The Russian leader Vladimir Putin declared that doesn’t see the point to meet with Volodymyr Zelensky. The meeting had been proposed by the Ukrainian as a effort to end the war in Ukrainewhich has been going on since February 2022.
“This reinforces, in a certain way, the perception of Moscow that still believes it can improve your military position before making any relevant concessions“, said the International analyst Fernanda Magnotta to the CNN 360º this Friday (5).
According to the analyst, what prevails in this scenario is the logic of “negotiate by fighting”which makes the chances of a ceasefire or more assertive negotiation in the short term limited. “Instead of stopping to negotiate, what we should continue to watch is the continuation of the conflict“, he added.
Zelensky tries to transfer debate to the political field
Magnotta explained that, in recent days, Zelensky tried to transfer the debate to the political and symbolic planeaddressing the internal costs of the war for Russia itself.
“Instead of talking about Ukraine and the Ukrainian perspective that everyone already knows about, he tried to suggest that it might be interesting, from the point of view of Russian assets, to consider this pause,” the analyst said.
Putin’s denial, according to Magnotta, demonstrates that there is no Russian interest in enter this negotiation arena. Given the negative response to the meeting, the risk now, in Magnotta’s assessment, is new waves of attacks in the coming weeks and also the increase in Ukrainian operations on Russian territory.
Role of Donald Trump
Regarding Donald Trump’s role in trying to resolve the conflict, Magnotta assessed that his capacity for interference is relatively limited. “We have already realized on several occasions that Trump in fact does not control Moscow’s strategic calculations“, he stated.
The tools available to Trump would include economic pressure, and secondary sanctions for those who maintain relations with Russiabut the analyst highlighted that these measures already exist and are already quite severe.
“He can, in some way, try to articulate dialogues, mediating rapprochement. But we’ve seen him try to do this before, including in a very emblematic way, welcoming Putin to the American territory with a red carpetand not even with that conversation did we see a definitive solution emerge”, highlighted Magnotta.
For the analyst, as long as the interests of both the Russian and Ukrainian sides are incompatible and there is no trust buildingit is unlikely that any mediation will produce definitive results.
