Pavel K. Baev
The fallout from the failed Russian plan to organize a meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump in Budapest was so significant that any prospect of bringing the war against Ukraine to an end any time soon appeared to disappear. Trump’s statement that a follow-up summit would be a “waste of time” seemingly negated the “Anchorage Impulse,” to which Putin had referred up to mid-October, implying that Trump acknowledged at the Alaska summit the Russian interpretation of “root causes” of the war (Nezavisimaya gazeta, October 10; TASS, October 22). Putin subsequently resorted to nuclear posturing, a move he had uncharacteristically abstained from for most of the first year of Trump’s presidency (Meduza, October 30; see EDM, November 3). Some new currents in the political atmosphere have, nevertheless, rehabilitated resilient hopes for a new round of results-oriented talks.
Nuclear brinksmanship has not delivered the results that Putin expected. Trump’s vague order to resume nuclear testing immediately, on par with other great powers, has left Russian experts puzzled and worried (RIAC, October 31; TopWar.ru, November 6). Putin convened an emergency meeting of his Security Council on November 5, which, contrary to usual protocol, was open to the media. In the orchestrated debate on the proposal for preparing the Novaya Zemlya test site for underground nuclear explosions, the predictably hawkish voices advocated instead for a wait-and-see approach (Kommersant, November 5). The Russian autocrat can still claim to have gained a new position of strength and deterred the U.S. attempt to put pressure on Moscow (Novaya Gazeta Europe, November 5). Russian-style nuclear deterrence is not exactly a “mind game” with calculated moves, but rather a vanity fair for demonstrating hugely expensive weapon systems of dubious military value (Meduza, November 5).
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