Another round of trilateral Ukraine peace talks has wrapped up in Geneva with the ritual claims that they were ‘businesslike’ and ‘productive’. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s president Zelensky took to social media to announce that he doesn’t ‘need historical shit to end this war’ and accused the Russians of doing nothing but engaging in delaying tactics. So is there any point to the talks?
Central to this question is quite what Vladimir Putin really wants. If granted the remaining, unconquered portion of the Donetsk region that he is demanding – itself potentially a concession too far for Kyiv – will he be willing to call it quits and allow the rest of Ukraine to go its own way, subject to constraints on Nato membership and the presence of foreign troops in peacetime? This is, after all, the basis of the current process, which therefore focuses on haggling over territory and security guarantees.
Or, as others assert, is this all a sham, to placate Donald Trump and string everyone along? This camp believe that Putin will never abandon maximalist demands not just for even more territory, quite possibly including the Black Sea port of Odessa, but the ousting of the Zelensky government and the imposition of a new one subservient to Moscow. If this is true, then it is hard to see how the current talks can do anything beyond achieve some peripheral progress such as in prisoner exchanges.
Putin remains a geopolitical Rorschach inkblot
The problem is that, as ever, Putin remains a geopolitical Rorschach inkblot. Assessments of his true intent tend to say more about the observer’s experiences, prejudices and assumptions than anything else. His speeches and comments can be mined for ‘evidence’ to support whichever perspective, but he is no more consistent or honest than any other politician. Likewise, one can find officials and talking heads to justify presenting Putin as an imperial maximalist or a pragmatic peace-seeker, to taste.
A particular problem is that the people who really know – Putin and his closest advisers and cronies – are tight-lipped. Not for them the temptation of the tell-all interview or the steady stream of strategic leaks that fuels western (and especially US) coverage. Foreign minister Sergei Lavrov and his sharp-tongued spokeswoman Maria Zakharova are voluble, but he and his ministry are long since no longer in the driving seat. In many ways, Lavrov has undergone the same demeaning metamorphosis as former president Dmitri Medvedev, relegated to making often outlandishly hawkish statements precisely so that the Kremlin can look statesmanlike in comparison. The people really driving the process, like presidential foreign policy adviser Yuri Ushakov, keep their comments bland and generic.
Besides, Putin is not a rigid strategist with a fixed game plan to follow. He is an opportunist, a tactician, who will constantly be running cost-benefit analyses, setting the costs of continuing the war – economic, political, geopolitical – against what he thinks he can get. His intentions yesterday may not be the same as tomorrow’s.
As if that were not problematic enough, his conduct has often proved that even rational actors can do foolish things, depending on their assumptions and what they are told. When Putin invaded Ukraine in 2022, he did not believe he was leading his country into a long, bloody war. His prejudices about Ukrainians and the way his circle of mini-mes told him what he wanted to hear, not what he needed to hear, led him to assume that in a few weeks or months, and largely without bloodshed, Ukraine would have been dragged back into Russia’s sphere of influence. Likewise, we don’t know how far the upbeat and exaggerated public claims of Russian advances on the ground coming from the military genuinely reflect what he is being told.
The likely truth is that Putin, for whom the survival of his regime must surely take priority, is after the most he can get whenever he feels is the right time to settle. Should Russian forces make some unlikely breakthrough in Donetsk, he may well chance his arm and demand some new concession. Should some crisis at home or the front imperil his current gains, he may be willing ‘magnanimously’ to moderate his terms.
It is precisely because we should have the humility to accept we don’t know for sure what Putin is willing to accept that these talks matter. Negotiations are dynamic processes whereby it is possible for unexpected accords to emerge. More to the point, they are an opportunity to test the tolerances, terms and taboos of both sides, a chance to force them to put their money – and territory, and credibility – where their mouths are.
Honestly, I am not optimistic about this current peace process, although I would love to be proven wrong. However, even if only as the basis for some new round of more viable negotiations in the future, as a chance to address the minor issues and identify the genuinely intractable ones from the rhetorical flourishes, they deserve to run their course – whatever Zelensky’s exasperation.
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