Vladimir Putin is dusting off his stalling and delaying tactics playbook as peace talks with Ukraine falter and Russia continues to build up troops on the frontline and pound Ukrainian targets.
In the space of just a few days, Putin has questioned Volodymyr Zelensky’s legitimacy and made, then changed, major demands over Ukraine’s security guarantees, all while his forces continue to pound targets and rally on Ukraine’s Southern Front.
According to Zelensky, Russian forces are building up troops along the southern front line in the Zaporizhzhia region, which Moscow claims as its own.
‘Zaporizhzhia: the enemy is reinforcing,’ Zelensky said, adding that: ‘We can see that they continue transferring part of their troops from the Kursk direction to Zaporizhzhia.’
And overnight, Russia launched its biggest barrage of missiles and drones in weeks, killing one and leaving many wounded.
The latest cross-border fire follows Trump’s flurry of diplomacy this month aimed at ending the war.
The US president met Putin in Alaska, before bringing Zelensky and European leaders to Washington for separate talks.
Russia has played down the prospect of a summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Zelensky any time soon, and has said it wants to be included in discussions on future security guarantees for Ukraine.
Putin repeatedly said he is ready to meet Zelensky, but there are some issues that need to be resolved before such a meeting could happen, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said today.
Putin has questioned the legitimacy of Zelensky due to the postponement of elections in Ukraine due to the war.
Lavrov said the legitimacy issue would have to be resolved before Moscow could sign any document with Kyiv.
Just yesterday, Russia also took issue with security guarantees for Ukraine, claiming that any attempt to solve issues of security without Moscow were ‘a road to nowhere.’
Lavrov said at a press conference: ‘We cannot agree with the fact that now it is proposed to resolve questions of security, collective security, without the Russian Federation. This will not work.
‘I’m sure that in the West and above all in the United States they understand perfectly well that seriously discussing security issues without the Russian Federation is a utopia, it’s a road to nowhere.’
To top it off, Lavrov later upped the ante and claimed China also needed a say in the matter, once again moving the goalposts and forcing the West to recalculate its negotiating strategy and tactics.
He said Ukraine’s security guarantees ‘should be provided on an equal basis with the participation of countries such as China, the United States, the UK and France’.
He claimed the terms are based on those Moscow tried to force Kyiv into signing in Istanbul in April 2022, two months after their invasion. Those terms effectively meant none of the guarantors would be allowed to defend Ukraine from Russia unless they all agreed, including China and Russia.
Zelensky said today in response that he did not want China playing a role in guaranteeing Ukraine’s security following Russia’s invasion, citing Beijing’s support for Moscow.
‘First, China did not help us stop this war from the start. Second, China assisted Russia by opening its drone market… We do not need guarantors who do not help Ukraine and did not help Ukraine at the time when we really needed it,’ Zelensky said in comments released to reporters including AFP on Thursday.
The stalling comes after Russia launched hundreds of drones and missiles against Ukraine overnight in the biggest barrage since mid-July, killing one person and wounding many others.
Zelensky said several missiles were aimed at a US-owned business in western Ukraine ‘producing everyday items like coffee machines’.
Fifteen people were injured in that strike.
Ukrainian officials said that the strikes showed Russia was not serious about a peace deal despite intensive diplomatic efforts led by US President Donald Trump.
‘The Russians carried out this attack as if nothing has changed at all, as if there are no global efforts to stop this war,’ Zelensky said.
‘This requires a response. There is still no signal from Moscow that they truly intend to engage in substantive negotiations and end this war,’ he said.
Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched 574 drones and 40 missiles. Air defence units downed 546 drones and 31 missiles.
‘One person was killed and two were wounded as a result of the combined UAV and cruise missile strike in Lviv,’ said Maksym Kozytskyi, head of the military administration in the western city’s region.
‘Dozens of residential buildings were damaged,’ he added.
The 15 people were wounded in the city of Mukachevo, near the border with Hungary and Slovakia, the city council said.
‘Five patients are being treated in the hospital, and one more was transferred to the regional hospital,’ the council posted.
Western Ukraine is less frequently targeted by Russian forces, which have captured swathes of southern and eastern Ukraine in an invasion which began in 2022.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sybiga said there was ‘no military logic or necessity’ to the strikes, saying they were ‘just terror against people’.
Meanwhile, Russia’s defence ministry said it destroyed ’49 Ukrainian aircraft-type unmanned aerial vehicles’ across multiple regions.
The ministry did not detail any casualties or damage.
Putin’s stalling appears to be just the latest instance of deploying a stalling tactic during talks about the future of Ukraine.
Earlier this year, when Russia and Ukraine were set to meet in Turkey, Putin failed to confirm his attendance of the talks that were, at that point, the highest level discussion between the two nations.
Instead, he sent a second-tier delegation to Istanbul to speak with Zelensky and his team on his behalf.
The highest level official in attendance at the Istanbul talks was Vladimir Medinsky, one of Putin’s aides, slowing down the negotiation process.
Putin’s meeting with Trump in Alaska last week appeared to highlight exactly why he and the Kremlin were keen to use stalling as a diplomatic tactic.
The Russian despot said that the ‘root causes’ of the conflict needed to be addressed in order to achieve lasing peace.
These so-called ‘root causes’ include Ukraine becoming a neutral territory, giving up land in the east, hugely reducing the size and capability of its military and abandoning its aim to join NATO.
Analysts slammed Putin for the underhanded tactics seen this week and previously.
Philippe Dickinson, a former UK diplomat who works with the Atlantic Council, described last week’s Alaska summit as: ‘The treading water summit.’
He added: ‘With little seemingly achieved, this was nobody’s worst-case scenario. Putin got to share the stage with the president of the United States and proffer enough flattery and meaningless talk of respecting Ukrainian security to stave off further immediate sanctions and economic pressure.’
Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Centre, meanwhile said it was unlikely Putin would meet with Zelensky unless he all but gives up.
‘Putin will not meet Zelenskyy under the current circumstances. He has repeatedly stated that such a meeting would only be possible if there were well-prepared grounds, which in practice means Zelenskyy’s acceptance of Russia’s terms for ending the war’, she said.
Dickinson said that the only way for the West to respond was with ‘strength and pressure’.
He said: ‘Now is the time for the Europeans to press on Trump that Putin is the only obstacle to peace, and that Trump should finally apply his “peace through strength” approach to this conflict: to dial up the collective military, diplomatic, and economic pressure on Russia, both directly and indirectly through the countries that continue to enable Putin’s war machine.
‘Absent that, Putin will continue to happily tread water in the bloody lake he has created’.