Talks destined go nowhere as Putin pulls strings again

Vladimir Putin was quick on the draw with an announcement that said nothing after his two-hour phone call with Donald Trump, as the Russian president grabbed the narrative before the Oval Office had figured out what the story even was.

- SAM KILEY WORLD AFFAIRS EDITOR

The call, the White House hoped, would show how much influence the US president had in the Kremlin. But they were sorely disappointed. Instead it showed that it is, again, Putin who pulls the strings.

“We have agreed with the president of the United States that Russia will propose and is ready to work with the Ukrainian side on a memorandum on a possible future peace accord, defining a number of positions, such as, for example, the principles of settlement, the timing of a possible peace agreement,” Putin told reporters near the Black Sea resort of Sochi.

Principles of settlement? That means what happens to the land that Russia has taken and the land that it has been already claimed as its own. That includes the whole of Crimea, Zaporizhzhia, Luhansk, Kherson and Donetsk provinces.

Or it might mean anywhere in Ukraine where Putin says Russian-speaking people are “in danger” and need rescuing – like Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second city. No matter that this seat of learning with its 40 universities and actual rocket scientists has steadfastly driven Russian invaders out.