Expert: Ukraine has negotiations leverage for the first time
Security expert Rainer Saks told Vikerraadio that Ukraine has, for the first time, gained the ability to influence the course of negotiations to end the war in its dealings with both the United States and Russia.
U.S. President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met in New York on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly.
Saks said President Zelenskyy has generally maintained that Ukraine wants a peace agreement, wants to negotiate and is ready to meet with the Russian president, but that Russia is unwilling to do so.
According to Saks, no specific plan of action was discussed publicly, but a picture can be pieced together from previous media reports.
"We can be certain that this 40-minute working meeting — rather than a major, thoroughly prepared meeting between delegations — focused on one issue: how to restart negotiations. President Trump wants Ukraine to stop bombing Russian oil refineries. Ukraine also attacked an oil refinery near Samara last night and has a simple response: We can reach an agreement with Russia to mutually refrain from attacking certain targets, whether that concerns energy infrastructure, airstrikes or the Black Sea. What the Ukrainian president is saying is that if the U.S. wants Ukraine to change its policies, this must be agreed on mutually with Russia," Saks said.
"This means that, for the first time, Ukraine has gained serious leverage to influence this process. The U.S. can no longer threaten Ukraine with withdrawing support because that would further reduce U.S. influence. Ukraine is carrying out attacks in Russia using weapons that it largely produces itself; they are not imported from elsewhere. In that sense, the situation has improved somewhat and Ukraine is giving the U.S. an incentive to put pressure on Russia," Saks said.
Saks noted that the U.S. president has also acquired a new tool in the form of Lindsey Graham's sanctions legislation.
"It has been signed by the president but has not yet been implemented. This gives the U.S. president an additional means of applying pressure. If it took effect, it would be a sanctions package with very severe consequences for Russia," Saks said.
"And the U.S. always has the option of putting pressure on Russia by saying that if you do not take the path of de-escalation, we may begin supplying Ukraine with weapons," he added.
According to Saks, there are so far no signs that Russia has begun engaging more actively with the U.S.
Saks said Trump is putting pressure on Russia, but not directly.
"I don't think direct pressure would produce any results either. But what they are now trying to construct as a means of pressuring Russia is to say: We can see from here in the U.S. that things are going badly for you, both in the war and in the economy, and that you cannot continue fighting a war like this for much longer. They are then trying to make the case to Russia that it would be better to negotiate now because your position will be even weaker later," Saks said.
Saks said that, with Russia's State Duma elections now over, the environment is somewhat more conducive to talks.
"Somewhere around the beginning of October, as Gen. Budanov, head of the Ukrainian presidential administration, has also predicted, we could expect trilateral negotiations to be possible, but that depends very much on how effectively the U.S. can bring them about," Saks said.
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Editor: Marcus Turovski, Aleksander Krjukov
Source: "Uudis+"
