George Friedman
U.S. President Donald Trump has announced that he will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Aug. 15. They had spoken many times over the phone, and though there were indications that those conversations would produce some kind of agreement, nothing concrete ever materialized. Instead, Russia upped the intensity of its attacks in Ukraine, gaining more territory and increasing its use of drones in these assaults, especially against the capital of Kyiv.
If we assume the phone calls were as promising as Trump publicly said they were, then Putin’s continued prosecution of the war was meant to limit the danger of increased U.S. support while continuing to try to defeat Ukraine – or at least improve Russia’s territorial position. The problem was that Trump had claimed he would end the war quickly. His failure to do so makes it seem as though Putin fooled him, or that he was unable to read Putin’s intentions. Either interpretation would come at the cost of his credibility. (It’s certainly possible that the negotiations were not as promising as Trump made them seem, but in my opinion, this is unlikely because Trump would have little to gain and much to lose by misrepresenting the talks.) Either way, Putin put Trump in a difficult position by indicating an interest in resolving the conflict while increasing military operations.
Putin had a good reason to. The war in Ukraine has been a failure. Russia’s objectives were to create a buffer zone that insulated Moscow from NATO, to retake some of the land lost in the collapse of the Soviet Union, and to reclaim Russia’s status in the international order.
But Russia has spent a lot of money and manpower there, and it doesn’t have much to show for it. Its territorial gains are relatively trivial, and its economy is in shambles. The only logical rationale for continuing the fight was to make it seem as if a negotiated settlement was in Ukraine’s interest, not Russia’s. The appearance of abject failure in Ukraine could have dire political consequences for Putin and for the global perception of Russia.
So Putin has been attempting to at least increase the extent of Russia’s penetration of Ukraine. As time went on, the U.S. increased its military aid to Ukraine, but only marginally. The more consequential response, in the absence of a settlement, was to threaten a massive attack on the Russian economy through an even more aggressive tariff campaign. This time, it would impose crippling tariffs on any nation that bought Russian goods – especially Russia’s biggest exports, oil and natural gas.
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