Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Diplomacy is not enough if it is not matched up with forceful deeds and this should be spelled out to Russia
But the important thing is that Moscow's agenda needs to be at the core of the negotiations.
There are some hints out there that the Russians are really wanting some negotiations because Putin has put some interesting ideas on the table.
Putin’s actions suggest that his true goal is not to conquer Ukraine and absorb it into Russia but to change the post-Cold War setup in Europe’s east. That setup left Russia as a rule-taker without much say in European security, which was centered on NATO.
American involvement in a war for Ukraine might also have broader consequences: It could damage peace in Asia. Many factors inform Beijing’s calculations toward Taiwan; events in Ukraine are unlikely to be decisive.
For now, Biden is the leader who prevented a war, but that’s not to say that the summit will be followed by a rapid de-escalation: not until Moscow sees new steps being taken by Washington on Ukraine. First and foremost, that means progress on implementing the Minsk agreements.
Join Aaron David Miller as he sits down with leading experts Rachel Kleinfeld and Frances Brown to discuss the state of democracy and the path forward in advance of the summit.
Russia’s military preparations and other actions signal that Moscow has recognized the danger of coexisting with a fortified area on its border, but doesn’t yet know what to do about it.
Putin has stepped up his rhetoric about Ukraine throughout 2021. With new moves on the Russian-Ukrainian border, the saber-rattling has to be taken seriously.
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