A carnival float in Dusseldorf’s Rose Monday parade last March shows US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin crushing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky while shaking hands. The dynamics among the three leaders have shifted since the spring and are still in flux. / Photo by Hesham Elsherif/Getty Images.
The battered Russian troops call it the “Horseshoe,” a brutally reinforced area in the hilly northern corner of the Donbas region that blocks the army’s entry from the east to the vast central plains of Ukraine—a path that could lead the Russian army, if it were able to overcome an expected counterattack, deep into central Ukraine and even theoretically to the outskirts of Kiev.
The Horseshoe is bloodied high ground and fortified by trenches, bunkers, and concrete barriers that have kept the Russian army at bay, at great cost in lives and materials. A well-informed American official told me that Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, continues to urge his generals to do an all-out assault and take the area and give Putin what he wants to end the war: total control of the Donbas, which consists of two provinces—Donetsk and Luhansk—that are rich in coal, iron ore, lithium, titanium, and rare earth metals. And Russian history. Russian speakers make up 70 per cent of the region. Russia’s generals, I was told by the official, have so far refused to make another attack on the Horseshoe, citing prior failures, heavy casualties to combat soldiers, and destruction of their tanks and other heavy weapons.
With winter approaching, Putin will not be able to mount a ground offensive until spring and again seek to take all of Donbas, whose Ukrainian-controlled areas have been under heavy Russian drone and missile assault since Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2022. Press reports of the most recent non-summit have emphasized that Putin agreed to freeze all combat along the rest of the front if he is granted control of all of Donbas. President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, despite pressure from the United States, insisted, as he has throughout the history of peace talks with Russia, that he would not alter, as the US official put it to me, “his long-standing position to keep up the empty hope and objective of ‘taking back all of the Ukraine.’”
The irony, or “reality,” as the official put it, is that “Russia has been trying unsuccessfully to capture this sliver of territory for a year and failed with great loss of life by his troops without success.” Zelensky’s gambit, he added wryly, “Might work. Might not.”
Clearly, there is no learning curve in this war.
The Horseshoe is bloodied high ground and fortified by trenches, bunkers, and concrete barriers that have kept the Russian army at bay, at great cost in lives and materials. A well-informed American official told me that Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, continues to urge his generals to do an all-out assault and take the area and give Putin what he wants to end the war: total control of the Donbas, which consists of two provinces—Donetsk and Luhansk—that are rich in coal, iron ore, lithium, titanium, and rare earth metals. And Russian history. Russian speakers make up 70 per cent of the region. Russia’s generals, I was told by the official, have so far refused to make another attack on the Horseshoe, citing prior failures, heavy casualties to combat soldiers, and destruction of their tanks and other heavy weapons.
With winter approaching, Putin will not be able to mount a ground offensive until spring and again seek to take all of Donbas, whose Ukrainian-controlled areas have been under heavy Russian drone and missile assault since Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2022. Press reports of the most recent non-summit have emphasized that Putin agreed to freeze all combat along the rest of the front if he is granted control of all of Donbas. President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, despite pressure from the United States, insisted, as he has throughout the history of peace talks with Russia, that he would not alter, as the US official put it to me, “his long-standing position to keep up the empty hope and objective of ‘taking back all of the Ukraine.’”
The irony, or “reality,” as the official put it, is that “Russia has been trying unsuccessfully to capture this sliver of territory for a year and failed with great loss of life by his troops without success.” Zelensky’s gambit, he added wryly, “Might work. Might not.”
Clearly, there is no learning curve in this war.
The never ending logjam ensued after the latest summit that did not happen: Trump canceled a meeting with Putin this week because, as he explained, “It just didn’t feel right to me. It didn’t feel like we were going to get to the place we have to get. . . . We’ll do it in the future.”
The future came early today when the US Treasury, taking the cue from Trump, abruptly announced sanctions on Russia’s two largest oil companies, Rosneft and Lukoil. The New York Times reported that the European Union immediately followed suit, driving up the prices of Brent Crude, the international benchmark, by more than than five percent. China immediately cancelled its November order of Russian crude, and India, the other main buyer of Russian crude, was expected to do the same. There was no immediate reaction from Moscow, but the pressure game is on.
Putin has survived every successive set of US sanctions, which Donald Trump is now escalating, that led to the withdrawal from Russia, beginning under Obama, of American hotels, food chains, and other US businesses that had thrived there.
Ukrainian drone and missile attacks, targeted with the aid of Western intelligence, began striking Russian oil refineries in August. As of today, the official told me, nearly half of Russia’s refineries have been at least temporarily put out of commission by Ukrainian drones.
The economic impact has been enormous inside Russia and carefully monitored by oil and chemical industry journals. Their reporting found at one point that Russia earned 22 dollars for every barrel of refined oil that ended up in Turkey, India, or China. Russia, with its capacity for refining diminished, now earns as little as two dollars per barrel for its crude oil—which often contains one percent or more of sulphur byproducts that must be removed in the refining process.
Another complication for the Russian economy has been the lack of brokers willing to deliver Russian crude oil directly to refineries throughout Europe and Asia. There is a pipeline to Europe, but only only Hungry and Slovakia are buying Russian crude. Russia is selling crude to Turkey and Asia, but doing so entails far more costly shipping, with insurance needs. Oil tankers are easy to find and destroy in a crisis, which may come soon, and oil storage depots around the world remain unprotected.
“Putin has run out of money,” the US official insisted to me. “The Russian fleet in the Black Sea is finished and he’s running a Ponzi scheme” by borrowing funds that he has no means of repaying from Russian banks that thrive on oil and gas money but are not permitted to lend to private citizens. And yet, he added, “Putin is willing to take a deal if you accept his terms.”
Sarah Miller, a blogger who has edited America’s leading energy journals, reminded me in an email today that “every time it seems as if the US, Ukraine, and its European allies may succeed in really hurting Russia’s oil industry, and therefore its war economy, something happens to push up oil prices and bail Russia out. It’s happening again. Crude oil prices have shot up 8 to 10 percent in reaction to Trump’s cancellation of the summit with Putin and his threat to slap sanctions on Russia’s two biggest oil companies a month from now. [After he raised the sanctions today, crude oil prices increased another 5.5 percent.] Trump’s latest threats hit just as Russia was suffering in a real way from Ukraine’s drone attacks on Russia’s refining system that intensified over the summer.”
A European expert believes Putin is able to manipulate Trump at will. The Russian leader’s current goal, he told me, is “to be nice to Trump” to keep him from sending American Tomahawk missiles, with their long reach and large payloads, to Ukraine. “When you flatter Trump,” he said, “he will change sides.” It’s far from an original thought in international diplomatic—and American political—circles.
“Europeans are worried about Putin,” the expert said. “There is a two or three year window needed for Europe to be strong enough” to pose a threat to any future Russian political gambit. Meanwhile, he added, “Trump is helping Putin to snatch victory from defeat. He is changing the terms of a deal constantly.”
The world is watching and doing little to end the war between Russia and Ukraine. We are stuck with Zelensky, who insists that there will be no peace agreement that involves the loss of Ukrainian territory; Putin, who thinks he can bomb his way to victory in a war he started and has yet to win; and Trump, who wants to settle a war, any war, to win a prize.
Read Seymour Hersh in Substack.
The future came early today when the US Treasury, taking the cue from Trump, abruptly announced sanctions on Russia’s two largest oil companies, Rosneft and Lukoil. The New York Times reported that the European Union immediately followed suit, driving up the prices of Brent Crude, the international benchmark, by more than than five percent. China immediately cancelled its November order of Russian crude, and India, the other main buyer of Russian crude, was expected to do the same. There was no immediate reaction from Moscow, but the pressure game is on.
Putin has survived every successive set of US sanctions, which Donald Trump is now escalating, that led to the withdrawal from Russia, beginning under Obama, of American hotels, food chains, and other US businesses that had thrived there.
Ukrainian drone and missile attacks, targeted with the aid of Western intelligence, began striking Russian oil refineries in August. As of today, the official told me, nearly half of Russia’s refineries have been at least temporarily put out of commission by Ukrainian drones.
The economic impact has been enormous inside Russia and carefully monitored by oil and chemical industry journals. Their reporting found at one point that Russia earned 22 dollars for every barrel of refined oil that ended up in Turkey, India, or China. Russia, with its capacity for refining diminished, now earns as little as two dollars per barrel for its crude oil—which often contains one percent or more of sulphur byproducts that must be removed in the refining process.
Another complication for the Russian economy has been the lack of brokers willing to deliver Russian crude oil directly to refineries throughout Europe and Asia. There is a pipeline to Europe, but only only Hungry and Slovakia are buying Russian crude. Russia is selling crude to Turkey and Asia, but doing so entails far more costly shipping, with insurance needs. Oil tankers are easy to find and destroy in a crisis, which may come soon, and oil storage depots around the world remain unprotected.
“Putin has run out of money,” the US official insisted to me. “The Russian fleet in the Black Sea is finished and he’s running a Ponzi scheme” by borrowing funds that he has no means of repaying from Russian banks that thrive on oil and gas money but are not permitted to lend to private citizens. And yet, he added, “Putin is willing to take a deal if you accept his terms.”
Sarah Miller, a blogger who has edited America’s leading energy journals, reminded me in an email today that “every time it seems as if the US, Ukraine, and its European allies may succeed in really hurting Russia’s oil industry, and therefore its war economy, something happens to push up oil prices and bail Russia out. It’s happening again. Crude oil prices have shot up 8 to 10 percent in reaction to Trump’s cancellation of the summit with Putin and his threat to slap sanctions on Russia’s two biggest oil companies a month from now. [After he raised the sanctions today, crude oil prices increased another 5.5 percent.] Trump’s latest threats hit just as Russia was suffering in a real way from Ukraine’s drone attacks on Russia’s refining system that intensified over the summer.”
A European expert believes Putin is able to manipulate Trump at will. The Russian leader’s current goal, he told me, is “to be nice to Trump” to keep him from sending American Tomahawk missiles, with their long reach and large payloads, to Ukraine. “When you flatter Trump,” he said, “he will change sides.” It’s far from an original thought in international diplomatic—and American political—circles.
“Europeans are worried about Putin,” the expert said. “There is a two or three year window needed for Europe to be strong enough” to pose a threat to any future Russian political gambit. Meanwhile, he added, “Trump is helping Putin to snatch victory from defeat. He is changing the terms of a deal constantly.”
The world is watching and doing little to end the war between Russia and Ukraine. We are stuck with Zelensky, who insists that there will be no peace agreement that involves the loss of Ukrainian territory; Putin, who thinks he can bomb his way to victory in a war he started and has yet to win; and Trump, who wants to settle a war, any war, to win a prize.
Read Seymour Hersh in Substack.