The Kremlin is engaged in a delicate balancing act between feigning interest in negotiations to Trump and conditioning Russian society to accept nothing short of Putin’s desired full victory in Ukraine, no matter how long it takes.
The Washington-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said this in a new report, according to Ukrinform.
ISW notes that Putin’s efforts to posture himself as amenable to US peace proposals and meaningful negotiations while refusing to meet with Zelensky in the near term are attempts to obfuscate the reality that Putin remains uninterested in ending his war and is attempting to extract bilateral concessions from the United States without meaningfully engaging in a peace process.
Analysts say Kremlin statements continue to indicate that Putin remains committed to replacing the democratically elected Ukrainian government with a pro-Russian puppet government, reducing Ukraine’s military such that Ukraine cannot defend itself from future aggression, abolishing NATO’s long-held Open Door Policy, and changing the Ukrainian constitution to commit Ukraine to neutrality.
ISW assesses that Putin likely claimed to U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff that Russia’s territorial ambitions are limited to the seizure of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson regions. Putin is likely attempting to frame Russia’s seizure of the four regions as inevitable in order to push Ukraine and the West to capitulate to Kremlin demands.
“Putin continues to believe that time is on Russia’s side and that Russia can outlast Ukraine and the West,” ISW said.
The think tank stresses that “economic measures coupled with Western military aid that enables Ukraine to inflict battlefield setbacks on Russian forces remain critical to changing Putin’s calculus and bringing him to the negotiating table willing to make compromises to end the war.”
Earlier, Trump described Witkoff’s meeting with Putin as “very productive” and said “great progress” had been made.
Source: Putin seeks to hide lack of interest in ending his war – ISW
