Irish Examiner view: Caution over Putin’s offer of diplomacy

Vladimir Putin in the Grand Palace at the Kremlin in Moscow. It may be more pertinent that Putin’s offer of direct talks follows the visit of China’s Xi Jinping to Moscow, given that China has been an essential economic lifeline for Russia in the face of Western sanctions. Picture: Pavel Bednyakov/AP

We would like to be able to warmly welcome Vladimir Putin’s offer of direct diplomacy with Ukraine. We would like to consider it with a hint of optimism.

But in many ways, it feels like we’ve been down this road before, and Putin’s bone fides will always be questioned, especially after the bloodbath of the last three years.

Remember that in 1994, Russia, the US, and the UK agreed to guarantee Ukraine’s security after it gave up its post-Soviet nuclear stockpile. Look what that’s been worth.

However, we should note that Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has publicly commented that it is “a positive sign that the Russians have finally begun to consider ending the war”. Though he, rightly, added that the first step would be a ceasefire.

Russia’s demands have been extensive, including halting Ukraine’s efforts to join Nato permanently. The invader has occupied some 20% of Ukraine, which, if scaled up, would be much of the eastern coast of the US.

It says much about the falling status of the US on the international stage that European leaders were meeting with
Ukraine and threatening Russia with greater sanctions while America’s president was more preoccupied with his social media postings. It’s unclear what, if any, influence Donald Trump has had on the weekend’s events, even if the minerals agreement between Ukraine and the US, while not providing security guarantees in and of itself, does give America skin in the game, as they say.

It may be more pertinent that Putin’s offer of direct talks follows the visit of China’s Xi Jinping to Moscow, given that China has been an essential economic lifeline for Russia in the face of Western sanctions.

Europe, meanwhile, has been resolute in reiterating its support for Ukraine and in shoring up its own defences, with France suggesting other allied countries could come under its nuclear umbrella. There has been a general shift that our grandchildren will still be grappling with.

But while this is all wider geopolitics, we need to remember the devastating human cost of the war. British intelligence estimates that Russia has had about 1m soldiers killed and wounded, with 160,000 of those in the first three months of this year. It’s been estimated that Russia loses almost two
soldiers for every Ukrainian soldier killed or injured.

And that’s not even factoring in the effect on civilian life, with millions of people being displaced. The full extent of deaths and damage may not be apparent for a long time yet.

A little more than 200 Ukrainian prisoners of war were returned home during the week, with the strain of the war and their internment evident on their gaunt faces and bodies. Meanwhile, some 20,000 Ukrainian children have been spirited away from occupied territories to within Russia. If Russia wants to be serious about peace, surely it should commit to returning those children at the very least.

So while we would like to be optimistic about the future, the recent past dictates that we remain staunchly cautious, lest even the faintest promise of peace all comes asunder.

Is Trump fit to be in charge?

There was a time when age became an all-consuming theme in the American presidential race. Joe Biden was too old, showing too many signs of decline, the narrative went, resulting in a disastrous debate with Donald Trump that led to the Democrat president withdrawing from seeking a second term.

But Trump is not facing the same chorus of disapproval, or at least not to the same widespread extent, even though he is arguably showing considerable signs of decline, and some of it quite alarming. If Biden showed such a loose grasp of economics as Trump, he would have been castigated by conservative America, both media and political, as well as those within his party’s ranks.

This is a president who has said he doesn’t know if he has to uphold the constitution — despite having taken that specific oath twice — and who has appointed a conspiracy theorist without a medical licence as surgeon general, saying he didn’t know her but that Robert F Kennedy Jr — himself prone to wild and nonsensical statements — had recommended her.

Trump’s assertions about trade deficits and “bailing out” other countries (such as longtime ally Canada) are folly. His claims that the US is somehow saving billions of dollars because container ships from China have stopped arriving is nonsense, something he repeated recently in the face of questions about thousands of dock workers and truck drivers fearing for their jobs. The head of Los Angeles port has given as a rule of thumb that four containers means one job.

The Trump administration’s ongoing economic illiteracy should have been clear from his previous claims that other countries are paying his tariffs, as opposed to, ultimately, the American consumer, although his base remains energised about this as a success. Whether the “total reset” with China that Trump announced at the weekend will result in change is unclear, and in any event it would take roughly a month before shipments from China resume after factoring in getting ships to Chinese ports and then to America. Isolationism is an almost antique economic philosophy, long overtaken by the effective outsourcing of manufacturing to countries outside the US.

There has also been footage of him being handed executive orders to sign and having to ask his aides what the regulations he’s rescinding actually entail (energy efficiency in the most recent case).

This is the kind of thing that Trump himself would have hammered ‘Sleepy Joe’ Biden about.

And we haven’t even looked at Trump’s loose, at best, grasp of international politics, from the war in Ukraine to merging with Canada to meandering that Denmark had acquired Greenland because a boat landed there a couple of hundred years ago.

Let us be clear that older people have a tremendous amount to offer every country, but is somebody demonstrating such clear decline suitable for the role to which he has been appointed?

Although his press secretary and acolytes would say otherwise, he increasingly gives the impression that he is not really in command of his faculties, let alone in command of his brief.

And if he’s not in charge, then who is?

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