27173 | 25 Oct. 2024 | 09:03

Like many analysts and most Europeans, I believe that the war will end with an agreement through negotiations. Kiev will be forced to exchange territory for significant security guarantees

"Like a conversation with a mirror" - that's how diplomacy historian Sergey Radchenko describes Nikita Khrushchev's preparation for negotiations with Dwight Eisenhower after the death of Joseph Stalin. The Soviet leader imagines what he will say to the American president, how Ike will initially reject his arguments, but then give in to their logic as the only working solution.

 This is what political scientist Ivan Krastev says in an analysis for the "Financial Times", cited by "24 Hours".

"The difficulty of talking with imaginary opponents - writes Radchenko - is that we unconsciously make them say what we want them to say." We do not consider what would happen if the other side opposed our logic.

 In the Western approach towards Moscow today, I can find a version of "talking to a mirror". We listen only to hear what we want to hear, namely that Putin wants to negotiate an end to the conflict in Ukraine. But is that really the case?

 Like many analysts and most Europeans, I believe that the war will end with an agreement through negotiations. Kiev will be forced to exchange territory for significant security guarantees.

 However, even if negotiations are inevitable, I'm not convinced that we are as close to the end as many others hope.

 According to Krastev, there are at least four factors that make the situation unpredictable.

 First, when it comes to the outcome of the war, Russia and Ukraine are in significantly different situations. Currently, the Kremlin is convinced that Russia is winning on the battlefield. It is believed that he has significant room for maneuver when it comes to ending the war (even how to end it).

 Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, on the other hand, is in an insecure situation. The military failures of Ukraine have weakened his political support. Ukrainians want the war to end as soon as possible, but they are still not willing to compromise their land for peace.

 This means that Zelensky is forced to talk about victory even when seeking compromise.

 Secondly, many of those who speak about negotiations assume they know what the Russian president wants and what he is prepared to concede.

 During his recent visit to the USA, Ukrainian president Zelensky, former president Donald Trump stated that "we have very good relations (with Zelensky), and I also have very good relations, as you know, with President Putin and I think that if we win... we will resolve it (the conflict) very quickly", as Ivan Krastev reminds us in his analysis.

 In his usual self-praise, Trump wanted to say that he has negotiated with Putin before and is confident he knows how to do it again.

 The problem is that no Western leader has a solid understanding of Putin's current motives. The pre-war Putin and today's Putin are as different as Stalin in 1940 is from Stalin in 1944.

 Additionally, Russia's goals have changed over time.

 Initially, Putin's "special operation" was focused like a laser. Her main goal was to break the magic of the West over Ukrainian society.

 The assumption was that Ukrainians are "bewitched Russians" who need a short war to wake up. But the awakening did not happen.

 The special operation failed by September 2022. What we have witnessed since then is a puppet war against NATO, led on Ukrainian territory. This is the way Putin and most Russians see things. That's why Putin will not allow any American president, even his old friend Trump, to play the role of a heroic peacemaker.

 Peace must be a Russian victory. The destruction of NATO is one of Moscow's military goals, according to Krastev.

 The fourth difficulty is that neither the US nor the EU have a long-term strategy for Russia.

 Ukraine has been an integral part of Western policy towards Russia since the end of the Cold War. This policy had two sides. In its transformative version, the democratization of Ukraine was viewed as a tool for the democratization of Russia itself.

 But there was another version, more focused on stability, in which the logic prevailed: do not provoke the bear. This two-faced policy contributed to the outbreak of war in Ukraine.

 In the nearly one thousand days since the beginning of the war, the West did not want to allow Ukrainians to hit targets in Russia itself, but "compensated" Ukraine by giving it a license to determine how the West speaks about Russia. The West shifted its Russia policy to Ukraine. If Putin believes that Russia is at war with the West, such delegation is self-destructive.
 
 The leaders of the US and Europe must regain initiative in their relations with Russia. Any meaningful negotiations will not only concern Ukraine, but also the future of the European order. As the old Russian saying goes: "If you invite the bear to dance, you don't decide when the dance ends, the bear does," concludes Ivan Krastev's analysis for the "Financial Times".