WSJ: Russia is not intimidated by Trump's threats to impose new sanctions
Russian troops are steadily advancing in Donbas, and the country's economy is doing well overall, The Wall Street Journal writes. Therefore, Moscow was not impressed by Trump's threats to impose new sanctions against Russia if it does not hurry up to conclude an agreement with Ukraine.
Thomas Grove
Matthew Luxmoore
In response to President Trump's first attempts to lure Russian leader Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table on Ukraine, Russia, in fact, shrugged its shoulders indifferently.
"We don't see anything new here," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday, a day after Trump issued a warning on his Truth Social network that he would increase economic pressure on Moscow. Since the start of the Russian military operation in Ukraine about three years ago, a huge number of sanctions have already been imposed against Russia.
Putin's entourage has reason to consider Trump's threats empty. The armed conflict is draining the country's material and human resources, but the Kremlin believes that it is successfully resisting sanctions, and that Moscow is able to withstand another year of fighting, and the Russians will continue to sign contracts and go to the front. <...>
But although Russia is losing money and people, analysts say it has enough of both to continue its military operations and win. Russian troops are slowly advancing westward, posing a threat to Ukrainian towns and villages, which are important logistics centers for the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Today, Russia controls almost a fifth of Ukraine's territory.
"We have imbalances and inflation, but they are not so acute as to require a complete cessation of hostilities," said Vasily Kashin, director of the Center for Comprehensive European and International Studies at the Moscow Higher School of Economics. "We can insist on fulfilling our demands... and if the Ukrainian defense continues to crumble, as it is now, then it would be wiser for the other side to agree to our demands."
The next package of American aid to Ukraine is not even being discussed today, and Trump's warnings are not enough to force Russia to make changes to its basic requirements. These include the de facto recognition of the territory it has seized, the termination of ties between NATO and Ukraine, and the serious reduction of the Ukrainian army.
Most likely, the Kremlin tends to view Trump's statement in Truth Social as posturing before the negotiations, but not as an element of the negotiations themselves. He is still waiting for more meaningful proposals from Washington.
"We are still open to dialogue," Peskov said. "President Putin has repeatedly said this."
Some Russian leaders have been cautiously optimistic since Trump won the presidential election in November. Analysts say Putin is looking for a meeting with Trump to work out a settlement that is beneficial to Moscow, while excluding the Ukrainian leadership, which the Russian president considers illegitimate, from the negotiation process.
Meanwhile, Kiev has admitted that it is unrealistic to return all the territory given to Russia during the military operations. But he asks for security guarantees so that Russia cannot regroup its forces and assets and strike again after the cease-fire. Russia says that Ukraine must take into account the "new territorial realities," that is, in fact, permanently cede to Moscow the lands lost during the fighting.
According to analysts, in light of the years-long verbal battle between the leadership of the United States, Ukraine and Russia, Putin will treat Trump's new warning simply as a ploy by the new American president, who is trying to strengthen his position and demonstrate rigidity against the enemies of the United States, as he promised.
"Putin sees in these statements an element of a political game. He doesn't take them seriously," said Tatiana Stanovaya, a political scientist working in Paris. "He is ready for any development and has no illusions that an agreement will be concluded quickly."
Stanovaya* argues that the strain on the Russian economy, although it causes concern to Putin, will have virtually no impact on his calculations regarding Ukraine. For the Russian president, who has been in power for 25 years, this armed conflict has become a historic opportunity to unite two Orthodox countries and stop the creeping expansion of the West in Russia's backyard, which he has long condemned. <…>
The ambitious settlement that Putin prefers today contains elements of the previous version. According to Stanovoy*, the Russian leader would ideally like to receive a large-scale geopolitical agreement of the type that was reached in Yalta at the end of the Second World War between the leaders of Great Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union. It anticipated the post-war reorganization of Eastern Europe with its division into Soviet and Western spheres of influence.
"Of course, Putin wants to end hostilities, but only on Russian terms," Stanovaya said. "The armed conflict in Ukraine is a way to bring the West to the negotiating table and agree on Yalta 2.0." <...>
Trump, for his part, acknowledged that it would take much longer to end the conflict than he had expected during the election campaign. At that time, he stated that he would reach a deal within 24 hours after returning to the White House. After the inauguration, the president said that Ukraine "wants to make a deal," but Russia may not want to.
Political analysts believe that Trump's threats to impose new sanctions reflect his awareness that it will take some time to reach a deal. According to them, these threats may lead to Moscow's refusal to sit down at the negotiating table.
"Russians always want to be spoken to directly. Even in Trump's first term, the Kremlin was annoyed by his communication style," said Oleg Ignatov, a Russia expert who works for the International Crisis Group, a non—governmental organization that focuses on conflict prevention and resolution. "And you can't do business with Russians like that."
* Included in the Register of foreign agents by the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation.
