Maybe our grandmothers had a point. Playing hard-to-get often works better than, well ... the alternative, whatever nomenclature one chooses for it. Or, perhaps closer to the mark, maybe Donald Trump has adopted Morrissey's First Axiom of Dating and Politics: Desperation is not an aphrodisiac.
This week, Trump made it clear that he would stop pursuing Vladimir Putin for peace talks when the Russian strongman refused to negotiate in good faith. Instead, he slapped sanctions on Russia's top oil and gas producers, along with anyone who imported their products. And mirabile dictu, suddenly, Putin has decided to pursue Trump instead, Axios' Barak Ravid reported earlier today:
Russian President Vladimir Putin's special envoy Kirill Dmitriev is visiting the U.S. and is expected to meet White House envoy Steve Witkoff in Miami on Saturday, according to a U.S. official and a source with knowledge of the plans.
Why it matters: Dmitriev's visit comes amid renewed tensions between the U.S. and Russia over President Trump's efforts to stop the war in Ukraine.
The Russians want preparations to resume for a second U.S.-Russia leaders summit after Trump canceled plans for a meeting with Putin in Budapest.
The Russians claim that the timing is merely coincidental:
In a post on X later Friday, Dmitriev said that his visit was “planned a while ago based on an invitation from the US side.” Dialogue between his country and the US is “vital for the world and must continue with the full understanding of Russia’s position and respect for its national interests,” he added.
The visit comes amid growing US frustration over the Kremlin’s refusal to end its war in Ukraine and after Trump said he had “canceled” a planned summit with his Kremlin counterpart, Vladimir Putin. The Trump administration on Wednesday imposed sanctions on Russia’s two largest oil companies Rosneft and Lukoil as it called on Moscow to agree to an immediate ceasefire in the war with Ukraine.
Well, YMMV, but it's tough to believe in coincidences when it comes to Russia and geopolitics.
CNN's report makes coincidence seem less likely as an explanation. They note the reaction to the canceled summit at the Kremlin, with Putin's rejection of "pressure" on any "self-respecting country." Dmitri Medvedev, one of Putin's longtime allies and usually a mouthpiece for the regime, declared yesterday that the sanctions were an "act of war," and the Russian military conducted a test launch of a nuclear-platform missile this week to underscore their unhappiness. However, sending Dmitriev to talk with Witkoff looks more like a sotto voce gesture of reconciliation:
Dmitriev – who has been a prominent Kremlin advocate for closer economic cooperation between Russia and the United States – recently proposed the construction of a “Trump-Putin” tunnel between Alaska and the Russian Far East. ...
In April, Dmitriev became the first Russian official to visit Washington, DC, since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. At the time, his visit – during which he met with Trump envoy Steve Witkoff – was viewed as an important step in the then-warming relations between the Kremlin and the White House.
The preparations for the now-canceled summit took place at the highest levels of diplomacy. Secretary of State Marco Rubio held talks with Putin's foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, the recipient 16 years ago of the red "reset button" presented by Hillary Clinton. Dmitriev can claim that this visit was already scheduled until he is blue in the face, but there would be no reason to shift talks to a lower level while Rubio and Lavrov were discussing the summit. The collapse of the summit prep already suggested that Rubio and Trump didn't like what the Russians were offering toward peace, and Trump's angry dismissal of a meeting with Putin as a "waste of time" made that explicitly clear.
Putin's sending Dmitriev to talk with Witkoff to salvage the opening. Will it work? Not unless the Russians are motivated to end the war; Trump has already made that much publicly clear. Trump has also made it almost as explicitly clear that he won't supply Ukraine with long-range Tomahawks, at least not at this stage. Trump will likely wait to see what impact the new sanctions will have, and that may well be why Dmitriev is on his way to meet Witkoff:
China has spent months building up supplies. However, it also can’t escape the impact of Trump’s sanctions, said Muyu Xu, senior crude analyst at data firm Kpler. “The Chinese oil majors will likely halt buying Russian oil,” Xu said.
The Trump administration has been pushing New Delhi to halt its Russian oil purchases, aiming to choke off Moscow’s war funding. In August, the U.S. imposed a 50% tariff on Indian goods, citing its continued Russian oil imports.
India, whose growing economy needs more oil, has resisted the U.S. push because it has retooled its supply chain since the Ukraine war to rely on discounted Russian crude. Last week, Trump said India had pledged to stop buying Russian oil, an assertion Indian officials quietly disputed while avoiding contradicting the president publicly. ...
Modi is facing increasing domestic pressure to hammer out a trade deal with the U.S., India’s biggest trading partner.
In September, the first full month under Washington’s 50% tariffs, India’s exports to the U.S. fell to $5.5 billion, down nearly 40% from May, according to Ajay Srivastava, founder of New Delhi consulting firm Global Trade Research Initiative.
Pant, the think-tank analyst, said Modi could use the new Russia sanctions as a “face-saving device” to persuade local interests that Trump’s demands on oil must be heeded. That could speed up negotiations on the tariffs.
China has more flexibility than India does. It can hide more of the purchases by getting deliveries through land-based systems, too. India, on the other hand, is a democracy, and the economic pain of their decline in exports to the US may overcome the expense of sourcing oil elsewhere. China can't make up for the Russian loss of India's imports, and if Trump decides to lean hard on India, then that loss will happen, sooner rather than later.
Can Witkoff work his magic with Dmitriev? He stumbled in his first attempts with Russia and in the Middle East, but Witkoff has proven himself a fast learner. Stay tuned this weekend to see whether the Russians start softening their positions publicly after this tete-a-tete.
Editor’s Note: Thanks to President Trump and his administration’s bold leadership, we are respected on the world stage, and our enemies are being put on notice.
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