The two screens to watch to understand why Putin needs Trump

The Kremlin’s American face, Kirill Dmitriev, has said that Russia and the United States are finalising new agreements. He did not provide any details, but the day after the major attack in which the Ukrainians suffered due to a lack of intelligence from Washington, Dmitriev sought to make it known that the very same Americans who are not communicating with Kyiv are, however, in constant negotiations with the Russians. There is no confirmation; Dmitriev has been contradicted on several occasions, but the mood in the Kremlin – thanks to Donald Trump, the diesel deal and the restrictions on Starlink – appears to be excellent. Until a few weeks ago, according to reports in the Ukrainian and American press, the US Administration was working on a deal that would have seen sanctions against Moscow eased in exchange for an end to attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. Now, however, Moscow is attempting to secure the easing of sanctions without offering anything in return.

 It all began with the phone call between Putin and Trump last Friday, after which the White House leader began to reverse the roles, dredging up accusations against Volodymyr Zelenskyy that he does not want the war to end and is clinging to power, echoing Putin’s favourite talking point that the Ukrainian president is not democratically elected. Trump has once again taken to echoing the Kremlin leader’s words, charting a course that seems to take US-Ukraine relations back to over a year ago, to the months leading up to the summit in Anchorage, Alaska, where Putin arrived to demand Kyiv’s surrender. In recent months of the war, Moscow has intensified its attacks on Ukrainian cities, but along the front line, Russian forces have lost ground. Given that, for the Kremlin, this is a war of conquest, the central focus of its operations has been a failure; yet Putin remains convinced that it is in his interest to continue fighting and, unable to advance, has decided to bring the front line into the midst of Ukrainian civilians, turning cities into battlefields where air-raid sirens ring out for hours, where people cannot sleep and cannot live.  

The arrival of Trump’s ‘help’, which invents ceasefires – yesterday the Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitri Peskov, said that the White House chief’s proposal was vague, so Moscow struck Ukraine’s energy infrastructure – and ties the Ukrainians’ hands; the Russians have been seeking this for months and now, with winter approaching, it has arrived. What Moscow cannot achieve on the front line, it is trying to unleash on civilians, who are exposed due to the lack of Patriot interceptors and now also because of the American president’s manoeuvres. The Kremlin need not do anything; it merely has to stand by, watch Trump’s moves, and enjoy the way he attempts to humiliate the Ukrainians. However, there are always two perspectives from which to view the war: the more visible one of the bombs falling on Kyiv and other cities, and the one on the front line, where the fourth phase of Operation Vivaldi has begun, with the Ukrainian army pushing the Russians back into the Donetsk Oblast. The operation began in late August, has led to the liberation of part of the territory and the capture of Russian prisoners – who are also valuable for the information they may reveal – and is now continuing. The war must be followed on two screens to be understood: one shows that the capture of Donetsk, which Putin cites as a prerequisite for a ceasefire, is even further away.

The Kremlin is working to create the perception that the Ukrainians have been defeated; this is needed to convince Trump that such a protracted war is down to Zelensky’s stubbornness, and therefore that the best way to end it is to stop him. Putin’s task now is to put up one smokescreen after another to cover up his difficulties. Trump’s help serves to draw attention to one aspect. It is a pincer movement that has taken months to come to fruition, involving a courtship during which the Kremlin, rather than discussing Ukraine, spoke to Trump about Iran: not about its own war but about Trump’s war; it has bartered and has now secured the attention of the American president, which it sorely needs. The two smokescreens must be examined carefully, and the course of the war is revealed by what Trump chooses not to look at.