Easter truce and prospects for Trump's drilling in Ukraine
The second round of talks in Riyadh on March 12 will be a review of the homework given to the Kremlin by the United States on February 18. The behavior of the Kremlin and Trump shows that at the moment Moscow does not want to fulfill it. Therefore, out of the three options for the outcome of this round - the parties will agree or categorically disagree, the third option is most likely - the talks will be postponed and a third round will be held at the end of March.
Trump's position, which he partially revealed on March 6, is to conclude a six-month truce between April 20 and May 7-8 and to begin major negotiations in the fall to reach a final peace agreement. A six-month ceasefire with a ceasefire implies that presidential elections in Ukraine and Russia will be held during this time, with Zelensky and Putin leaving office. This will simplify the process of subsequent negotiations. Kellogg says the Istanbul agreement is unacceptable as a matrix for a peace treaty. Whitkoff, who is negotiating with the Kremlin, says diplomatically, you can still run with it. But he implies that once the Putin brand is closed, the Kremlin will forget about the Istanbul agreement.
The Kremlin's position at the moment is to have a short truce on the specified dates and quickly sign a treaty based on the Istanbul Agreement, on which they will impose on Ukraine a language, a church, and a small army without long-range guns and missiles. They are no longer embarrassed by the overdue Zelenskyy, and they agree only to the Chinese as peacekeepers in Ukraine. In this context, they do not consider the removal of the Putin brand to be mandatory and make it dependent on their future relations with the US and the EU. De facto, on the speed of lifting sanctions. For the Kremlin, Putin is already a bargaining chip for sanctions, or a card, as Trump would say.
Thus, the only point of intersection is a temporary ceasefire, the term of which is seen differently in Moscow and Washington, but its date is acceptable to both sides. So far, this is the obvious maximum that Trump can actually get from them. Therefore, it is likely that after the third round in Riyadh, an agreement on a one-month truce will be reached. Macron and Starmer are also talking about a one-month truce for a reason. It makes no sense to set a truce for a shorter period, and there is a chance that in a month there will be some progress towards substantive negotiations, and this will allow it to be extended.
The probability that Trump's team will force the Kremlin to a ceasefire before Easter is almost 100%. On March 7, Trump moved from being nice to threatening Russia with hellish sanctions in the banking and other sectors if the Kremlin does not sign the truce. After threats, he will move on to action and start drilling for real. Trump has plenty to drill with. The Kremlin knows this and is unlikely to want to test Trump's patience at this point, especially since a truce for a month is also beneficial to the Kremlin for image reasons.
But the question arises as to what happens after the month-long truce, and it has no clear answer.
The Kremlin will try to jump out of Trump's scheme and try to replay everything. To do this, they have intensified bombing of Ukrainian cities and on March 7 struck the gas transportation system in the Ternopil region. It's a Russian custom to break the dishes before sitting down to drink the peace. For the same reason, they launched an offensive on Sudzha. For a long time, the Kremlin was satisfied with the location of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in Sudzha as an illustration of their thesis that Ukraine attacked Russia. But this narrative didn't work, and now the Kremlin doesn't know what's better - to retake Suja or to exchange it. As usual, they are betting on both options, and that's why they are sending battalions, not regiments, to Suja.
At the same time, they are creating tension points in countries other than Ukraine.
Including in Syria in alliance with Israel. In particular, on March 6, they staged an Assadist rebellion in coastal Latakia, populated mainly by Alawites. This is where Russian troops still hold two military bases. As a result, on March 6, something was on fire at the Khmeimim air base. The rebellion failed the very next day, as the Alawites did not support it. But this did not prevent Israeli Defense Minister Katz from making a statement in the style of Soviet propaganda: "the masks are off, Julani has massacred the Alawites." Prior to that, he had demanded that the Syrian government withdraw its troops from the south of the country.
By accident or design, Israel was burned by the Syrian Kurds. The commander-in-chief of their units, General Mazloum Abdi, said on the day of the uprising that he would accept Israel's support. At the same time, Kurdish units did not take any military action against the Syrian army from March 6 to 8. Israel's intelligence services, on the other hand, were sleeping soundly, organizing a demonstration in al-Suwayda, the main Druze city, against the al-Sharaa government on March 6 with portraits of Mowafaq Tarif, one of the Druze spiritual leaders living in Israel.
Iran looked at these efforts of Israel and Russia in Syria and stated in a profound way on the day of the uprising that they would not rush to establish relations with the al-Sharaa government. Netanyahu wants to dismember Syria, the racists want to force the Syrians to leave them two military bases, and the Iranian theocracy is not averse to participating in the process for its own benefit. The Moscow-Tehran-Jerusalem axis is turning out to be an interesting one. I wonder how many states can be created on the site of Israel on religious grounds, not forgetting the non-Orthodox Jews, to whom Netanyahu belongs, as well as atheists and those who believe that the ancient gods are aliens.
In their partnership with Netanyahu, the Kremlin does not want to limit itself to Syria and wants him to be active in Ukraine. Therefore, the day before the uprising, Masha from Midov approached Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar to ask why he did not condemn the renaming of Moskovsky Prospekt in Kyiv after Stepan Bandera. Saar promised to check the fact and, if anything, to condemn it. A subtle Jewish humor - the renaming took place 10 years ago.
Syria is not the only point of tension that Moscow is creating to jump out of Trump's scheme. Two days before Macron's brilliant address to the nation before the EU summit in Brussels, a Russian warplane somehow intercepted a French plane over the Mediterranean. This seems to have been one of the sources of inspiration for Macron.
Macron's speech also inspired Marine Le Pen, who said that she would support sending peacekeeping troops to Ukraine, but on the condition that they do not take part in hostilities. As a result, the Popular Front and the neo-communists found themselves in an uncomfortable position, since after the scene in the Oval Office, approving the killing of Ukrainians by the Russian army is the height of political recklessness. Even the socialist senator Bernie Sanders, who competed with Hillary Clinton in the 2016 primaries, brought a resolution to the Senate condemning Putin.
Four other Democratic senators introduced similar resolutions, but the Republicans voted them all down, saying that resolutions cannot stop the war and cannot kill Putin. The Republicans' position is to let Trump wave the carrot, it's not time for the stick, and if you're so smart, why haven't you taken Putin down in three years?
The absence of an agreement with Ukraine on metals also prevents Trump from pulling another trump card out of his sleeve. If the agreement is signed, U.S. drilling companies will receive licenses from the Ukrainian Cabinet of Ministers to conduct exploration work. This includes exploration for lithium in the occupied Shevchenkove on the front line. Drillers from the United States, for example, have been hired by private military companies to mine and transport uranium in Niger.
So you can imagine a situation where geologists and Texas Rangers come to Shevchenkovo, and some fools with a double-headed eagle are digging in the ground without a license. Then it will be like in Hollywood westerns - the rangers will start clearing the drilling sites from the invaders. This cannot be called a war between the United States and Russia, and there is no need to raise the issue of Article 5 of the NATO charter. Trump can copy Moscow's scheme, which until 2022 would claim that there are no Russian troops in eastern Ukraine and that only transnational PMCs registered somewhere in Mandalay are working there.
But Trump can't launch this scheme until he has a joint mining agreement with Ukraine and the Cabinet of Ministers' licenses for US drilling companies in his file. A week has passed since the scene in the Oval Office, and there is still no agreement. Despite the fact that Bankova Street pretended to understand everything and correct the mistake.