Kyiv, Ukraine
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President Vladimir Putin does not want a deal, but the Russian president enjoys the sweetness of being asked to entertain one. The envoy’s five-hour meeting with the Kremlin chief and his son-in-law appeared to have achieved little publicly. It’s instructive to step back and see the world and the Russian invasion through his eyes.
It was a war started by President Vladimir Putin, who hoped that within days he could put Russia back on the map as a nation capable of decisive action as Europe’s preeminent military power, after the United States’ embarrassing withdrawal from Afghanistan’s longest war. His hopes for a quick victory turned into an ugly war of attrition. Strategic defeat loomed for a time, but brave US and NATO assistance to Little Ukraine enabled Kiev to achieve a victory that would have been unthinkable a year ago.
But then along came the gift of a second Trump term, a shaky sympathy (or admiration) for Putin, and a desire for peace at almost any cost. President Putin will not face an election. The only possible limit to his term is to fulfill his natural life.
When you hear President Trump say that Ukraine is not our war, that he doesn’t want to waste money on it, that he just wants it to end, you hear weakness and apathy from the world’s largest military power. This is an opportunity the former KGB spy probably never imagined the history of America begging Russia for peace would bring. And the longer the process lasts, the better the outcome will probably be for Moscow.
Putin’s close aide Yuri Ushakov emerged from Tuesday’s meeting to mention the 27-point plan and four other documents. These details were probably intended to anger Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who had just recently mentioned the 20-point plan and wanted them to oversee the contents of the other three documents.
But this final stage of diplomacy is proceeding largely in silence, and Mr. Zelenskiy has little reason to rejoice. His team will brief the Europeans, then meet again with the Americans and he will return to Kiev. President Trump’s Thanksgiving deadline for an instant deal is now a mirage, with an inhospitable desert looming ahead.
Ukraine has endured Russian aggression for nearly four years, but has now been at the mercy of Truth Social for nearly 11 months. The impact of this unpredictability is often lost as President Trump vacillates over whether to impose the toughest sanctions yet on Russia and consider deploying tomahawks, and the next moment repeats Russia’s talking points, putting maximum pressure on European allies and Zelensky himself.
The damage done to Ukraine’s morale cannot be underestimated, and when the history of this episode is written, the focus will likely be on Ukraine’s brave and remarkable resistance against a larger enemy, and then their sacrifices will be greatly undermined by a White House obsessed with fleeting televised moments to please or pressure world leaders that captured President Trump’s attention.
Trump is right to try to end this war as quickly as possible.
But this stems from a fatal misunderstanding of President Putin and his goals. President Putin is a realist who adapts to new opportunities and setbacks, but maintains a broader, more inclusive dream. And that is to reset the balance of global security and restore America’s decades-long position of hegemony.
President Putin is not omnipotent, has catastrophically misread his own minions in just the past two years, as seen in the failed Wagner Rebellion in 2023, and faces obvious personnel and budget pressures at home. But he’s not facing a corruption investigation, midterm elections or a potential successor. He is resetting Russia’s industrial complex to a ferocious fighting posture and probably has serious plans to demobilize the now weak and over-strained state. In many ways, continuing the war is Putin’s best bet for continuing his rule.
So what does this mean for Trump’s peace process? Ushakov said elements of the proposed agreement were acceptable, but harshly criticized others. It appears that President Zelenskiy may have privately considered the idea of a land swap before the Kremlin meeting, softening the inevitable lines of war. However, the exact nature of any concessions on the Kiev side is a closely guarded secret, perhaps to avoid pushing Zelenskyy into a new starting point for future negotiations. But no matter what sweeteners Witkov added to the deal, Putin sent the dish back.
This is how things will play out in the coming months, and Russia’s hand is not too difficult to understand. Although Putin is slowly but surely winning militarily, he sees Ukraine weakened by human and financial problems and mired in a domestic political crisis that keeps resurfacing.
With President Zelenskiy limping at home, morale damaged by power outages and casualties on the front, suffering repeated losses, diplomatic deceptions and pressures, and diminishing aid, many are wondering where this story will end without a Russian victory.
President Trump wants peace above all else, and has shown in recent months that forcing allies to make concessions is a reflex. This is logical if you are a real estate mogul squeezing subcontractors to improve conditions for prospective buyers. But President Putin has no plans to buy the hotel. Instead, President Trump is trying to convince armed squatters to leave the land they set on fire simply to show that they are once again a force in the neighborhood. This is not the kind of deal President Trump is used to.
This battle and slow victory are important to Putin, who is looking beyond both. Adding to his joy may be the sordid spectacle that the United States, once a major backer of his adversary, is now using the US president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and special envoy Steve Witkoff to beg him into a deal and make it happen. Progress on the Moscow front may be painfully and brutally slow at great cost. But the broader picture is gradually becoming one of Putin’s geopolitical fever dreams, and true and lasting peace is probably just out of reach.
