From 4h
ago
03.23 EDT
Morning
opening: What does Vladimir Putin want?
Jakub
Krupa
On
Monday, several European leaders lined up to criticise Vladimir Putin for
Russia’s continuing attacks on Ukraine, and sabotaging the peace efforts of the
Trump administration in the US.
But the
White House view remains distinctively different.
Speaking
alongside El Salvador president Nayib Bukele, Trump once again took aim at
Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy instead, saying:
“The
mistake was letting the war happen. If Biden were competent. And if Zelenskyy
were competent -- and I don’t know that he is, we had a rough session with this
guy over here.”
“You
don’t start a war against somebody that’s 20 times your size and then hope that
people give you some missiles.”
On Putin,
his tone was distinctively different as he argued:
“And you
take a look at Putin -- I’m not saying anybody’s an angel, but I will tell you,
I went four years, and it wasn’t even a question. He would never -- and I told
him don’t do it. You’re not going to do it.”
Ultimately,
he concluded that Biden, Zelenskyy and Putin are all at blame for the war:
“And
Biden could have stopped it, and Zelenskyy could have stopped it, and Putin
should have never started it. Everybody’s to blame.”
But
perhaps even more revealing were comments by Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff, who
was in Moscow last week.
Speaking
on Fox News, Witkoff said he was confident after his latest five-hour
“compelling” meeting with the Russians that a deal with Putin was “emerging”.
“Towards
the end, we actually came up with – I’m going to say finally, but I don’t mean
it in the way that we were waiting; I mean it in the way that it took a while
for us to get to this place – what Putin’s request is to get to, have a
permanent peace,” he said.
But in
comments that are likely to spook European partners by signalling Putin’s
broader security demands, he said the peace deal is “about the so-called five
territories, but there’s so much more to it: there’s security protocols,
there’s no Nato, Nato Article Five, I mean, it’s just a lot of detail attached
to it.”
“It’s a
complicated situation … rooted in … some real problematic things happening
between the two countries and I think we might be on the verge of something
that would be very, very important for the world at large,” he added.
Witkoff
also added that he believed “there is a possibility to reshape the
Russian-United States relationship through some very compelling commercial
opportunities that I think give real stability to the region too.”
So, what,
back to business as usual? That’s certainly what Putin wants.
It all
increasingly makes it look, as our Russia expert Luke Harding put it, that “the
truth is that America either wants Russia to win, or doesn’t care if Ukraine
loses.”
On that
depressing note…
It’s
Tuesday, 15 April 2025, it’s Jakub Krupa here, and this is Europe Live.
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