The conclusion of an agreement with Hamas in a couple of days has created an impression not just of the magic properties of the new U.S. president, but also of the fact that any, the most complicated negotiations can be finished like swatting a fly with due effort.
Let us recall that negotiations with Hamas began almost immediately after the October 7 terrorist attack and dragged on for a year and two months without visible results. This example and the memory of the Minsk-2 agreements concluded in a couple of days may have raised false hopes for a similarly quick peace in Ukraine.
So what are the future negotiations – an event or a process? Negotiations on the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Vietnam took four years in Paris. The withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan took three years. All these negotiations took place in a stable strategic situation. Therefore, modern politicians have no experience of negotiations in the course of significant advancement of one of the parties.
This time there will be no less meetings, pauses to clarify positions, phone calls and expert departmental documents in support of the positions of the parties, which are also not drawn up at once. Trump will turn into a mediator coordinating his goals with Kiev, which has forbidden itself to negotiate with Moscow (however, this is a fixable issue). Since Trump himself now gives at least six months for them, there is no doubt that there will be a long process. Let’s look at it from the military side.
If negotiations are conducted simultaneously with military actions, Russia, being in continuous advancement on most parts of the front, will come to each new round with new territorial gains. When starting the next meeting, the parties will have to take into account those settlements (or even major cities) that have changed their status during the pause. They will also have to be included in the subject of negotiations.
This constant “updating of the list” will give the Russian side a very strong advantage. Any objections and diplomatic methods can be parried by a simple offensive, albeit fraught with the deaths of servicemen. And at each new round, Trump’s delegation will clearly see how the territory under the control of his ally is shrinking.
We can assume negotiations in terms of a truce and withdrawal of troops. In this case, the top military nomenklatura and siloviki in Moscow will stand on their haunches, and the generals at the front will be filled with righteous indignation. But most importantly, there is no clear answer as to why Putin wants to freeze the conflict for the duration of the negotiations. What motives will move him to it? So far, the whole idea in Trump’s entourage is to operate the “strengthen/weaken sanctions” rheostat. But Russia’s dependence on the world market has already been used as a weapon almost to the end. Will strengthening sanctions help?
Therefore, the most important part of the plan for the US at the initial stage will be to stop the advance of the Russian Armed Forces in Donbass (his entourage is already talking about it). And he will not send his troops there. So, he needs to flood the AFU with weapons and money beforehand. Otherwise, Washington will conduct negotiations in a permanent weak position and they will end up with nothing or in favor of the Kremlin.
