Putin launched a fresh idea regarding Ukraine and America

American specialists from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) have concluded that right now Russian leader Vladimir Putin is trying to use all the leverage to get US President Donald Trump to abandon peace talks with Ukraine.

Main theses:

• Trump’s team is making progress in setting the conditions for a peaceful resolution of the war.
• However, such a course of events does not suit the Russian leader.

Putin seeks to free himself from Trump’s influence on the course of the war American analysts emphasize on the fact that after the Russian leader’s meeting with Trump’s team on January 22-23, Putin’s aide Yuri Ushakov made a new cynical statement.

According to the latter, “there is no hope” of achieving a long-term settlement of the war without resolving the territorial issue according to the “Anchorage formula”.

Against this background, Kremlin spokesman Dmytro Peskov began to assure that official Moscow considers it “impractical” to “publicly go into the details” of the “Anchorage formula”, however, according to him, the withdrawal of the Defense Forces of Ukraine from the entire Donbas is an important requirement for a peaceful solution.

As the ISW team emphasizes, in recent weeks Trump’s team was able to make significant progress in defining the conditions necessary to ensure a stable and durable peace in Ukraine.

Such a development was not particularly to Putin’s liking, as he does not plan to end the war.

The Kremlin is using the uncertainty surrounding the summit to mask the fact that it is Russia, not Ukraine, that is stalling the negotiation process by insisting on its initial demands for war. It is likely that Russia is trying to sway Trump to abandon US efforts to cooperate with Ukraine and Europe by offering an ambiguous “Alaskan formula” as a means of ending the war