Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
by Gevorg Mirzayan
[REGNUM] On April 11, Donald Trump's special representative for negotiations with Russia, Stephen Witkoff, held another meeting - already the third in a row - with Vladimir Putin. Like the previous ones, it lasted several hours.
The Kremlin's final press release was kept to a minimalist tone: "The head of the Russian state held a meeting with the special envoy of the President of the United States of America, Steven Witkoff. The topic of the meeting was aspects of the Ukrainian settlement."
The official comment from the US government was roughly the same in terms of volume and depth. Donald Trump’s press secretary Caroline Levitt said the meeting was “another step in the negotiating process to achieve a ceasefire and a final peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine,” but declined to elaborate on the components of that step.
The laconicism of Moscow and Washington can be explained very simply. "Very intensive and difficult negotiations are underway, but there is no significant decisive progress or breakthrough yet," Dmitry Suslov, deputy head of the Center for Comprehensive European and International Studies at the National Research University Higher School of Economics, told Regnum.
According to him, the parties realize the importance of settling the Ukrainian crisis for normalizing bilateral relations, they are focused on dialogue, but their positions are sometimes really far apart.
There are indeed many differences. Both in the territorial issue (the US must not only recognize the new Russian territories, but also force Kyiv to withdraw its troops from the occupied parts of them), and in the area of observing the energy ceasefire (which Ukraine does not observe, and the US cannot force Kyiv to fulfill its obligations), and in sanctions (in order to move to a “water” ceasefire in the Black Sea, the US must lift restrictions on Russian agricultural producers).
Russia has no hurry. "Work continues, meticulous work, an exchange of opinions is underway. Each other's positions are communicated to each other... There is no need to expect any breakthroughs here. The process of normalizing relations and searching for grounds for entering the trajectory of a settlement around Ukraine is underway," said the president's press secretary Dmitry Peskov.
But the US is in a hurry. More precisely, President Trump is in a hurry. “Trump’s 100 days are approaching, and we see that of all his many grandiose undertakings, he has not yet completed a single one. He has nothing to brag about. At the same time, a ceasefire in Ukraine was one of his main election promises. He needs it in order to more intensively implement his strategy of increasing pressure on China and transferring American forces towards the PRC,” Dmitry Suslov reminds.
However, the conflict has not yet been resolved, and, according to Caroline Levitt, Trump is “disappointed by the behavior of both sides in the conflict.” From Moscow’s perspective, he should be disappointed primarily with the Ukrainian side, since it is Kiev that is not fulfilling its obligations. At the same time, Trump himself is rushing Russia and says that “Russia must act. Too many people … have died, thousands a week, in a terrible and senseless war.”
"The American president is unhappy: he wants immediate results and a truce, and both sides are putting forward conditions. And if Zelensky has already bent the knee and declared his readiness for an immediate ceasefire, then Putin has no reason to stop the offensive without concessions from the United States," writes international political scientist and RIAC expert Alexey Naumov. It seems that Trump believes that, given the current time crunch, it is easier for him to pressure Moscow into concessions than Kiev.
First, because forcing the Ukrainian side to submit is met with resistance in the United States. Resistance from the American political mainstream, which believes that Trump and Steven Witkoff are pushing the wrong people. “We need to increase the hard pressure on Vlad’s interests and unite our allies in the region, ” writes The New York Post.
Moreover, both the US president and his special envoy are unqualified for this kind of negotiation. “Whitkoff and Trump have committed the cardinal sin of diplomacy: they have flaunted their desperation to make a deal,” said Ned Price, a former State Department spokesman under President Joe Biden.
Second, because there is no agreement within the American administration itself. “American officials are increasingly at odds over how to break the impasse between Ukraine and Russia, according to U.S. officials and people familiar with the situation, as well as four Western diplomats who have been in touch with Trump administration officials,” Reuters writes.
The symbol of this disagreement was the publication of different plans by Stephen Witkoff and another special representative, Keith Kellogg, for resolving the Ukrainian issue. Kellogg proposed dividing Ukraine into three parts (implying the actual occupation of some territories by Western troops), while Witkoff proposed recognizing all Russian territories as Russian.
Thirdly, because any pressure on the Ukrainian regime is ineffective due to the European Union, which supports Ukraine and promises Zelensky assistance if Kyiv continues its policy of war to the last Ukrainian.
"We must acknowledge that peace in Ukraine is probably unattainable in the near future," said German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, adding that Europe would continue to help the Kiev regime.
In this situation, Moscow suggests that Washington should not rush for quick solutions, not try to show some results in a hundred days, but work systematically. Solve problems not in a rush, as the Americans want, but effectively.
"Trump has no way to pressure Europe into accepting our demands. However, Russia would be quite happy with a situation in which the US would stop providing free material military aid to Ukraine," says Dmitry Suslov. "This would lead to a significant reduction in the overall volume of Western aid."
When the advance of our troops leads to the threat of the collapse of the Ukrainian front and/or the collapse of Ukraine, then Kyiv and Brussels will probably be ready to accept Russian demands. They will simply have no other choice.
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