A few days after the call between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, the shock wave continues to be felt in Ukraine and Europe. A fear continues to grow: that the new American president – eager for a “deal” to end the war – only yields to the requirements of his Russian counterpart. Already, the new administration has excluded any membership from Ukraine to NATO, as is a return from the country to its borders of 2014 – two fundamental requests for kyiv. “Negotiations have not even started yet that part of the Russian maximalist objectives have already been theoretically achieved,” said Dimitri Minic, researcher at the Russia-Eurasie Center of the French Institute of International Relations and author of Russian strategic thinking and culture: from the bypass of the armed struggle to the war in Ukraine (Ed. Maison des sciences de l’Homme, 2023). This specialist also insists that strong Ukrainian concessions could lead to a keen resentment towards the West. With the risk of coming to power in kyiv of a prorussian government, or even a “military coup”. Interview.
L’Express: What are the main objectives of Vladimir Putin in these negotiations?
Dimitri Minic: Putin is not in a hurry to negotiate on Ukraine, both because the balance of power is objectively favorable to him-all the more with a neo-Isolationist American administration-and because the war has reconfigured internal balances in Russia. However, real peace could destabilize them. It should be kept in mind that this country has not invaded Ukraine for “lands” as naively believes – or pretends to believe it – Donald Trump. Moscow wishes a vassalization of Ukraine.
This involves a “finlanting” of the country, that is to say its non-adhesion to NATO, the ban on installing Western military infrastructure and delivering American or European military equipment. In addition, Putin demands a demilitarization of Ukraine and a regime change in kyiv which would be favorable to him. Added to this is the transfer of the annexed territories, including the parties still controlled by Ukraine, and perhaps other territories in the regions of Kharkiv, Odessa and Dniepropetrovsk. Either Donald Trump allows the Kremlin to get closer to this vassalization objective, or he does not wish, and negotiations will fail.
Flattering Donald Trump and renting his “common sense” is paid for Putin?
So far, Putin seems to have managed to “manage” Donald Trump. The Russian president responded by flattery to criticism and threats that his American counterpart, irritated by the Russian rejection of American proposals in December, publicly sent him in January. Putin has publicly praised the “common sense” of Donald Trump and married her story of the war in Ukraine, according to which she would never have started if he had been in place of Joe Biden. In parallel, Putin reaffirmed its alliances and partnerships with Iran and China.
Dimitri Minic is the author of the work “Russian strategic thought and culture: from the bypass of the armed struggle to war in Ukraine” (Paris, Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, April 2023)
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If the North Korean troops were removed from the front in the Russian region of Koursk in January, it seems that it is first linked to the heavy losses suffered-even if Moscow was able to pass this as a sign of ‘Opening to the American part-, while the North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un reaffirmed, on February 9, his commitment to support Russia militarily. Donald Trump may have been sensitive to Putin’s maneuvers, including his flattery, but it is not decisive. What is, however, is Trump’s indifference to the fate of Ukraine and Europe. The asymmetry of the challenges in Ukraine, existential for the Kremlin, and not existential for the new American administration, is just as decisive.
Should we fear that Trump is satisfied with a bad agreement for Ukraine and the Europeans, as long as he can have a “deal”?
What does Trump want? A quick deal to be a sacred peacemaker, which the Kremlin has understood very well. What does Putin want? Vassalize Ukraine, which Trump does not really seem to understand. But he will quickly realize if he wants to make a deal with Putin. The latter is not in a hurry: he is convinced that he can prevail on the battlefield. Especially since at the same time, Washington is reluctant to use most of the levers he has on Russia, namely, on the one hand, financial and military support to Ukraine, not to mention a shipment of ground troops, and, on the other hand, sanctions, customs duties and the use of frozen Russian assets. Trump also refuses that the security forces, supposed to keep a demilitarized area, be American. He therefore leaves responsibility for creating these forces to Europeans.
Negotiations have not even started only part of the Russian maximalist objectives have already been theoretically achieved: de facto acceptance of the annexed and non-adhesion of Ukraine at NATO. The partial or total exclusion of Volodymyr Zelensky of negotiations as well as the mention by Donald Trump of bad popularity polls of the Ukrainian president and the need for new elections, are a step towards the acceptance of another fundamental requirement of Moscow: the change of diet. If Trump wants an agreement with Putin, these elements will have to be acquired before negotiations, which will focus first and foremost on: the contours of finlantization, the drastic reduction in the size of the Ukrainian army, partial lifting or Total Western sanctions against Russia, and finally the creation of a new security architecture in Europe, including a decline in NATO.
It seems totally unacceptable …
The transparency of American isolationist policy has from the start weakened the hand of the American administration. This losing strategy culminated on February 12 with the statements of Trump and his defense secretary, Pete Hegseth. The latter tried to retreat, the next day, on the American refusal to bring Ukraine into NATO by indicating that it is up to Trump to make this decision. The American vice-president, JD Vance, also tried to catch up on the same day, recalling that sanctions and even “military pressure means” were not excluded if Russia did not want to agree .
But it will be difficult for the American part to erase statements like “I don’t really care what will happen to Ukraine in one way or another”, launched by JD Vance last July, or that Insisting that Washington does not want only one American to be involved in a peacekeeping force or security guarantee in Ukraine. Trump is ready for important concessions because there is no other real stake for him than to make peace, that the conditions for Ukraine and Europe matter. He will make up these concessions in “best deal in the history of humanity” if he gets what he wants from Russia. Now what he wants has nothing to do with the sovereignty and independence of Ukraine.
Wouldn’t a bad “deal” constitute a humiliation for Trump?
We don’t all have the same definition of what a good “deal” is. For Trump, the bad “deal” is on the one hand to continue to finance a war from which he considers no advantage, and on the other hand to alternate Russia permanently, while he hopes to take advantage of From a good understanding with her, by detaching her from China. Given the inflexibility of Moscow – which will not “let go” China for the beautiful eyes of Washington – and the pressing desire of Trump to make peace, a good “deal” for the latter would be a peace where concessions to Russia would not see itself too much.
Despite a very conciliatory tone and theoretical concessions even before the negotiations started, Trump could also very well refuse the maximalist requirements of Moscow, get tired of the stiffness of the Kremlin and end up strengthening the sanctions while pushing the Ukrainians and Europeans to Buy American weapons. In summary, let them manage. After all, Trump believes that it is a European affair. The only threat that Washington seems to be ready to implement is economic: imposing or strengthening sanctions and increasing customs duties. This will in no way change the course of Russian policy in Ukraine and Europe. On the other hand, military threats, not to mention an attempt to implement these threats, will lead, according to their nature, to an aggressive rhetoric that we know well in Putin: invoke the specter of a third world war or a nuclear apocalypse.
Does Ukraine have the ability to refuse bad agreement?
Of course she has the capacity and she may do so. Nothing consisting will be outside the will of the Ukrainians. But it is to be feared that kyiv should choose between plague and cholera: to refuse the conditions negotiated by Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, and to continue a war that she is unlikely to win without firm support from the West; Or accept these conditions and therefore give up, sooner or later, its independence. The hostility of Ukrainians towards Russia is legitimately and permanently rooted, but resentment towards Washington and, perhaps even more, to Europe, will be strong.
Waddle and acceptance, at least temporary, of a prorusian flourish should not be excluded. Whether these conciliatory authorities with Russia or simply prorussians come to power following negotiations that would have resulted, or after a military victory in Ukraine, or in the longer term, as was the case in Georgia. Dispered by Westerners, some members of the Ukrainian elite could also try to dialogue directly with Russia by excluding Westerners from the equation and by renouncing partnerships of all kinds with them. The Kremlin would probably be delighted and perhaps more “Clement”. The prospect of strong Ukrainian concessions and a complete abandonment of Westerners could just as well lead to a military coup, even a desperate attempt to obtain the atomic weapon. What is certain is that the will of the Ukrainian population will be decisive, nothing will be played outside of it.
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