Are they serious? Hard to say, but every public statement has a purpose. It’s serious work trying to understand what Russia’s actions mean.
Both sides have some dark skies ahead. For the Russians, they are bleeding unsustainably and not achieving much. And Trump’s usefulness is about to be curtailed. Xi is probably not convinced of much more progress to keep investing in.
Ukraine is suffering from Russian terror every day and sees some thunderclouds ahead with rising populists in France and Germany that aren’t shy about reducing Ukrainian support in the coming years.
Maybe they’re serious about ending this phase. Long term - that’s another kettle of fish, but…maybe it’s time. Wars are often indecisive and their conclusions unsatisfying. It’s the years after that matter.
No, never serious. They have their puppet in the white house on a short leash and want to exploit that before the midterms.
Usual bullshit, they’re not going to drop any imperial asshole demands.
They should meet on neutral ground, I don’t know maybe at the Hague.
Well, in my opinion that is very simple - the very fact of so called negotiations is the goal. Why? - they just don’t want some specific military actions from Ukraine (supposing the attacks on oil refineries, but maybe something else) to take place during negotiations - so they can prepare. That is it. So “negotiations” will last for a time, that putin wants - probably to boost its defenses of oil refineries (if that is the thing, he is doing “negotiations” against). When he is done - talks will end and successes of drone strikes on refineries will be much less frequent. And by the way Russia itself will continue attacking like nothing is happening, because restrictions during talks will be imposed by Trump only on Ukraine. Just an old byzantine tactics. I hope Ukrainian negotiators knew it all.
that’s all reasonable, but Ukraine hasn’t offered to stop attacks during any negotiations, and if Russia was capable of boosting it’s defenses, why wouldn’t they have done it already. Given Russia’s nature, it seems likely that they’re doing literally everything that they’re capable of and not much is held in reserve.
I mean - i agree with your underlying assumption that Russia is not serious or trustworthy. But if Ukraine never stops attacking the refineries, the the ‘negotiations for the purpose of stalling’ doesn’t work.
I have a lot of faith that Ukraine and their supporters are much, much smarter than the Russians. Russians have excess brutality but not more brain power.
We will see how it goes. Right now we don’t know even the date of talks. I think Trump and Co gonna tell about the very thing (what is forbidden attack) in social media. In terms of why Russia is not boosting its defenses? - it is boosting it, but time may be an important factor in it. Since we don’t know yet what is the main essence of this round of talks it is hard to say. Russia always has movement of forces as an option in reserve - abandon something for some other thing, so to say. In other words - move available anti-air from factories to refineries or vise versa or even from front-lines to refineries etc. When the movement of such assets is happening - they cant do anything and could be easily destroyed. So some political coverage is necessary. It is just as an example. But yet again i don’t really know, I am just making assumptions just as we all do. You may be right as well. I hope only for one thing - I hope for Ukraine to win this war. I hope, that US wont force Ukraine to surrender to Putin.
