The so-called Ukrainian peace negotiations are now about money
Paul Craig Roberts
Putin’s peace negotiations with Washington are turning out to be as endless as Putin’s war in Donbas. Yet another day of negotiations has passed, and the result is no progress, but we are assured that the negotiations were conducted in a business-like way. Thus reassured, the never-ending peace process continues.
What is extraordinary about the negotiations is that the two men on which a solution depends are not directly involved in the negotiation. Putin and Trump are not meeting to resolve between them Russia’s security concerns and the construction of a new world order in which cooperation replaces confrontation. Indeed, the negotiations no longer seem to be in the hands of the foreign affairs officials who, one would hope, understand the situation. Instead, both Trump and Putin placed the negotiations in the hands of people interested in money. For Trump the negotiator is Witkoff, a real estate developer, who represents in the negotiations the hopes of American economic interests to re-Russia on preferential terms to exploit Russia resources. Putin is represented by Kirill Dmitriev, an Atlanticist Integrationist who represents Russian money interests who wish to have their access to the US and Europe restored.
The intrusion of money into what was originally a security matter between Russia and the West suggests that the original Russian security concerns, such as American missile bases in NATO countries and Ukraine on Russia’s borders, has been replaced by money.
It appears to me, and I may be mistaken, that Putin is trying to entice Trump with promises of preferential access to Russian resources and their exploitation in exchange for Trump’s acceptance of Russia’s security concerns. This would line up American corporations with Putin’s goal of non-confrontation. If this is Putin’s bet, it relies on extraordinary trust of the United States government, for which the record shows little hope.
Red flags have gone up in Russia, and the long-serving Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov has found his courage to speak against this change in Russian policy, which places the Russian nation at the risk of an agreement that resides in money, an agreement that disadvantages Russian companies.
John Helmer pays closer attention to the details that comprise the picture than I do. I recommend the article and video referenced below.
To use my parlance, Russian nationalism is losing out to the Atlanticist Integrationists, or as Lavrov puts it, Russian security is losing out to money. When Putin and Trump handover the negotiations to money men, you know that security has been displaced as the issue. Everyone has his price. Witkoff and Dimitriev are searching for Putin’s price.