Diane Francis: Putin’s ploy

by Diane Francis, Editor-at-Large at the National Post, columnist at the Kyiv Post, Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council, Eurasia Center and author, publisher on the Substack blog platform.

Source: Francis on Substack

What is underway with Russia is not a peace process but a slow-motion humanitarian catastrophe. Donald Trump choreographs trilateral meetings while Vladimir Putin demolishes Ukrainian energy infrastructure and civilians. Putin plays with Trump, who recently asked him to hold off bombing for a while. Putin agreed then reneged, unleashing massive strikes on residences, infrastructure, a maternity hospital, a bus carrying miners, and a passenger train. When asked how he felt about Putin’s treachery, Trump said he was “unsurprised”. Shortly after, the Kremlin announced there would be no “breakthrough” at the next round of talks in Abu Dhabi. And so the diplomatic dance continues: Ukraine is battered, Washington and Brussels do nothing, and Putin plays for time.

The failure to stop this war is debated to death, but has nothing to do with “sticking points,” casualties, “security guarantees,” or concessions. Putin is not interested in stopping or negotiating. He has no interest in business-related win-win business deals with Trump, either. He does not care about his soldiers. He wants to destroy Ukraine, then Europe, and America. Every decision he makes, or promise he breaks, is designed to stall, enrage, weaken, or break his foes. He’s like the “mugger” in the alley, only with a machine gun, not a pocket knife, who wants your wallet and your life, nothing less. He is not willing to sign a ceasefire, a security guarantee, keep a promise, or honor a joint venture resources deal to develop oil in the Arctic with Americans.

Putin is a sociopath who projects power with his palaces, gilt-lined offices, and goose-stepping guards. But instead of emphasizing and demonizing this, the world’s media spills ink insisting that Trump — not Putin or Europe or Russia — is the problem. Some even claim, without evidence, that Putin controls Trump or that late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein was in cahoots with Putin to control Trump, tycoons, and Western leaders to suborn the geopolitical agenda. Such Kremlin-fed disinformation is designed to distract.

Putin’s war could end if Ukraine’s allies got their acts together. Russia’s economy is smaller than New York City’s, is slowly going bust, and can be brought to a halt if the allies do a few things: Pound its army and infrastructure with long-range missiles, impound shadow fleet oil tankers around the world that deliver its oil, and ban all Russians from travel. But none of these happen because the impediment to ending this genocidal war is not Russia. It is Europe. Many of its politicians, notably German, have been compromised. Its leadership is splintered and has been infiltrated for decades by Kremlin operatives. The prestigious Munich Security Conference and many “think” tanks take money from Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs. They have preached for years about the wisdom of “East-West Rapprochement,” and ignored the threat.

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