In Their Own Interests

From Argumenty i fakty, May 28, 2025, p. 3. Condensed text:

Editors’ Note. – In this interview with AiF, Fyodor Lukyanov, scientific director of the Valdai International Discussion Club, assesses the prospects for direct negotiations between Moscow and Kiev and explains why the US foreign policy line toward Russia has changed.

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Question. – Fyodor Aleksandrovich [Lukyanov], we’ve seen a rather nervous reaction in Europe since the telephone conversation between Putin and Trump.Why is that?It doesn’t seem that the American president told them anything particularly new.

Answer. – The general direction is shifting slowly – but still shifting – toward what Russia has consistently offered. The EU and Ukraine sense this. And they see that Donald Trump is not resisting Putin’s offers in the same way. Even though Europe expects this resistance from Trump.

Here is a clear example. Europe’s position has recently been as follows: “First a truce, then everything else.” But it’s been ignored. But it’s been ignored. By both of us. Russia simply paid no attention to it. And as for Trump, [his disregard] was clear from the phone conversation between the two leaders. In addition, the view is increasingly spreading in Europe that Trump is exiting, leaving Ukraine one on one with Russia. First the US president says that Moscow and Kiev should resolve their dispute between themselves. Now he is taking action – after all, it was the Americans who forced Ukraine to enter into negotiations in Istanbul [in May 2025]. Brussels sees this as a sign that the Russian approach is being pushed through.

That is why European leaders are panicking that the position of Ukraine and its most ardent defenders is weakening.

But here’s what’s interesting. As Europe thrashes and throws a fit, there is a sense that Ukraine is finally beginning to wake up to reality. Until recently, Kiev assumed that the European position was the only one possible for it. And now, it seems to me, they have begun to understand that Brussels, as it pushes Ukraine toward further battle and the risk of defeat, does not want to take any responsibility.

Q. – With regard to direct negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, is there a real opportunity to find a compromise?

A. – The fact that some kind of contact has begun is already a shift. But in itself, it does not promise anything.

As for compromise, in my opinion, it is pointless to even bring up this word now – we are infinitely far from it.

If we call a spade a spade, then Russia’s compromise is to push until its demands, which by now have more or less been stated, are met. They are strict, especially the part about territory. The demand that Ukraine withdraw from territories it has not yet lost is very harsh. If you lose territory during a war, there is nothing you can do about it. But if you are holding it for now and have to leave it behind as a result of agreements, that is frankly humiliating.

Q. – Do you mean Ukraine completely withdrawing from the four new regions of the Russian Federation within their administrative borders?

A. – Yes. Many believed that this position of Moscow was, as they say, a “starting position” and that when it came to a real conversation, Russia would walk it back. But for now it doesn’t look that way at all.

There is one more factor that is important and extremely difficult to solve. This is legal recognition of the new borders. Without it, we will have a potential source of a new crisis: an unrecognized external border always means possible problems.

Let me note once again that there is no reason to talk about a compromise yet. Putin patiently sticks to his line, without deviating from it: root causes, lasting peace, the goals of the special operation. But now the main game is not about the essence of the conflict, but about the general configuration. Who should participate in the negotiation process, and in what capacity? Moscow insists that this is a process between Russia and Ukraine; let the US be the arbitrator (since under Trump, Washington has taken a relatively detached position), and Europe should not be there at all.

Brussels, meanwhile, is furiously pretending to influence the course of the process, believing that it is supporting Kiev through attempts to disrupt negotiations with Moscow. So far the Europeans haven’t been able to disrupt anything, and they cut a peculiar figure with their threats.

Q. – And have we come to understand why Trump has so dramatically changed the American foreign policy line toward Russia in just four months of his presidency?

A. – He has simply begun to actualize his vision of what America should represent in the world. This is a general context of sorts, and Russia is a part of it. Not the main part, but quite an important one. In this new context, the system of priorities has changed – the Ukraine issue has lost its pull.

This is the main difference from previous administrations (those of [former US presidents Joe] Biden and [Barack] Obama), which, for various reasons, put Ukraine at the center of their political and ideological approach. Not for the sake of Ukraine itself, but based on the consideration that this country is a battlefield between two worlds, two systems: democracy and autocracy. That is, the US could not lose Ukraine. Not because they needed it, but because it was a matter of principle.

Trump has a completely different view. He does not believe in the mythology of ideological battles but tries to rethink America’s role in the world in terms of the immediate interests of the US.

Q. – Material interests?

A. – Yes, those first and foremost. Trump does not have an obsession with spreading American ideology and values. He believes that America should reduce all its unnecessary burdens and become involved only in those global processes that correspond to the material interests of the US.

Trump’s first [state] visit to the Gulf states is an illustration of this [see Vol. 77, No. 20, pp. 18-19]. The American president went to a region where relations are built to the greatest extent, if you’ll pardon me, on money. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar – the main thing (if not the only thing) that connects them with the US is money.

That is why Trump does not see Ukraine among America’s priorities. The unfortunate mineral deal is just his attempt to answer the question, “What are we doing there anyway?”

If you look through this lens, then the entire conflict in Ukraine appears fundamentally different to the US. That’s why Trump and people around him constantly repeat: “Why exactly did we clash with the Russians there? After all, we could have fruitfully cooperated on a whole range of issues.” This, by the way, is where his talk about the prospects for American business in Russia comes from.