As Russia enters its third month of war against Ukraine, the question is whether a solution is possible by negotiating with Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
Kenneth Dekleva, a psychiatrist who has worked for the US State Department in the past, disagrees with the speculation that Putin is unstable and therefore impossible to deal with.
Dekleva describes the Russian President as “Putin is not crazy. He is a sensible actor and knows exactly what he is doing. He is an intuitive, highly intelligent and ruthless leader who has been in power for more than 22 years.”
Kenneth Dekleva, a senior fellow at the George HW Bush Foundation for US-China Relations in Texas, has studied Putin, a former Russian intelligence agent, for 20 years.
Dekleva says that because of Vladimir Putin’s training as a KGB agent, he is determined, steadfast, proficient at manipulating people, and extremely focused. But the recent actions of 69-year-old Putin suggest a less flexible leadership style sometimes seen in aging leaders.
Dekleva explains this leadership style by saying, “You become more rigid. You see things more in black and white. You have less tolerance for nuance and uncertainty.”
But Dekleva says that the Russian leader fits that description. “It’s definitely a possibility, but I’m not sure if we can describe Putin as that, judging from his recent decision on the Ukraine war. However, Putin seems to be a deliberately focused and somewhat impetuous man.” .
Dekleva says the way to negotiate with someone like Putin is to try to understand his mentality and empathize with him, even if you don’t agree.
Dealing with Putin takes determination, according to Jason Pack, a senior analyst at the NATO Defense College Foundation in Italy.
Pack said of this determination, “I think we need to be brave enough to come to the brink of things that we think will cause a huge escalation in tensions, such as going into a cyber war. If you don’t, the lights will stay off for two days,” he explains.
Pack says he has every reason to believe that if Putin invaded Ukraine, the West would throw it back, even though it had “more military and economic power at its disposal.”
At this point, Pack reminds us that after the war with Georgia in 2008, Russia occupied twenty percent of the country. Putin also annexed the south of Crimea, which was then in Ukraine’s hands, in 2014.
Of Putin, Pack says, “He seems to respect power and doesn’t like things being muttered. I don’t think he even thought we would impose sanctions where he was threatened in case of invasion, because his attitude was like ‘it’s just bullshit'”; Nor does he believe that Putin will commit destructive nuclear action.
Pack explains that Putin wants to live, “he is afraid of COVID. As you can see in the photos, he stands six meters away from his advisers. So as long as we stick to the rule of no NATO personnel fighting in Ukraine, I don’t think there’s any risk of blowing up the world.”
Strongly opposing the joining of Ukraine, which was formerly part of the Soviet Union, to NATO, Putin complains that the West is too close to Russia’s borders.
Pointing out that Putin’s main aim was to take Kiev, but he did not use tactical nuclear weapons for this, Pack said, “It turned out to be a hollow power to some extent. He thought we would retreat. He wants to live. He does not want to be overthrown inside Russia. He has terrible coordination with his generals. “There were no war plans,” he says.
Kenneth Dekleva states that negotiations to end the conflict in Ukraine should consider both Ukraine’s security needs and sovereignty, and Putin’s perception of threat to NATO’s expansion into Russia’s borders.
Dekleva thinks that a senior third-party mediator, such as China, India or Israel, that both Putin and the West can trust could be helpful to the process. Dekleva is very clear about what should not be in the negotiations.
Dekleva says that “it doesn’t help that senior leaders in the West, including US President Joe Biden, call Putin a madman, thug, murderer or war criminal”, saying that the Russian leader cannot be brought to the table in this way.