Putin awaits Trump meeting

Despite the signals from Trump’s team that the new US President will continue to provide military support for Ukraine, Moscow has viewed his inauguration as a cause for celebration. The Kremlin sees it as unlikely Trump can offer Russia an acceptable deal to end the war, but Trump has made clear there is one thing he can — and wants — to do for Putin: hold a face-to-face meeting, ending the Russian leader’s isolation in the West.

• Trump’s inauguration was the focus of mass attention in Moscow, with the ceremony receiving unprecedented coverage. Putin deliberately moved his regular meeting of the Security Council from Friday to Monday to coincide with events in Washington, and ordered that the proceedings were more public than usual. Typically, no details are provided about these meetings other than the topic of discussion, but this time the Kremlin released a video and transcript in which Putin congratulated Trump and praised him for withstanding the pressure he was put under in the election campaign.
• It was the first time Putin had issued a video message of congratulations to an incoming US president in his 25 years in power. For all previous election winners, the Russian president contented himself with issuing standard public telegrams. Today’s congratulations were a direct invitation to talk. “We see the statements from the newly-elected president of the USA and members of his team about their desire to resume direct relations with Russia, which the outgoing administration interrupted, through no fault of ours. I would like to emphasize that we have never refused dialogue and have always been ready to maintain equal relations in cooperation with any American administration. We proceed from the assumption that any dialogue will be built on an equal and mutually respectful basis,” Putin said.
• It’s likely that such dialogue will start imminently. On the eve of the inauguration CNN reported that Trump ordered his aides to set up a call with Putin in the next few days and a face-to-face meeting in the coming months. Putin’s message today showed the world that he welcomes the attention.
• Neither Russia nor Ukraine were mentioned at the inauguration itself and the only significant Russian in attendance was former billionaire, opposition figure and one time Putin foe, Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Allies of late opposition leader Alexei Navalny were not invited.

Why the world should care

A meeting with the US president would be a huge political success for Putin. In the past two years, he has only spoken regularly with two Western leaders — Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico. A phone call with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz a week after Trump’s victory last November was seen as the first crack in the West’s decision to fully cut off high-level contact with the Kremlin. A Putin-Trump meeting would be a major geopolitical breakthrough, even if it does not lead to any meaningful progress towards a ceasefire in Ukraine. Putin is confident of eventual victory in Ukraine, where his army is advancing, and has shown no signs of being willing to make concessions through diplomacy.