War until the next election? Zuckerman and Magda on Caliber.Az

Vladimir Putin is taking the US presidential election into account in his military plans, hoping that Biden’s defeat in 2024 will weaken Washington’s support for Kyiv. Washington will improve its own position in possible negotiations to resolve the conflict in Ukraine – such is the point of view of politicians in the US and Europe.

Although all of Putin’s predictions about the problems in the West, which would have forced them to meet Moscow halfway, have so far been shattered.

The US has no specific intelligence about Putin’s calculations or his desire to deliberately prolong the war in hopes of a victory for Donald Trump or another Republican candidate in November 2024. Four American officials told CNN that the US presidential elections are still a key factor which, as according to Western officials in the fields of national security, intelligence and diplomacy, will influence Putin’s decisions on Ukraine. The US president takes office at the end of January, the year after the elections, so a cessation of hostilities before 2025 seems less likely.

“There is no doubt” that Putin is “trying to hold out” until the American elections, one official said. According to another acquainted with the relevant intelligence information, the plans of the Russian president are quite obvious to the US, Ukraine and Europe “Putin knows that Trump will help him. Both the Ukrainians and our European partners know this. So, although we have not seen anything specific along those lines, we must proceed from the fact that everyone thinks so”.

A European diplomat told CNN that prolonging the war until the election of the US president is exactly what Putin plans.
Trump leads the Republican presidential candidates by a wide margin. However, several investigations were underway against him, three of which had resulted in criminal charges against the former President.

How probable is it that Putin is counting on Trump to win the war in Ukraine until the US election? Is there any reason to believe that Trump, if returning to power, will decide to support Moscow’s position in this war?

Several foreign experts have answered those questions for Caliber.Az.

American Analyst, geopolitical and security Expert, and Editor-in-Chief of The Washington Outsider Irina Zuckerman believes that these assumptions sound like left-wing political propaganda for one very simple reason: Trump and Desantis, who is the runner-up for the Republican party, are unlikely to win the election.

“They simply lack the people’s support, even though Biden lost the general support in recent polls. Trump was one of the most controversial figures in recent years. Many Republicans who oppose Trump may not even vote for him if he is nominated. Desantis is more likely to unite the party, but won’t infiltrate the ranks of independents and democrats; on the contrary, his polarizing tone is repelling. Yet the candidate who is likely to have a cross-party appeal, Senator Tim Scott, is unlikely to win the Republican nomination, but he is also a staunch supporter of Ukraine and an opponent of Russia, so if Putin were to put his faith in any candidate, besides Trump, he would be making a serious mistake”, believes the American analyst.

At the same time, she believes that the rumours can hardly be true, since Putin never bet on any American candidate.

“His goal is to cause general chaos and compromise all leading candidates that he can. Even during the 2016 election, Putin created problems for both Republicans and Democrats. At the time, no one thought that Donald Trump could win the election, not even Putin, who certainly tried to get through to him, but did no less to Hillary Clinton. And let’s not forget the infamous server. The same can be expected from any election, and thought that Biden or any of his main opponents are untouchable, ridiculous, and harmful, especially given that Biden himself essentially abandoned Ukraine at the start of the war and pushed President Zelenskyy to leave the country, until the Congress and his fellow party pushed him to help Kyiv”, said Zuckerman.

The director of the Kyiv Institute of World Policy, Yevgen Magda, believes that we are dealing with the intersection of two matters.

“The Russian-Ukrainian war is, on the one hand, the most important military-political event in the world, for which the interest exists to be ended as soon as possible, yet not everyone is interested in it being a victory for Ukraine.

Yet the US presidential election will obviously be the biggest political event in the world of the next year. Although there will also be European and British parliamentary elections, which should be paid attention to. Just Trump’s behaviour is such that it attracts attention, and Russia is of the opinion that it will be more accommodating in the presidency, and will be able to put more pressure on Ukraine or reduce the flow of military-technical assistance for it.

However, I would not forget the existence of the so-called “deep state” in the United States, which, in my opinion, is sufficiently interested in Ukraine inflicting as much damage as possible on Russia.

There is another factor, namely the supply of American weapons to Ukraine, which is essentially an immense advertisement for the US military-industrial complex. Those same HIMARS and Patriots, for example, have received stunning advertising in Ukraine. So I would react to all this calmly because the assumptions of American analysts in this case carry a “holiday” tone. After all, the informational space in any ways has to be filled and a significant number of people are on holiday, and interest for many even important topics is falling”, concluded Magda.