How talking to Putin has split the west
Is it worth talking to Vladimir Putin?
The Russian president has a long history of stringing western leaders along. George W Bush claimed to have looked the man in the eye and found him “very straightforward and trustworthy”. Angela Merkel of Germany and François Hollande of France engaged in prolonged and fruitless diplomacy with Putin after his annexation of Crimea in 2014. Steve Witkoff, the Donald Trump administration’s emissary, recently took naivety to new levels by calling Putin a “humanitarian”. The following morning, a Russian missile attack on Dnipro railway station in Ukraine killed 15 civilians.
Nonetheless, talks with Putin’s Russia continue. The Russians, Ukrainians and Americans are due to meet soon in Abu Dhabi (or elsewhere, if war intervenes) for peace negotiations. Against this backdrop, three different western approaches to Putin have emerged.
The first is spearheaded by Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law. They are focused on getting Ukraine to cede further territory and, on the US side, making business deals with Russia.
The second approach is championed by President Alexander Stubb of Finland and Jonas Gahr Støre, the prime minister of Norway. These two leaders are firm backers of Ukraine — but think Europeans have to talk directly to Russia. They held a 90-minute phone call with Putin last week.
The third view is that talking to Putin is counter-productive. That view is popular in the Baltic states and Poland.
For many months, Witkoff and Kushner have dominated the dialogue. Their suggestion that Ukraine should cede territory it currently holds to secure a peace deal was seen as a betrayal in Kyiv and much of Europe. More recently, they have been pushing the idea of postwar business deals between the US and Russia. In much of Europe, the Witkoff-Kushner emphasis on putting business at the centre of a peace deal with Russia is regarded as naive at best — and corrupt at worst.
Stubb and Støre are in close contact with Witkoff and Kushner. But they also think it is a bad idea for both Europe and Ukraine to let Washington control the dialogue with Putin. They want to get Europe “back in the game”.
The Finnish and Norwegian leaders consulted Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian president, extensively before talking to Putin. They used their conversation with the Russian leader to convey the message that Zelenskyy is interested in speaking directly to Putin — about territory and about security guarantees for both Ukraine and Russia. Putin apparently said he is willing to meet Zelenskyy, but only when it is clear that a final agreement is close at hand.
To get nearer to that point, the Russian, Finnish and Norwegian leaders also discussed “confidence-building measures”. These could include partial ceasefires focused on protecting energy production and food shipments — as well as prisoner exchanges.
At some point Stubb and Støre envisage stepping aside to let Germany, France and the UK (plus the EU and possibly Italy) take over the dialogue with the Kremlin. But they have already faced a barrage of criticism from some European colleagues. Mette Frederiksen, the Danish prime minister, said she was “very sceptical of the Norwegian and Finnish initiative” — which she suggested would fracture European unity and so ease the pressure on Russia.
Perhaps unhelpfully for Stubb and Støre, Putin has defended them by praising “people in Europe who do not want to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia, as some do, but want to establish some kind of constructive dialogue”.
The question of whether a “strategic defeat” for Russia should be Europe’s goal does indeed underpin the dispute between the Stubb and Frederiksen camps. For the Danish leader — and those who think like her — the only truly acceptable conclusion to the war is the defeat of Russia and the collapse of the Putin regime.
For the Stubb-Støre camp, however, the idea of a “strategic defeat” of Russia is a dangerous chimera. They think it is unlikely to happen and that, even if it did, the results might not be entirely benign. As well as trying to end the Ukraine war, they are already thinking about how to shape a postwar relationship between Europe and Russia.
All sides in this intra-western dispute over talking to Putin have their blind spots. The Trump administration’s professed belief that Russia can be lured into a peace deal with the promise of economic benefits wilfully misreads what is driving Putin. He did not attack Ukraine for economic reasons and he will not end the war for an oil deal.
But those pressing for the strategic defeat of Russia currently have no con- vincing picture of how this will come about. They also tend to underplay the enormous costs to Ukraine of yet more years of war.
By contrast, those Europeans who are keen to engage Putin in dialogue now may be kidding themselves about his real willingness to negotiate a peace set- tlement. All the signs are that the Rus- sian leader wants to bring Ukraine to its knees over the winter, by seeking to destroy its energy infrastructure and much of Ukrainian industry.
As for Putin, he is prey to his own illu- sions. The Russian leader has consist- ently overestimated Russia’s progress on the battlefield and underestimated Ukraine’s resilience.
Peace in Ukraine would be a wonder- ful thing. But it still seems a long way off.
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