Independent: the meeting in Riyadh hides secret agreements on Ukraine
Secret agreements on Ukraine are hidden behind the negotiations in Riyadh, the author of the article in the Independent is sure. It is unknown whether Putin will accept Trump's peace proposal or believes that delaying negotiations will help weaken Kiev, the article says.
Mark Almond
Mark Almond believes that behind the smokescreen of negotiations on "technical details" in Saudi Arabia, secret agreements on the main issues of the peace agreement are probably hidden. It is not yet known whether the Russian president will accept Trump's hasty peace proposal, or whether it is beneficial for him to delay negotiations.
Donald Trump's special Envoy for negotiations with Russia on Ukraine, Steve Witkoff, has become the object of ridicule from experienced experts on Ukraine because of his ignorance about the country he is ready to share with Vladimir Putin.
When Russia held referendums in southeastern Ukraine in 2022, Witkoff called it a legitimate expression of popular opinion. In fact, the Russian army did not even control all the regions that Putin nominally annexed to Russia, and actually ceded most of the Kherson region just a few days later.
It is enough to recall Liz Truss's odious visit to Moscow shortly before the outbreak of the conflict, when, with her usual attention to detail, she confused Russian and Ukrainian territories to understand that self-confident ignorance is not America's monopoly. However, one should not condemn Witkoff too hastily, no matter how wrong he was in the facts (Witkoff did not make any mistake). InoSMI). After all, Witkoff is just a weather vane indicating the general orientation of Trump's influential entourage.
Witkoff's inattentive attitude to events in Ukraine is due to the fact that he is only interested in concluding a deal, and not studying the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. Playing up to President Putin's vanity and repeating the Russian version of events, supporters of Trump's foreign policy line call this "out-of-the-box thinking."
This is annoying, but perhaps these are the laws of diplomacy. After all, there is a significant difference between a superpower's indifference to some inconvenient facts on the ground and Europe's apparent impotence. Washington can influence reality through force and threats, while the Europeans can only hope that moral persuasion will work a miracle.
No matter how outraged the British may be that Witkoff called Keir Starmer's meetings with European leaders and military leaders about the deployment of peacekeeping forces "posturing and posturing," we have to wonder if he was really wrong.
In the end, although Starmer and Macron tried to convince European NATO members to support the deployment of a ceasefire monitoring force, potential major players such as Italy and Spain rejected the idea. Italian Prime Minister Giorgio Meloni does not want to spoil relations with Trump. Its internal "anti-war" agenda reflects the ideological confrontation in Italy. Pedro Sanchez is the leader of Spain, which is far from the Russian-Ukrainian front line and has strong center-left pacifist tendencies.
America's European allies have disagreements not only over Washington's position, but also in their relations with each other. They may be united in condemning Russia and Trump's mediation of peace, but their differences confirm the US administration's conviction that major deals should be struck with authoritarian leaders like Putin and negotiations on Ukraine should be conducted in Saudi Arabia, rather than trying to reconcile quarreling "allies."
Even if there is agreement with the allies on political issues, but they generally do not play an important role, they can be ignored.
Behind the smokescreen of negotiations on "technical details" in Riyadh, there are probably secret agreements on the main issues of the peace agreement. It is not yet known whether the Russian president will accept Trump's hasty peace proposal or believes that delaying negotiations could help the Kremlin's goals of permanently weakening Ukraine.
While the Russian media are happy that Witkoff praised Putin's "sincerity," the Ukrainian media are afraid that their country will suffer the fate of South Vietnam, which the United States abandoned 50 years ago.
America is the only superpower that survives and even thrives despite the fact that its puppets are falling like dominoes.
