Behind the doors of the Kremlin will be transferred within the week the negotiation on the fate of , with the visit of the envoy of the president, Steve Witkoff, to . Real estate agent Vitkov is packing for Moscow after securing the president’s coverage of his ultra-friendly phone conversations with Putin’s counterpart, secret adviser Yuri Ushakov, who he coached on how the Russian leader should approach Trump. So said Trump, who prefers his own people to the “bureaucrats” of the State Department.
Ukraine is facing existential dilemmas alongside its worst internal crisis since the 2022 Russian invasion that reaches the presidential palace in Kiev. The president’s chief of staff, Andrii Yermak, resigned on Friday hours after his home was searched by the anti-corruption agency in connection with the much-vaunted scandal at the state-run nuclear power company. Germak has a leading role in the negotiation as well.
There is no guarantee that the Americans and Russians will take seriously the pro-Ukrainian “improvements” that European leaders have demanded and received on paper, let alone their fear of Russian expansionism, which the Russian leader called “ridiculous.”
Instead, Putin described the Hungarian prime minister’s stance as “balanced” in order to ensure the flow of Russian natural gas, keep Hungarians warm in the winter and ask for their vote in parliamentary elections next April. Demonstrably indifferent to European unity, Orbán won from Trump his country’s exemption from secondary sanctions.
Diplomatic and financial tug-of-war
On November 6, amid behind-the-scenes negotiations with the Kremlin over the fate of Ukraine, the Donald Trump successively welcomed to the White House the leaders of the five countries located in its soft underbelly in Central Asia.
After the bilateral meetings, the US president hosted a working lunch for the powerful men of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, with the mineral wealth of their countries as the first course. Regardless of whether or not there is a settlement in Ukraine and Eastern Europe, other strategically important regions such as Central Asia, the Caucasus, and the Arctic will continue to be areas of competition between the US and Russia.
There, instead of a proxy war, a diplomatic and economic tug-of-war is under way that may develop in the future into a negotiation on “spheres of influence” and a new Yalta.
Central Asia
On the eve of Trump’s meeting with Central Asian leaders, a bipartisan panel of senators introduced a bill in Congress to lift restrictions on American investment in the region dating back to the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union. The head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Jim Reesset the frame without rotations.
“We must ensure that these countries decide their own futures at a time when unstable Russia and China aggressively advance their own interests at the expense of their neighbors. The US offers the countries of Central Asia a real opportunity to work with a willing partner and grow their economies.” said the Republican senator, recalling in style and content the American interventions during the Ukrainian Orange Revolution.
Although all five countries maintain close economic and military relations with Moscow, to the extent that they are considered its satellites, the US continues its infiltration efforts that began in 2004 with the so-called “color revolutions” in Russia’s periphery. The US maintains no permanent bases in the region, but with Russia’s “green light” it has for years used the bases of Manas in Kyrgyzstan and Karsli Khanabad in Uzbekistan as transit stations for the “war on terror” in Afghanistan.
Officially, the American military presence ended after the color revolutions in both countries, several years before the disorderly American withdrawal from Afghanistan. The US is now coming back to claim a share of the rich subsoil while attempting to interfere with China’s Silk Road trade and the Russia-China axis.
Caucasus
At the crossroads of Asia and Europe, between the Black Sea and the Caspian, the Caucasus mountain range is an area where the American footprint is constantly growing. Moscow imposed itself by force of arms on the autonomous republics of the North Caucasus that remain parts of the Russian Federation (Chechnya, Dagestan, North Ossetia, Abkhazia), but the South Caucasus ceased to be the southernmost Russian embankment. Russia is trying tooth and nail to keep Georgia in its own sphere of influence, undermining Tbilisi’s Euro-Atlantic course and supporting the pro-Russians who currently have the upper hand.
In the South Caucasus, the balance tipped decisively in favor of the Americans after the defeat of the Armenians by the Azeris in the Nagorno-Karabakh war. The leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan shook hands at the White House last August, agreeing to the plan to create the “Trump Corridor for International Peace and Prosperity.” The 99-year-old agreement sees the 43km long corridor cross Armenian territory, linking Azerbaijan with the Azeri enclave of Nakhchivan (and Turkey, which claims a border guard role). The trade and energy hub to be developed by American companies helps bypass Russia and encircle Iran as it runs parallel to the Iranian border.
Arctic
If there is one area of the planet in which Russia maintains an advantage over the USA, it is the Arctic, where the climate crisis and the consequent retreat of the ice create new data and challenges for navigation and the exploitation of energy resources in the depths of the Arctic Ocean. Moscow has most of the coast, thus a much larger EEZ, but the US is trying to change the balance with the support of the other members of the Arctic Council (Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden).
Trump’s plan to conquer Greenland, by acquisition from Denmark, through local self-determination or even by force of arms, is not a sign of “megalomania” by the US president, but reveals the dispositions of the US, which lags behind in coastline, bases and icebreakers, while also aiming to exploit the rich subsoil.
On the other hand, Russia is intensifying naval exercises near Alaska with the participation of warships and aircraft from China, which are increasingly passing through the Bering Strait. The military dimension becomes more noticeable if we see the Arctic on the globe, not on a flat map. Missiles will fly over the Arctic in the event of a nuclear holocaust.
Nuclear weapons
In February 2026, the New START agreement, which set limits on the development of nuclear warheads and strategic missiles by the two largest nuclear powers, expires. Russia has about 5,500 nuclear warheads and the US about 5,200, and both countries have warned against resuming nuclear tests.
In the midst of the war in Ukraine, Moscow has not ruled out a first strike with tactical nukes (so-called “small” nuclear bombs) on the front while Russian media often threaten to level London, Berlin and Paris. An agreement on Ukraine would create conditions for the renewal of the START treaty, without however discounting a positive outcome of the relevant negotiations.
