President Putin has presented his American counterpart with an invitation to join him in the strongman’s club. Whether encouraging President Trump’s designs on Greenland or implicitly offering him a free run at Ukraine’s resources, the Russian leader’s strategy and his endgame are coming into clear focus.
Flattery works
In the legend of Dr Faustus, a medieval scholar is induced to sign away his soul because the Devil’s agent, Mephistopheles, can promise him his heart’s desires. Putin’s strategy depends on offering Trump what he most wants.
Putin, once asked about his particular skills, named “working with people”. He meant, of course, knowing how best to manipulate them. He certainly seems to have taken Trump’s measure. Beyond mere flattery, he is offering the US president the chance to indulge his id, not only to see himself as the ultimate dealmaker, but to use America’s hyper-power status to reshape the world as he chooses.
This entails what one seasoned British diplomat who had served in Washington has called “helping Trump be the worst version of himself he can”. Last week Putin described Trump’s desire to acquire Greenland as “serious” and with “deep historical roots”, even though “it has nothing to do with us”. With those words Putin both encouraged Trump’s eccentric ambition and signalled that Moscow would stand aside if the president acted on it.
On Friday Trump said: “We need Greenland, very importantly, for international security.” A US land grab would not just seem to validate Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it would be deeply disruptive of Nato: could Denmark, which controls Greenland, invoke the article 5 mutual security guarantee against the US?
• Why does Trump want Greenland?
Promise of profits
Putin is also encouraging and exploiting Trump’s apparent vision for himself as the chief executive of USA Inc, treating geopolitics simply as a means to national enrichment.
Despite being rebuffed earlier, the White House has intensified its demands that Ukraine accept a deal granting the US rights to a share of the revenues of its natural resources and associated infrastructure. The terms are nothing less than colonial. Kyiv is outraged, but Moscow is quietly reassuring the Americans. One Russian parliamentarian described the proposed deal as “a perfectly natural equation, repayment for services rendered”.
Meanwhile, the prospect of US oil and gas companies being welcomed back to Russia — still a long shot — is being talked up. Kirill Dmitriev, head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund and the Kremlin’s main business spokesman, even offered US firms the chance of partnerships to exploit the Arctic (and said Elon Musk could have a small nuclear power plant for his mission to Mars).
Such overtures can be grouped with the ongoing effort by the former East German spy Matthias Warnig to persuade American investors to take over the sabotaged Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline company. They are unlikely to come to fruition soon but the point is not whether they succeed. Rather the aim is “to make Trump feel that Putin is eager to offer US business special access and opportunities, because he’s such a master dealmaker”, as one retired American official put it.
• Tracked: Trump’s approval rating
Zelensky is the target
Putin’s negotiating strategy is built around three axes, all of which play to Trump’s personal inclinations. First, Moscow signals a willingness to continue with the peace process that the American president has initiated, but demands concessions at each step. For example, before agreeing to the new Black Sea ceasefire, which would make it easier for Ukraine to sell its grain, Putin wants sanctions lifted on Russian agricultural exporters in return. Trump is unwilling to admit that his campaign claims of being able to resolve the contest were merely bombast, so he has an incentive to play along.
Second, Putin plays on Trump’s dislike of President Zelensky and their common belief that Ukraine should be treated not as sovereign but as a subject nation, whose assets are to be divided between them. In effect, Putin is offering Trump Ukraine’s subsoil wealth in return for a share of its territory and a say in its governance. When Kyiv understandably protests, this can be presented as the selfishness of a bought-and-paid-for vassal that fails to appreciate what America has done for it. The hope is that this not only angers Trump, but it forces him to act to discipline Kyiv, as he did after the infamous Oval Office row, lest he seem weak. This drives Zelensky into the arms of Europe as an ally of last resort (he is a regular attendee at gatherings of Sir Keir Starmer’s “coalition of the willing”.)
But it also sets up Putin’s third axis: exploiting Trump’s mistrust of the European Union, which he infamously claimed was “formed to screw the United States”. Many of Moscow’s peace demands, such as that its agricultural bank be allowed back onto the Swift interbank transfer system, are not exclusively in Washington’s gift. These inevitably become a source of more transatlantic tensions. Does Europe swallow its frustrations and bend the knee, or does it refuse, risk Trump’s ire and let Putin off the hook by derailing the peace process?
Blaming Europe
Putin’s incremental focus on amplifying the most useful aspects of Trump’s agenda and character suggests that, to a degree, he cannot have a fixed sense of an endgame to the war. This suits the Russian leader, who is a tactician and an opportunist rather than a strategist. He retains his maximalist goal of wanting to see Ukraine firmly under Moscow’s thumb, but it is unclear how far he may be willing to compromise — indeed, he may well not know himself.
Instead, Putin is trying to get the best deal he can, retaining the occupied territories and leaving Ukraine vulnerable to Russian threats and interference. True to form, he is keeping his options open. If talks fail, as is still likely, he will try to ensure that someone else, whether Zelensky or the Europeans, gets the blame. A Trump furiously angry at either for derailing his initiative (and denying him the Nobel peace prize he reportedly craves) would, after all, be almost as useful for Putin as a successful deal.
No easy option
This perhaps explains Zelensky’s recent comment that Putin “will die soon — that’s a fact — and it will all be over”. It is unlikely that Zelensky would have inside knowledge here. He was probably making a simple reference to their respective ages — he is 47 to Putin’s 72 — but still the word “soon” prompted speculation that the Russian president was on his deathbed.
That speculation is not new. Since before the original invasion in 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea, there have been regular claims that Putin had everything from cancer to leprosy and would be dead within six months. (Zelensky’s own military intelligence chief predicted Putin’s imminent death in 2022.)
It is possible that Zelensky was hoping to destabilise the Russian elite, but it is more likely that this was simply a counsel of despair. The hope that Putin would overreach himself in playing Trump (which could still happen) seems at present distant, so Kyiv is left hoping that Putin will die imminently and that the demise of the Mephistopheles of the Kremlin will magically end the conflict on terms that Ukrainians can embrace. At present, neither of those outcomes seems likely.
Professor Mark Galeotti’s latest book, Forged in War: A Military History of Russia from its Beginnings to Today, is published by Osprey/Bloomsbury
