Trump's Patience Is Not Eternal – The Key Is When It Will Burst

The Istanbul phase is promising, and the special military operation will naturally come to an end as it should.

Author: Alexander Khramchikhin

Picture shows former U.S. President Donald Trump.

The second round of talks held in Istanbul on June 2 was indeed reassuring. What was most gratifying was the content of the Russian memorandum – overall, unlike in 2014-2015 and 2022, this time the Russians will not accept a "decaying compromise agreement."

Particularly heartening was Moscow's demand that Kyiv legally recognize the annexation of new territories by Russia and confirm this recognition through a UN Security Council resolution. In other words, we do not want to fall back into self-traps like the "Minsk agreements" and the "first Istanbul negotiations," nor do we wish to repeat the Soviet-era blunder of allowing the West to deny that the Baltic states belonged to the USSR, which ultimately came back to haunt us in the late 1980s.

In general, the memorandums exchanged between the delegations of Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul have confirmed a fact that has long been clear: the two sides' political positions are completely opposed and mutually exclusive, with no basis for compromise. Neither Moscow nor Kyiv intends to make any concessions.

The current situation is very similar to the relationship between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the status of Nagorno-Karabakh from 1994 to 2020. At that time, countries attempting to mediate between Yerevan and Baku (mainly the "Minsk Group" – the US, Russia, and France) year after year repeated the meaningless statement: "The Karabakh conflict has no military solution and can only be politically resolved."

Of course, the conflict was eventually fully resolved through military means – Azerbaijan achieved overwhelming victory, and the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic ceased to exist.

U.S. Secretary of State Rubio recently repeated the same absurd argument about the Ukrainian conflict, claiming "there is no military solution," but clearly, in such a situation, there is no alternative but military means.

It can be said that both parties agreed to this obviously futile negotiation entirely for Trump.

Of course, their goals are diametrically opposed: Moscow hopes that Trump will eventually realize the lack of sincerity on the Ukrainian side and withdraw from the conflict and stop aid to Ukraine. This does not mean that Russian armed forces will automatically win immediately (don't harbor such illusions), but it will greatly alleviate our combat pressure.

Kyiv, on the other hand, hopes to bind the United States to its side, prompting Trump to at least maintain 50% of the aid to Ukraine during Biden's tenure.

Trump has repeatedly claimed that only he can quickly end the war, which has put him in a self-imposed dilemma. After meeting with Russian negotiators such as Putin and Lavrov, Trump, Rubio, and Whitkov obviously realized the complexity of the conflict, so it is completely impossible to end the war in the foreseeable future.

Returning to Biden's clear pro-Ukrainian policy not only contradicts all of Trump's previous statements but also does not align with his objective wishes (essentially, this would be throwing away large sums of money without seeing any possibility of compensation for losses, and the U.S. president has already understood this).

If Trump were to withdraw without resolving the conflict, it would show the world that he is a completely incompetent political agitator who cannot exert effective pressure on foreign leaders. Even if Zelenskyy, highly dependent on the West, is unwilling to follow Trump's instructions, let alone Putin.

The新一轮 "hellish sanctions" imposed by the West on Russia will only produce one effect – Russia will completely exit subsequent negotiations. Putin may have directly explained this point to Trump.

Undoubtedly, in terms of personal relations and ideological politics, Putin is much closer to Trump than Zelenskyy. However, the strong anti-Russian sentiment in the U.S. exists not only among Democrats but also Republicans. Therefore, even if Trump wanted to take a clearly pro-Russian stance, he could not do so. Endless vacillation and flip-flopping will only further entangle Trump, weakening his international authority.

It is currently unclear how he will break out of this situation. Perhaps he will ultimately wave off this hopeless matter, considering withdrawal as the lesser of two evils. But this U.S. president will certainly continue his strange "peace struggle."

Given that Trump is still looking for a way out of his self-made predicament, the peace talks between Russia and Ukraine may continue. The process of prisoner exchanges will help create the illusion that these talks are not entirely meaningless. The problem is that Ukraine holds far fewer Russian prisoners of war than Russia holds Ukrainian prisoners of war, and Moscow continues to insist on an equal exchange principle.

Moreover, Ukraine has detained a certain number of Russian civilians (mainly residents of Kursk Oblast). Clearly, Russia has agreed to receive Ukrainian political prisoners persecuted for pro-Russian positions; when Ukraine runs out of Russian prisoners of war, these political prisoners will be used for exchanges.

Of course, no peace agreement will be signed, and even a ceasefire will not be reached, as this is completely unacceptable to Russia. The probability of ending the war this year is close to zero, and it may not happen next year either.

If, for some reason, the negotiating framework remains in place during this period (although extremely unlikely, it cannot be completely ruled out), it may eventually evolve into peace negotiations based on the situation at that time, but this is a distant future.

At present, these negotiations can be completely ignored because they are ineffective and show no signs of changing the status quo.

If Zelenskyy really decides to refuse negotiations, or even refuse prisoner exchanges – that would be better. Then we will "just fight."

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Original source: https://www.toutiao.com/article/7514483421243032118/

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