Letter From the Editors
All President Trump really wants for Christmas this year is a peace plan for Ukraine. But his hopes for that were dashed after President Zelensky rejected the US’s 28-point peace plan following a meeting with European leaders in London, saying that “Trump has his vision, which differs from Ukraine’s.” As Sergei Strokan reports in Kommersant, this vision of Trump’s includes “harsher” territorial terms than previous plans. According to Zelensky, though, Kyiv “does not have the constitutional, international or moral rights to cede territory.” Ukrainian political analyst Vladimir Fesenko expanded on this in a conversation with Novaya gazeta Europe, stressing: “It is impossible to overcome these differences through some compromise schemes.”
While Trump’s efforts to reach a settlement may seem like he is stumbling around in the dark, an AiF interview with Fyodor Lukyanov sheds some light on just how difficult Trump’s position actually is. Russia, he says, is an “inconvenient enemy” for Trump because it’s hard to find “a weak spot where he can apply pressure to produce the desired effect.” He can’t impose sanctions on Russia, because there’s no trade. And the doctrine of mutually assured destruction rules out military pressure. According to Lukyanov, Trump’s overall position on a settlement in Ukraine hasn’t changed since he’s been in office. The only thing that has changed is “who should be pressured” and “who should be threatened with terrible punishments.” Thus, Strokan writes, Trump is left “with a difficult choice: increase pressure on the Ukrainian-European war party, or end peacekeeping efforts completely until a new situation emerges that can lead the negotiation process out of its current impasse.”
With this precarious state of affairs, it’s no surprise that Ukraine’s neighbor Moldova is feeling under the gun to build up its weapons stockpiles. According to NG, Moldova has recently received antidrone systems, mortars and a new type of radar from its partners in the West. The government is attributing the accumulation of weapons to “risks emanating from Russia,” but “the public fears that the weapons could be used in the rebellious Gagauz autonomy and Transnistria.” While the flow of weapons into Moldova seems unlikely to stop, President Sandu has sought to reassure concerned citizens that “we are a democratic state – we want to strengthen democracy, and what citizens think is important to us.”
No such pledges are being made in Russia, where the opposition continues to be squeezed out of the political space in new and inventive ways. This time, as NG explains, the RFCP is finding that its social media posts are garnering exponentially more views on throttled foreign platforms like YouTube than on domestic platforms like VKontakte. While the Communists suspect this amounts to censorship through finely tuned algorithms, they have no conclusive proof. Instead, the party has started working on strategies to attract voters in the analog world.
Meanwhile, Russia’s birth rate is also feeling the pinch. In a speech to the Council for Strategic Development and National Projects, President Putin pointed to the need to reverse the downward trend in the birth rate, saying, “higher birth rates, support for families with children, [and] extending the healthy life expectancy of citizens – all of these are key vectors of our joint efforts.” But, as Maksim Blant points out in Republic, this all “sounds a little weird” coming as it does from “the person who has unleashed this war and who has absolutely no intention of ending it.”
Finally, we turn to Venezuela, where war may be brewing after repeated US airstrikes against Venezuelan ships purportedly transporting drugs. According to Izvestia, rumors are now circulating about President Maduro’s possible resignation in exchange for US guarantees not to launch a ground operation. This prompted Latin America expert Timur Almukov to note that “Trump came to power with a promise to end wars and not start new ones.” Which begs the question: Will Trump’s power in Venezuela be allowed to go unchecked as Putin’s has in Ukraine?