There are real doubts that the meeting, brokered by French President Emmanuel Macron, will ever take place. The White House said on Sunday it would only proceed “if no invasion has occurred.”
Any summit depends on the outcome of talks between Foreign Minister Antony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Europe this week. That meeting also depends on the condition that Moscow troops do not penetrate further into Ukraine.
“Blinken and Lavrov will further discuss whether the invasion has not started by then — in which case it will all be over,” an official told DailyExpertNews’s Kaitlan Collins and Arlette Saenz.
No timetable or location has been set for a presidential summit. White House press secretary Jen Psaki also stressed that if Russia chose to invade Ukraine anyway, the US would face “rapid and serious consequences.” … And currently Russia seems to be continuing preparations for a large-scale attack on Ukraine very soon. †
Just hours before news of a potential summit emerged after an overnight conversation between Macron and Putin — following an earlier conversation between the French president and Biden — the US warned it had intelligence suggesting the Russian strongman had already killed his field commanders. ordered to invade Ukraine. And on Monday morning, Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan painted a harrowing picture of the situation around Ukraine, saying an “extremely violent” attack could take place in the coming hours or days.
“It will cost the lives of Ukrainians and Russians, civilians and military. But we also have information that suggests there will be an even greater form of brutality, because this will not simply be a conventional war between two armies: it will be a war.” waged by Russia against the Ukrainian people, to oppress them, to crush them, to harm them,” Sullivan said on NBC’s “Today” show.
The extreme mistrust shared by all parties to the conflict – Russia, Ukraine and Western allies – means that this diplomatic breakthrough will hang by a thread. Recent US and Russian exchanges have been marked by contempt, suspicion, and sarcasm. Success guaranteed when Lavrov and Blinken meet. Any outcome of a summit that preserves Ukraine as a functioning, democratic state would likely be viewed by Putin as a defeat.
And the situation around Ukraine’s borders, where more than 150,000 Russian troops are on high alert, is so tense that local clashes could lead to a bigger conflagration and a shutdown of diplomacy. The US and its allies will also see the possibility that Putin is willing to talk, not because he blinks at the standoff, but instead is looking for a way to separate America from his friends before an invasion takes place.
But if Putin holds back from what was seen in Washington as an almost certain new foray into Ukraine, it will count as a temporary success for the White House’s aggressive information war, designed to remove the element of surprise from his massive troop build-up and any falsified rationale for thwart an invasion.
Even France, which helped bring about the idea of a meeting between Putin and Biden, warned that a lot of work still had to be done before they could come together. “We are making our last efforts, the most intense, to prevent the worst,” a source at the French presidential palace told reporters on Monday.
Biden’s political gamble
Even if the apparent agreement for a summit holds, Biden will take a major gamble.
Hawk Republicans are sure to accuse him of appeasing the Russian strongman and rewarding his aggression in taking Ukraine hostage. If a meeting with Putin fails and an invasion nevertheless ensues, Biden will open himself to accusations of weakness.
Yet presidents are elected to make the toughest decisions. If Biden refused to meet and war breaks out in Ukraine, he would be accused of failing to test diplomacy to its limits. And he has a possible cover: If Putin backtracks and there is no summit, he will let Biden go off the political hook.
Blinken effectively explained the president’s openness to diplomacy despite his belief that an invasion was imminent during an appearance on DailyExpertNews’s “State of the Union” on Sunday.
“We believe President Putin has made the decision, but until the tanks are really rolling and the planes are flying, we will take every opportunity and every minute we have to see if diplomacy can still stop President Putin from doing this.” continue,” said Blinken. Dana Bash of DailyExpertNews.
However, the skeptical tone of the White House statement explaining Biden’s “in principle” openness to a meeting was not rooted solely in suspicion of Russian motives. It also seemed like an attempt to isolate the president from political attacks at home.
But there are reasons to take the risk. Despite the fact that the US will not send troops to defend Ukraine because it is not a NATO member, Biden has a real domestic reason for avoiding war in Ukraine. Any Russian invasion could cause a spike in already soaring gasoline prices and inflation rates that could further hurt Democrats’ chances in the midterm elections.
Is Biden in Putin’s Game?
Biden is not only at great political risk, but will also brave treacherous geopolitical terrain if he meets Putin.
One theory of the Russian leader’s build-up around Ukraine is that he wants to restore the Kremlin’s prestige in the Cold War as an equal US power. In essence, Biden grants Putin that platform, even though many in Washington view Russia as a greatly diminished force, despite its formidable nuclear arsenal.
But Putin would also like to debate and decide on nations’ big affairs with the US – as was the case during the Cold War summits between the US and the Soviet Union. The fact that this possible meeting was organized by the French will allay some fears in Europe that US allies will be marginalized – a factor that emerged early in the Ukraine crisis.
The Élysée Palace said other “stakeholders” will be included. That could include Ukraine and other NATO allies, including ex-Warsaw Pact members in Eastern Europe. But the French Presidency gave no further details. The prominent role of Macron, who aims to become the dominant European statesman after the retirement of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and faces a re-election campaign within weeks, will not go unnoticed inside or outside France.
A total disconnection
The most fundamental threat to the success of any talks between Putin and Biden is the incompatible positions of the two sides.
The Russians demand assurances that Ukraine will never join NATO and want the alliance to withdraw arms and troops from member states that were once behind the Iron Curtain, such as Poland, Hungary and Romania. That condition is non-negotiable for the West, which says it is up to individual nations to decide their fate.
The US rejects Russian warnings that it feels threatened by NATO’s post-Cold War expansion to the east, calling the alliance purely defensive. This position may make sense in Western capitals, but it ignores bruised Russian pride — the root of Putin’s two-decade efforts to reshape the accepted Cold War outcome after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
By repeatedly trying to destabilize Ukraine, the Russian leader has also made it clear that he is determined never to let the former Soviet republic make an ideological move west towards NATO and the EU. So any attempt to save face could undermine his historic mission and be difficult for him to accept.
But if Putin has decided that the costs of an invasion of Ukraine — sanctioning Western sanctions and a possible bloody insurgency in the country — are too heavy — Biden may be able to build a diplomatic exit for the Russian leader. There are many issues, including arms control, mitigating conflict in cyberspace, and countering the proliferation of nuclear weapons, which can make both sides safer.
But these issues have been held hostage by the same fundamental rift between Russia and the US that developed during the Ukraine conflict — showing why a Biden-Putin summit will be considered tentative until it happens and why success is unlikely. .
