Trump blusters and Putin mostly keeps his mouth shut and his eye on the ball. From Paul Craig Roberts at paulcraigroberts.org:
The prospects are not good as it seems the negotiations have already failed. Putin was excluded from participation in the agreement that Trump is threatening to shove down Putin’s throat with threats.
On March 13 Nima hosted on Dialogue Works a discussion between myself and Professor Geoffrey Roberts of the prospects for negotiations ending the conflict between Washington, NATO, and Ukraine on one side and Russia on the other. https://www.youtube.com/live/VSnRCWBuF20
Geoffrey is optimistic about the prospects, whereas I emphasized the realism of the situation. Whereas I sincerely hope Geoffrey’s optimism is justified, I introduced the many overlooked problems that might stand in the way. A major challenge to ending the conflict is the pretense that it is a conflict between Russia and Ukraine whereas in fact the conflict is Washington’s proxy war against Russia. It is difficult to resolve a conflict when the reality of it is denied. Essentially, I think Trump blundered by not first working out the terms of settlement with Putin and then taking them to Zelensky who would have had no alternative but to accept them. I was also concerned that having coerced Zelensky into agreeing to a cease fire, Trump would get pushy with Putin, and Trump has.
Another major concern is that the Americans do not understand that they have much more to gain from ending the conflict than Russia and Ukraine together. An important result of ending the conflict would be the removal of sanctions. Washington in its characteristic stupidity thinks the sanctions harm Russia, whereas the sanctions have severely impacted the European economies, denying them business deals and cheap energy, and could yet wreck the dollar as world reserve currency, which is the basis of American power.
