by Stefano Caprio

Today Moscow is biding its time, waiting for the proclamation of Victory on 9 May. But the agreement with Trump has already given it what it had been waiting for for more than thirty years: Russia's return to the table of superpowers, as a leading player in the world political arena.

The negotiations between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin drag on rather wearily, without actually offering any glimpse of an end to the conflict in Ukraine, with promises not to touch Ukrainian energy infrastructures, while on the same day a rain of kamikaze drones and aerial bombs is raining down on the entire country that has been invaded, occupied and devastated for more than three years.

The Kremlin accompanies these false promises with assurances that are tragicomic to say the least, saying that as soon as Putin gave the order not to hit the Ukrainian power stations, Russian planes were forced to shoot down their own drones that were heading precisely towards those targets, which Trump then proposed to entrust to the Americans.

On the other hand, it seems that the two emperors have managed to agree on hockey matches between their respective national teams, news that has aroused great enthusiasm in the Russian public opinion, which considers the Americans as their sparring partners to obtain truly satisfying victories.

It is clear that Putin aims to solemnly proclaim Victory in the parade on 9th May, and before then any negotiations will be just a show, in Trump's narrative of ‘successful TV shows’ and ‘cordial and very promising’ conversations. The next episode of the Russian-American serial will be in Jeddah on 23 March, to start putting the peace plan in writing (the Ukrainians will also come, but without meeting the Russians), or perhaps just the plot of the subsequent sequels, to keep the public's interest high.

On the Russian side, however, the classic tactic of the ‘Soviet trap’ is being applied, as former CIA officer Matthew Schumacher observed, when during the Cold War the USSR slowed down any process of dialogue and negotiation in order to reorganise itself and find new ways of influencing its adversaries. Today Putin needs time, not only to respect the schedule of events until May, but also to secure his position politically and militarily, and above all economically.

The harmony between the two great hockey players of the East and the West, as confirmed by all observers, gives the Kremlin the first and fundamental victory it has been longing for for more than thirty years, namely the return of Russia to the table of superpowers, as a leading player in the world political arena.

The Ukraine question isn't even the main topic of the dialogue, because as well as the sport of ice hockey, there are the big energy and mining deals to be had, and the circumvention of sanctions to be entrusted not only to Caucasian and Central Asian subjects or to big brother China, but directly to their American partners. The last thing the Tsar is interested in is finding solutions for peace, given that it is now a fact that war will remain the fundamental context of the life of the people, especially in and around Europe.

Further confirmation of Putin's intention to continue the war to the bitter end came from the assembly of the Russian Union of Entrepreneurs and Investors (RSEI) a few days ago, in which the president guaranteed that ‘Russia is ready to attack Odessa’, if Ukraine does not recognise the annexed regions of Crimea, Lugansk, Donetsk, Zaporižja and Kherson, which the Russians call ‘Donbass and Novorossija’, the symbolic areas of the Cossacks and the Jews deported in past centuries.

At first the claim was limited to the historically most significant territory of the Crimean peninsula, occupied and incorporated in 2014, but since ‘nobody listened to us’, the Russian presence has been imposed even beyond the territories actually conquered, given that parts of these regions are still under Ukrainian control.

Putin has however declared that Moscow can go even further than these requests, aiming at ‘all the territories currently under Kiev's control’. It's no coincidence that the phone call with Trump took place immediately after the businessmen's assembly, from which the Tsar drew particular inspiration.

The RSPP meeting also left a very anxious trace in the minds of Russian industrialists, especially after the report by Finance Minister Anton Siluanov - summarised with the phrase ‘there is no money, but you hold on’ by the president of the association Aleksandr Shokhin - who also invited those present to ‘support entrepreneurial activities with prayers, together with actions’.

Siluanov insisted that the government will do everything it can with ‘subsidies, privileges and discounts’, recommending however that waste be reduced and unprofitable activities be disposed of, as the giant Gazprom is currently doing, laying off thousands of employees and auctioning off its most luxurious offices throughout the country.

Putin himself has recognised the need to ‘cool down the economy’, although he urged that it should not ‘go as far as the hyperbaric chambers’. He is under no illusions, however, that the sanctions against Russia will be cancelled, as they are ‘unprecedented in history’ and are an expression of the West's desire to ‘keep our economy from growing’ to avoid unnecessary competition on international markets.

In this sense, Putin's mantra reiterates ‘the usefulness of sanctions, which are a catalyst for our development’, forcing Russia to rethink itself as an autonomous country in perpetual war with the rest of the world, with no duties or debts towards others. In truth, there is no shortage of problems, with the thousands of billions of military spending fuelling unstoppable inflation, suffocating business with very high interest rates for months now.

According to data from Zmakp, the Centre for Macroeconomic Analysis and Short-Term Forecasting, which is very close to the Kremlin, one in five companies in Russia is at risk of closure, with an economy characterised by ‘avalanches of corporate bankruptcies’. The national GDP grew by 4.1% in 2024, with an economy inflated by investments in the arms industry, but for the current year the International Monetary Fund forecasts a maximum of 1.5%, three times less than the previous one.

Therefore, at least a pause is needed, and the May holidays will certainly bring some form of temporary detente. Most excited by the latest imperial conversations are the Crimean leaders, who are hoping for recognition of the annexation by Trump's America, as they cannot be satisfied with those of Iran, Venezuela and North Korea.

The copy of the Statue of Liberty in Sebastopol had been dismantled, and is now being hastily reassembled from the warehouse where it had been stored by order of the speaker of the Crimean parliament, Vladimir Konstantinov, who claims that the ‘good results’ of the transoceanic phone call concern the status of the Black Sea peninsula.

He naturally adds that ‘we will not allow the Americans to get their hands on our resources, as they are trying to do in Ukraine’, but assures that ‘Crimea will be a suitable space for dialogue and collaboration on equal terms and for the benefit of all’, in the spirit of the new Trump-Putin Yalta. The turnaround is remarkable, considering that Konstantinov was one of Trump's most outspoken critics before his re-election, considering him ‘an enemy worse than all the others’.

The vice-premier of Crimea, Georgij Muradov, Putin's representative on the peninsula, sees in the talks these days the ‘overcoming of the opposition between civilisations’, and even ‘the formation of a new world order, without global military conflict’.

The enthusiasm of the Russians is best revealed by an entrepreneur and blogger from Moscow who lives in Sevastopol, Aleksandr Sergeev, known as Gornyj, the ‘Mountaineer’, who writes ‘now the Pindosy have become our friends’, using a term of Ukrainian-Crimean origin that indicates ironic contempt for foreign fools’, as the Greeks of the peninsula were once called, and the Americans during Soviet times.

Now the Kremlin propagandists have been instructed to no longer use the term Anglo-Saxons, since the “war of civilisations” is over, and the Pindosy, easy to deceive and exploit, are back in vogue.

Blogger Gornyj therefore assures us that ‘we will go back to flying on Boeings, driving Fords and using Visa credit cards, it will be a great turbulence full of surprises, great cataclysms and climatic catastrophes are already awaiting us from the summer, which will turn into technogenic invasions and new world crises, and our Crimea will be at the centre of everything’.

This is the vision of ‘Putin's peace’, which doesn't come from agreements and negotiations, but by putting Russia at the centre of the world, to prevent anyone from becoming its master. It won't be a temporary truce, but eternal peace.

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