At this stage, there is no indication that they will manage to get along. True to his “maximum pressure” strategy, Donald Trump has died Vladimir Putin: if he does not “quickly” agree to end the war in Ukraine, he will impose taxes on Moscow ” Customs and “very high, he insisted on Truth Social. He did not escape the American president that the Russian economy has alarming signs of overheating: 9 % official inflation (but price increases closer to 15 % in supermarkets), a free fall ruble … in This degraded context, tackling the sales of Russian gas and oil – which represents more than half of the export revenues, according to the latest available data – would bring a severe blow to the Putin War.
Not sure, however, that this threat is enough to make it bend. Although “concerned” by the economic situation, the chief of the Kremlin is not (yet) short of resources. On the initiative on the battlefield, he could oppose an end of inadmissibility in Washington. At the end connoisseur of the Psyche Trumpian, he could also take the US president on the other hand. Already, he has started to flatter him by calling him “intelligent” and “pragmatic”. He could now encourage him to deal with him directly with him the fate of Ukraine. Without Volodymyr Zelensky. And without Europeans.
New yalta
Last September, Putin said he was ready to negotiate a peace on the basis of the “Istanbul formula”, talks between kyiv and Moscow who had stood in the spring of 2022. Ukraine agreed to become neutral, but could join the European Union. The case had overturned, kyiv not having obtained sufficient security guarantees.
But Putin wants to go further. “It is preferable that we […] Quietly discussions from all areas that interest both the United States and Russia, “he said last week, talking about a possible meeting with the new American president. Negotiations at the end of the conflict in Ukraine could thus integrate in a larger format, aimed at defining a new European security architecture.
End the war – alone – and redraw a new order for the West? It would be tempting for a Donald Trump, who dreams of the Nobel Peace Prize. In kyiv, we see the danger: Putin wants to “negotiate the fate of Europe without Europe”, alerted Andriï Iermak, chief of staff to President Zelensky, on January 24. Mistrust, indeed. Between an egotic Trump and a manipulative poutine, the risk exists that Europeans will be kept away from “major diplomatic maneuvers” and that they are sweeps away from their own history. Or, to put it differently, that they are not at the negotiating table, but that they are the menu.