Another Big Putin Mistake?
Putin is not travelling to Istanbul. He’s made many strategic errors in this war, and this may be his biggest. My article published this afternoon in the Australian Financial Review.
Over the past two days, diplomats and observers of the war in Ukraine have waited on word whether Russia’s president would follow through with his commitment last week to meet with his Ukrainian counterpart in Turkey.
Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky, keen to keep the Americans onside and set in motion a peace process with Vladimir Putin, flew to Istanbul in anticipation of talks.
We have now received what appears to be definitive advice from the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs that neither Putin nor Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will attend the talks. Instead, a scratch team of low-level Russian bureaucrats will be sent to Turkey.
For Putin, this may be yet another carefully calculated move to show that he controls the levers of this war and – as the person who began this war in 2014 – only he can end it.
He is playing a high-risk game, however. The Russian president has calculated so far that Donald Trump, unwilling to escalate the conflict, will continue to tolerate Putin’s insults and brutal behaviour against Ukraine.
But Putin’s decision might also be seen by Trump and others in his administration as a deliberate insult. It could (if we squint our eyes enough) finally force Trump to take action against the Russians. This might comprise additional sanctions, and potentially, an increase in the amount of US weaponry that Trump permits Ukraine to purchase.
Regardless, Putin is not the master chess player that his propaganda network portrays him as. He has made many strategic errors in this war, and this might be his largest yet.
The no-show in Istanbul certainly offers a bonanza to the Ukrainian strategic messaging campaign about Putin and his lack of seriousness in engaging in the peace process.
This has been obvious to anyone who reviews the evidence of Russia’s continued targeting of Ukrainian civilians in drone attacks (particularly its repulsive Kherson drone safari), ongoing ground offensives and campaign of sabotage throughout Europe. But for many in America and beyond, weary of a war for which they have not had to make any exertions, Russian propaganda about Ukraine’s lack of willingness to engage in the peace process has provided a fig leaf for disengaging from Ukraine support.
This fig leaf has now been torn away.
Perhaps worse for Putin, he now looks even smaller and more cowardly than he has throughout the war. After offering the talks, he has not demonstrated the courage to get on a plane and travel to a neighbouring country to face Zelensky directly.
These issues aside, what does the trajectory of the war, and peace negotiations, look like from here?
For America, this is a fork-in-the-road moment in their posture towards negotiations. While ostensibly treating each side equally, the reality until this point is that the American government since January this year has treated the Russian aggressors more favourably than Ukraine.
Trump has recognised a Russian sphere of influence in Eastern Europe. He has not been able to bring himself to criticise Putin, while frequently engaging in slander against Zelenskyy. Now, given Putin’s repeated repudiations of America’s peace entreaties, might Trump decide on a harder line with Putin to force him to the negotiating table? Or might they walk away entirely?
You can read the full article at this link.
I agree that this move on Putin’s part is a weak move. In response, Zelenskyy can simply say “Putin doesn’t want peace and doesn’t even want a real ceasefire, as evidenced by his sending only low-level people who lack any significant authority” and go home, mission accomplished.
Then it’s up to the Western leaders to make good on their threat of increased sanctions. If they do so—great. If they fail to do so, they weaken themselves, but Zelenskyy and Ukraine still look better vis-a-vis Russia than they did a week ago.
I however don’t see this move as a big Putin mistake. Among the plausible moves that Putin could make, i.e. the possible moves that are aligned with the pursuit of the goals that Putin has been pursuing so far, I don’t see any alternative moves that would be more effective from the perspective of Putin’s goals. Zelenskyy has simply made a brilliant move by calling Putin’s “direct negotiations” bluff and inviting Trump to the party. The very definition of a brilliant move is that it is non-obvious and there is no effective way for the opponent to respond.
In particular, if Putin had come to meet Zelenskyy, he would thereby have increased Zelenskyy’s perceived legitimacy; that would have severely weakened a major line of attack that the Russian propaganda war machine has been pursuing.
Trump may be pissed off enough at this betrayal - and being made to look like Charlie Brown kicking at the football which Lucy snatches away at the last moment, and falling flat on his back. "Rats! Fooled again..." - that he just *gives* weapons to Ukraine... A bit of razzing might be in order - "Fooled again, Donald, eh?" - to drive home the obvious, even send him a copy of the cartoon with "Peace Talks" on the football and Lucy tagged as Putin.