According to Walsh, Putin’s five-hour meeting with US President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and the White House head’s son-in-law Jared Kushner in Moscow on December 2 did not bring public results.
The author considers the second presidential term of Trump, who sympathizes with Putin and strives for peace at almost any cost, to be a “gift” for the Russian Federation.
And when Trump says that what is happening in Ukraine is not his war and he does not want to spend money on it, but wants it to stop, Putin “hears the weakness and indifference of the largest military power in the world,” Walsh noted.
“This is the chance that the former KGB agent is talking about [Путин]probably never dreamed that history would deliver to him: the US begs Russia to make peace. And the longer this process takes, the better the result is likely to be for Moscow,” the CNN correspondent wrote.
Commenting on the negotiations between the United States and the Russian Federation on the “peace plan” in Moscow, he emphasized that “the final stage of this diplomacy is taking place largely in silence,” and Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has “little reason for joy.”
Trump is right in trying to end the Russian war against Ukraine as quickly as possible, writes Walsh, but the head of the White House does not understand Putin and his goals of ending the long-term dominance of the United States.
“Struggle and slow victory are what fuel Putin, and he sees more to come. Adding to his delight is the piquant spectacle of his adversary's former main ally, the United States, now begging him to negotiate an agreement and using the US president's son-in-law Jared Kushner and special envoy Steve Witkoff to do so,” the CNN correspondent said.
Russian advances at the front may be slow and come at great cost, but in scale they are shaping up to be one of Putin's geopolitical dreams, likely putting real, lasting peace out of reach, Walsh concluded.
