While Trump & Putin deal bilaterally ...

It looks for all the world as though Trump, against all his self-vaunted reputation as a dealmaker, has rather publicly gone into bilaterals with Putin on a basis that may be designed to achieve something for “America First”, but nothing whatever for Ukraine.  And maybe that’s exactly the correct summary of the situation.

But even if he has, Putin has also made some capital errors in this process: he’s wetting himself with such pleasure at being talked to again by someone other than China and NK, it’s not clear he can help himself.

Just count his well-advertised desiderata:  I’m not sure which, if any, count as Red Lines, but just look at the list.

• Russia gets all of the oblasts of Crimea, Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson (Kharkiv has sometimes featured on this list, and we know what he really wants is Odessa, for a free crack at Moldova and total blockade of Ukraine from the Black Sea)
• Ukraine to undergo regime change (we must assume he has a List of Names), and a programme of ‘denazification’ which is a long list of demands in itself
• Ukraine substantially to disarm
• NATO to withdraw from X, Y, Z (list varies), and deploy no forces whatever to Ukraine
• Ukraine never to be admitted to NATO (sometimes demand extends to EU) 
• end of all sanctions etc
• return of all assets (no doubt “+ interest” etc)
• end of all blacklistings, charges of war crimes etc etc
• return to the comity of nations in all dimensions, G8, sports, etc etc: (we may guess he has a list of specific showy performative demands to seal this)
• tickets to the Oscars, Wimbledon, Pope’s funeral 
• I have probably forgotten a few

So: how many of these could Trump conceivably deliver?  (without at very least expending every last drop of personal credibility in the RoW, and US political capital with the EU.)

So Putin won’t get all this (that’s putting things mildly): so he risks looking like he’s spent a helluva lot of blood and treasure for equivocal results.  May not go down well back in Moscow.

OR: he simply wants to set Trump at the throats of Europe.  Now that, he might achieve.  But not all of Trump’s merry men are knaves or fools, by a long shot.  And not necessarily the bombastic, unequivocal, easily-understood ‘victory’ Putin would be hoping to celebrate in Red Square, even though it might be epoch-making in the long run.

This ain’t over by Xmas. 

PS, I didn’t miss the interesting BTL suggestion from Mr Cowshed that Trump wants to set Putin up against Xi.  Nice theory!  Even more difficult to imagine, though.

ND