. Most European allies realize they need to spend more on defense, but mostly because they can no longer rely on the US. They are planning for a post-NATO world, or at least a NATO without the US.
And, continuing with the dream metaphor, the collapse of NATO is like a wet dream for Putin (sorry, a vision clearly created in hell), and his thinking will be to continue the war with Ukraine a little longer, because with the collapse of NATO, his support for Ukraine will also inevitably weaken, which will lead to the possibility of a complete victory for Russia in Ukraine. This may not be true, but what matters is what Putin thinks, and as someone who has followed his 25+ years in power and predicted a full-scale invasion of Ukraine back in 2015, I can assure you that he thinks so. I understand Putin.
And what about the peace process? For me, it is not serious - it is run by frivolous individuals like Witkoff and Dmitriev. Both Russia and Ukraine are merely pretending to participate in the process, trying to please Trump or prevent serious actions that could harm them if they are perceived as the unwilling party.
If Ukraine is going to cede territory, it needs ironclad security guarantees. The offer by the UK and France to send troops to the ground is frivolous - first, they cannot provide enough, and second, are they capable of fighting Russia for Ukraine? No one thinks so; that is the harsh reality. The only country that can provide a credible security guarantee is the US, but even then, when NATO allies in Europe doubt the US’s determination under Trump to stick to its Article 5 commitment, why should Ukraine?
For all the smiles at the Trump-Zelensky meetings at Mar-a-Lago, Ukrainians absolutely do not trust the US. Just look at the polls there. So the Ukrainian, and indeed the European strategy in general, is to accommodate Trump in the negotiations, to drag them out, to try never to say outright "no" and to try to shift the blame for the failure of the negotiations onto Russia.
Ukraine wants to keep the US on its side for as long as possible, so that it can continue to receive weapons and intelligence before Trump eventually cuts off all support. The hope is that by then Europe and Ukraine will be self-sufficient enough to continue to oppose Russia.
To some extent, the Russian negotiating position is the same, although Russia seems to be in a stronger position, since Trump seems to have an unhealthy attachment to Russia and to authoritarian regimes in general. Trump's natural tendency is to flatter the strong and bully the weak. This is the classic modus operandi of a tyrant, aided by his sociopathic traits and the abundance of sycophants in his entourage. Putin is great at playing on Trump's ego - he plays it like a violin.
This week, Russia sent two messages that it was unhappy with the latest Ukrainian-European version of the peace plan for Ukraine - it is a 19-point plan against Russia's (stupid) 28-point plan. The first was the missile strike with the "Oreshnik". The second were comments by Maria Zakharova, the spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry.
Zakharova is a female version of Saddam Hussein's comic Ali, mixed with elements of Hitler's Goebbels. What a woman! She stated that the deployment of any NATO troops (meaning British and French) in Ukraine would be unacceptable and would be a legitimate goal. This was a key aspect of the 19-point peace plan and underscores that Russia is opposed to any plan that provides any credible security guarantee for Ukraine, as its ultimate goal is to keep Ukraine insecure and open to further Russian invasion. Russia will oppose anything that gets in the way of its plans for the ultimate subjugation of Ukraine.
In short, Trump’s peace talks in Ukraine are stalled and will remain so until Trump realizes that he must increase the cost of continuing the war for Putin, which implies larger and better arms supplies to Ukraine and new sanctions against Russia.