Putin does not tell Trump that it would take several years of war to take the Donbas

The Kremlin has taken an interest in the AfD’s victory in Saxony-Anhalt, the eastern German Land where the far-right party received the most votes and mobilised voters who had stayed away from the polls for years, now drawn in by the anger of the local leader, Ulrich Siegmund. The state is small, with 1.7 million voters – enough to fuel Russian jubilation: “A historic victory that humiliates the arrogance, narrow-mindedness, warmongering, ineptitude and hypocrisy of Germany’s discredited governing coalition,” said Kirill Dmitriev. The head of the Russian Sovereign Wealth Fund, before celebrating the result in Germany, had shown American envoys around Moscow. For the Kremlin, the AfD’s victory brought to a close a weekend of passive diplomacy, entirely devoted to the ‘form’ that Vladimir Putin – thanks in part to Dmitriev’s help – had sought to perfect down to the last detail: if you are going to pretend, you must see it through to the end; words can be secondary if the form is convincing enough. Moscow welcomed Donald Trump’s envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, last Saturday. Dmitriev, as he had done in the past, treated them to moments of luxury and pleasure, and the day concluded with a meeting with Putin, who seated everyone around the circular table reserved for grand occasions in the Red Hall, giving the impression that this visit might be different from previous ones. It was exactly the same, because the Kremlin leader’s determination to continue the war against Ukraine remains unchanged, until Kyiv is sufficiently worn down to accept every Russian demand. Putin is demanding the Donbas – even the parts he has failed to conquer – and is not revealing what he would do with eastern Ukraine once it is under his control. With this demand, he bid farewell to the two American mediators without showing any signs of compromise; indeed, he prevented them from flying directly from Moscow to Kyiv, where they were due to be received on Sunday by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. For a direct flight between the two capitals, the Kremlin leader would have had to agree to a ceasefire in other Ukrainian cities as well – from the front line to Kharkiv or Kherson, where the Russians have continued to bomb. Only Kyiv was given a respite, whilst intelligence detected signs of an attack in the pipeline that is likely to take place in the coming days. The two Americans arrived in Ukraine from Poland; for the first time, Witkoff and Kushner did what they had promised on previous occasions, but which Putin had always ensured did not happen. This time there was no pressure; the Kremlin leader was keen to demonstrate his control over Ukrainian airspace, partly to deliver the message: either I will secure the Donbas through negotiation, or I can take it by force – I call the shots over Ukrainian skies and on the ground. When Putin meets with the Americans, he makes it clear that Ukraine is a secondary issue; in official statements, he emphasises that he has discussed many other matters, such as economic affairs or the war in the Middle East, but in the interplay between form and substance, the truth is that Kyiv is the only thing on his mind, and he tries to bring up other topics to secure American support and pressure them into action because, as Russia keeps repeating, sooner or later we will take the Donbas by force.

That is not the case. Last week, Putin had said that Russian troops were in Sviatohirsk, in the Donetsk region. Yesterday, Ukrainian General Andrii Biletski recorded a video in the town saying: “This is our rear”, meaning that Russian troops are not even close to capturing it. The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) has calculated that if Russia were to maintain this level of effort in the Donetsk oblast – where the bulk of Moscow’s forces are concentrated – whilst advancing at a rate of 2.36 square kilometres per day, it would take until 2032 to conquer the entire region. In six years’ time, the capture of Donetsk is not imminent.