Pavel K. Baev
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Steven Witkoff, U.S. President Donald Trump’s key negotiator, met last Friday in what could mark a decisive moment in making or breaking a peace deal on Russia’s war against Ukraine. This conversation lasted about 4.5 hours, but next to nothing has been revealed about its content and outcome. This resounding silence indicates Putin’s displeasure with the U.S. pressure and perhaps his reckoning with the need to make a decision on at least a ceasefire. In the meantime, two Russian Iskander missiles struck the Ukrainian city of Sumy on Palm Sunday, observed as a holiday by many Ukrainians, killing 34 people including two children (Kyiv Independent, April 14). Russia’s Ministry of Defense has claimed responsibility for the strikes, justifying them as targeted against a meeting of the command staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ Seversk operational-tactical group (Telegram/@Ministry of Defense of Russia, April 14).
Putin arranged the meeting with Witkoff in St. Petersburg, likely to buy himself more time before making any concessions, as an unnecessary and curtailed session was held on the prospects for building up the Russian Navy (Kommersant, April 12). The real purpose of holding the talks in St. Petersburg was apparently to create an opportunity for Kirill Dmitriev, Putin’s newly-promoted courtier who was also present for the talks in Saudi Arabia, to take Witkoff to the grand choral synagogue on the eve of Pesah, or Passover (see EDM, February 18; Fontanka.ru, April 11). The setting implied that the Russian leader prepares to celebrate Easter, as is his established habit, after which the preparations for the Victory Day parade would occupy his agenda, which further implied that talks on an armistice could only occur in mid-May after these events occur.
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