Russia’s Lost Interest in Ukrainian Peace Talks: Why?

Russia has lost interest for now in participating any time soon another round of talks with Washington and Kiev in the negotiation process kicked off by U.S. President Donald Trump to end the NATO-Russia Ukrainian War. The reasons are manifold and include the increasingly erratic and duplicitous behavior of Russia’s interlocutors, consequences emanating from the U.S./Israeli-Iranian or Third Gulf War, and growing dissatisfaction across Russia because of the behaviors and consequences, all of which I detail below.

On March 30th Ukrainian leader Volodomyr Zelenskiy stated that he was interested in re-starting the stalled peace talks, reiterating that he was ready to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin anywhere but in Russia and Belarus and reviving the idea of a truce on attacks on energy infrastructure. There was no response from Moscow. Oddly, the next day Zelenskiy told yet another absurd lie by claiming that “the Americans” had told him that the Russians were giving him two months to withdraw from Donbass or else Moscow would toughen its demands. The Russians promptly denied they had communicated anything of the sort to Washington but continued to ignore Zelenskiy’s apparent call to continue the talks begun in Abu Dhabi and continued in Geneva in January and February.