Donald Trump was elected president again partly on a program of ending the war in Ukraine through a negotiated settlement. Barely a day passed from his victorious election when President Vladimir Putin responded with his terms of ending the conflict.
Putin gave a substantial talk at the Valdai Discussion Forum on November 7, a premier showcase for semi-official foreign policy pronouncements in Russia. He welcomed the opportunity to talk with President-elect Trump and announced that he is willing to have sincere discussions and reestablish the relationship with the United States.
However, Putin’s conditions for ending the conflict touched upon much more than the war in Ukraine, which Putin regards as only a symptom of his hostile relationship with the West.
First of all, Putin’s most uncompromising demand is for the revision of the international order, meaning the end of Western hegemony. He determined that there is a need for the next historical stage.
The West believes in its own exceptionalism and maintains absolute power, but actually the West is in systemic crisis and against the interests of American and European societies with deteriorated legal and moral norms.
More importantly, Putin regards this system of Western hegemony as representing a global minority, maintaining dominance over the majority: Russia and the global South. This is deeply immoral. The West must lose its hegemony and become only one of the international powers. This is the essence of conflict today.
After the end of the Cold War, the West became geopolitically greedy, Putin says. It got involved in Yugoslavia, Iraq and Libya, and today in Ukraine and the Middle East. The West was sowing discord between Russia and Germany and expanding NATO, preventing Russia from managing its own zone of influence.
Now the new era is emerging of multilateral cooperation, based on openness with no artificial barriers, restrictions and egotistical interests. This new world is based on the Eastern philosophy of harmony and win-win constructive cooperation with no coercion.
For Putin, the best examples of such new forms are BRICs and the system of Eurasian security. They are based on sovereign equality, fairness, free movement of people. Only this type of multilateralism can lead to international stability.
Second, a new order is also necessary in Europe. Europe must be part of the Eurasian security system.
For Putin, promising beginnings were made in this direction. He witnessed Chancellor Kohl of Germany say that the future of Europe is with Russia.
But the United States keeps sowing discord between Germany and Russia. China is also part of this system but it does not strive for dominance. It is the West that is constantly on the offensive and wants to project its own influence over our historical territories.
Putin does not specify what he regards as Russian historical territories and many people assume that he is referring either to the Soviet Union or the old tsarist empire.
But considering that he lays claim to the Middle East, Libya and Iraq, it seems that he is actually referring to the old Byzantine empire — the second Rome. Russia claims to be its direct successor because of the Byzantine baptism of the Kievan Rus in 988 and therefore it must follow in its footsteps.
Thus, the West’s creeping interventions, such as the one in the Caucasus, the expansion of NATO or its ABMs are actually efforts to destroy Russia, which cannot be cowed and which experienced an unprecedented level of popular consolidation recently. Russia will not allow it to happen because it has deep roots in own identity, history and culture.
Third, as far as Ukraine is concerned, Putin believes that it has been instrumentalized by the West to destroy Russia. It is the United States that created this conflict and derives the greatest benefit from it by increasing its influence.
Putin says that he recognized the 1991 borders when Ukraine was neutral. But now he believes in self-determination.
The Donbas and Crimea exercised their right to self-determination, just like Kosovo, and decided to secede. It was a sovereign decision made by the inhabitants of these sovereign territories.
Now, Putin has a treaty of mutual aid and is obligated to help them. This does not involve Russian aggression or violations of international law.
As far as the remainder of Ukraine is concerned, it must remain neutral, otherwise it becomes a tool in someone else’s hands and no durable settlement is possible.
A durable settlement could be achieved only on the basis of surrender negotiations that were started in April 2022 in Istanbul. This involved almost complete demilitarization of the country and “denazification” meaning Russian control of its politics.
Apparently, self-determination does not apply to this country.
In short, Putin expects Trump to give up the preeminent position of the United States in the world and treat Russia and China as equals and not impose any restrictions on them. He expects Trump to weaken NATO and cede Europe to become a part of the Russia- and China-dominated Eurasian security system.
Supposedly, the Germans agree but the U.S. is interfering in this natural process. Ukraine is in the Russian historical space and the U.S. is not allowed to help her. Ukraine must surrender and be controlled by Russia.
In his year-end press conference, Putin continued his diplomatic offensive of presenting Russia’s position in the most flattering way possible and claimed a position of strength. He mimicked Western discussions and arguments but without comprehending their substance, and subverting their meaning.
His most insistent demand is for the West to guarantee the security of Russia as if it were Ukraine which invaded Russia, not the opposite. If Putin does not come out of these negotiations appearing to be a winner, his future will become very uncertain. There is a touch of desperation in his extremist claims.
To emphasize the seriousness of his diplomatic offer and to register his protest against U.S. supply of long-range arms to Ukraine, Putin lobbed a hypersonic missile on a provincial city in Ukraine and resumed his nuclear saber-rattling. He promises to repeat this if his words are not taken seriously enough.
Now he is awaiting President Trump’s reply to this master narrative.
Dr. Lucja Swiatkowski Cannon is a senior research fellow at the Institute of World Politics in Washington, D.C. She was a strategist, policy adviser and project manager on democratic and economic reforms in Eastern Europe, the Baltics, and Central, South and Southeast Asia for Deloitte & Touche Emerging Markets, Coopers & Lybrand, and others. She has been an adjunct scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Dr. Cannon received a B.A., M.Phil. and Ph.D. from Columbia University where she was an International Fellow and IREX Scholar at Warsaw University, and the London School of Economics. Read more of Swiatkowski Cannon's reports — Here.