There were always two big problems with Europe’s latest diplomatic attempts to deter Russia’s President Vladimir Putin from seeking to crush Ukraine and bring it back into Moscow’s sphere of influence, reports the Financial Times.
The first, diplomats say, was the unrealistic hope of French president Emmanuel Macron — who became the west’s chief negotiator in the final days before Putin raised the stakes by recognising two breakaway “republics” in eastern Ukraine — that he could persuade him to “de-escalate” by offering talks about Russia’s strategic concerns.
But the second and more important obstacle to success was Putin himself. He is judged by those involved in negotiations with him over the years to have become more hardline, more isolated (especially during the Covid-19 pandemic) and, in his rambling and aggressive speech about Ukraine from the Kremlin on Monday night, even “paranoid”.
That was the diagnosis of Mark Rutte, prime minister of the Netherlands, and of one of Macron’s senior officials. Macron, who negotiated with Putin for nearly six hours at the Kremlin two weeks ago and wrested from him last weekend an agreement in principle to have a summit with US president Joe Biden, has been criticised as naive for thinking he had any influence over the Russian leader, and opportunistic for trying to use the international stage to help his chances of winning re-election in April.
Kaja Kallas, prime minister of Estonia, a Baltic state bordering Russia and previously in the Soviet Union, recently suggested Macron did not grasp that Putin faced none of the pressures from the public felt by democratic leaders. She told the Financial Times she felt “there is a strong wish to be the hero who solves this case, but I don’t think it’s solvable like that”.