- “The Kremlin notes a pause in negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, although communication channels between the working groups exist,” Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
With this dry announcement, delivered from such a high level, Putin kicks Donald Trump to the ground three times:
- It shows once again who, between the US and Russia, really has the initiative in shaping the peace talks related to Ukraine and who, between the US and Russia, really has the ON/OFF button of these talks. This can be easily deduced from the fact that Moscow unilaterally “takes note” of the “pause”, regardless of what Washington concludes or doesn’t conclude.
- It is also worth noting that the Kremlin’s brutal and black-and-white announcement puts the White House in the worst light possible for Ukraine’s allies and Russia’s allies. Why? It’s simple: where the Trump administration had constantly maintained the illusion that, despite the lack of concrete results, talks with the Russians are still advancing, and peace remains in sight even for Putin, the Russians have just shattered the illusion, indicating that it is not about advance, but about blockage (the term “pause” is a beautifully packaged synonym for blockage, not for anything else). As such, once Putin presents the negotiations in such gloomy terms, then both Ukraine’s allies and Russia’s allies are stimulated by the Kremlin to wonder if Trump really understands anything about how Russian-American contacts on Ukraine are going, if Trump really understands anything from the messages Putin has been sending him for eight months already either directly or through envoys. The dictator’s tactics are perverse, but it’s tempting to doubt them!
- Finally, by taking the initiative to decree a “pause in negotiations between Russia and Ukraine”, the Kremlin has created enough space for itself to push Trump’s America to new concessions and concessions to Putin’s Russia so that Moscow feels motivated to come out of the ‘pause’ at some point and return to the playing field. In other words, Putin’s “active” initiative forces Trump to be “passive”.
Of course, the moment chosen by the Russians to announce the freezing of negotiations with Ukraine is hardly accidental.
It coincides with the start of Russia’s gigantic ZAPAD 2025 military exercise, which is a demonstration of both armed force and propaganda. ZAPAD (Eds: a Russian-Belarusian joint strategic military exercise) taking place in Belarus on 12–16 September. Belarus has said the drills will test the Union State‘s defensive readiness, with main activities staged at central training areas near Barysaw and a reciprocal movement of units between the two states.[1] It will be the first Zapad exercise since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022; authorities describe it as a scaled-down form, takes place on Russia’s western border, is meant to impress the West and NATO in particular, and the 2021 edition remained in the collective memory as the moment when troops were concentrated in the region, the same troops which only a few months later invaded Ukraine.
By putting the negotiations on pause, the Kremlin is practically stripping itself of any kind of formal constraints during the ZAPAD 2025 maneuvers, thus taking an increased freedom to make them as bold even aggressive without being accused of jeopardizing ongoing peace talks… because there were not ongoing peace talks, just a break, isn’t that so?
It is also no coincidence that the intrusion of almost 20 Russian drones into Polish airspace (therefore NATO territory) occurred now, timing with the decree of the “pause” and the start of ZAPAD 25.
The fact that Moscow has a long-standing defiance of NATO and Donald Trump himself stems fully from Dmitry Peskov’s announcement of the pause, but takes on additional proportions by corroborating the fact that instead of a small “prey” – the Baltic countries or the Republic of Moldova – the Russian test against NATO directly targeted the largest “prey”, Poland (the third largest army in the world and the largest EU army and also the main hub for Western arms deliveries to Ukraine).
Trump once again complained that he was losing patience with Putin. This reaction sounds hollow now, as we’ve seen it countless times and it has never been followed up by tangible and appropriate actions from Donald Trump’s administration.
In fact, the excessive wording and the lack of action, aspects in which the American leader has excelled so far, have made it clear to the Russian dictator that there is a need for extreme interventions.
And there have been extreme interventions – from the systematic bombing, in recent weeks, of Ukrainian civilians, to the bombing of a key building of the Ukrainian government and to the aggression in Poland, which triggered the activation of NATO’s Article 4.
And now… now Putin has put the negotiations on hold and will probably try to make the current edition of the ZAPAD maneuvers unforgettable again.
- PS: Of course, there is something else related to Putin’s “pause”: he triumphed in the summit with Trump in Alaska and consolidated his position in the Chinese summit in Tianjin.
NATO to beef up defense of Europe’s eastern flank after Poland shot down drones
