Don’t trust Putin’s promises – POLITICO

KIEV — US Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has joined former President Donald Trump in believing there are good faith deals to be struck with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

This is the position also taken by French President Emmanuel Macron last December, who raised the prospect of negotiating security guarantees for Russia with Putin under a new security architecture for Europe.

She tries to tell Yevgeny Prigozhin that the Kremlin is keeping its word on deals. Two months ago, after Prigozhin’s failed coup, the Russian security services said they would not press charges, and Prigozhin was lured into a false sense that he had been given security guarantees. The real verdict on Putin was an explosion in a private jet at 28,000 feet.

Any Ukrainian can tell you Russia’s assurances that it will not invade Its value is zero. Moscow was supposed to respect Ukrainian sovereignty and give Kiev security guarantees in accordance with the terms of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, under which Ukraine handed over its nuclear arsenal, but Putin has shown no interest in adhering to this international agreement.

Prigozhin certainly did nothing good for Ukraine, sending his convicted recruits into “meat wave” attacks in the Battle of Bakhmut. But his death may provide a cautionary and sobering lesson for politicians around the world, who easily believe they can trust Putin and cut deals with him.

“No one can come to terms with a serial liar like Putin and expect to be respected. The UN Charter, the Russo-Ukraine Treaty of Friendship, the Minsk Accords, the Black Sea Grain Initiative – how many more treaties does Putin have to break before everyone realizes that talk Does it make sense with him?, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told Politico.

Ramaswamy recently He explained to CNN He would freeze the current lines of control and pledge that NATO would not recognize Ukraine. He said the US could even pressure Ukraine to make concessions because it “pays the bills”. In exchange, he would ask Putin to withdraw from the military alliance with China.

Will he trust Putin with all this?

Whether the Russian president is dealing with a war criminal leader of his own or an outside power, he will use any means necessary to achieve his goals. Kuleba said that only a strong Russian military defeat in Ukraine can achieve a just and lasting peace. “Those who claim that Ukraine should agree to a quick cease-fire, ceding territory, or freezing the conflict are not seeking an end to the war. They are calling on Ukraine to die. It is the path to a bigger war after giving Putin a respite.”

Broken deal

The Black Sea Grain Deal – an initiative to export Ukraine’s vast wheat resources, especially to poor countries – is another example.

It was signed in July 2022 with the mediation of the United Nations and Turkey.

For a year, Ukraine won the opportunity to transfer its grain to the world and stabilize food prices, but Russia kept claiming that the grain deal should include more concessions for the Kremlin and was constantly complaining about the ineffectiveness of the initiative, until it withdrew in July. 2023.

Since then, the Kremlin has bombed Ukrainian ports and grain terminals, destroying food destined for emerging countries.

“This is clear evidence that negotiating anything with Putin is like asking a serial rapist not to do it again. It doesn’t work, and Prigozhin is proof of that.”

In public, Putin Claims He is ready for peace negotiations, and the United States, NATO and Ukraine are the parties that are pressing for the continuation of the war. However, his spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said on August 2 that those negotiations should take place be on Russian terms. On August 6, he claimed There were no grounds for peace and Russia wanted to keep the five Ukrainian regions it illegally annexed, although it did not fully control four of them.

“For me, the attempt to annex part of Ukrainian territory was another confirmation of the Kremlin’s total incompetence in assessing the political and military situation,” Ukraine’s Minister of State Security and Defense Oleksiy Danilov told Politico.

Ukrainian officials have warned the Kremlin that a decision to annex Ukrainian regions in 2022 would destroy the possibility of ending the war at the negotiating table. But the Kremlin did it anyway.

“Negotiations and concessions to Putin will be a geostrategic failure for the West, and will start the countdown to the start of the anti-democratic counter-revolution and the advancement of authoritarian regimes along the entire front from Latin America to China,” Danilov said.