Kushner and Witkoff's visits to Moscow and Kyiv: None of this will amount to anything

I’ll briefly summarize the situation again.

1. Trump needs to win the election, and to do that, he needs to project an image of a peacemaker.

2. Trump can’t achieve anything in Iran. That leaves the Russian-Ukrainian war.

3. Trump won’t put pressure on Russia. It doesn’t matter whether he wants to or not—he can’t. He has no leverage. China could put pressure on Russia, but it’s waiting for the U.S. to ask it to do so, and it will charge a hefty price for its help.

4. Therefore, Trump will put pressure on Ukraine. Not because he wants to, but because he can.

5. Russia has once again taken the toughest possible stance. There are two reasons for this. First, Putin truly believes that he will succeed in everything this fall and winter (we don’t know what Putin believes, but we can see the consequences of the decisions made). Information that does not fit the dictator’s worldview is blocked at two levels: at the entrance to his office and in the dictator’s own mind. Second, Putin excels at a game of raising the stakes, and that is precisely the game being played here.

6. Ukraine will attempt to use diplomatic and military means to correct the picture Washington sees. But this will have no effect, as Washington is very limited in its options.

7. Europe is frightened by the prospect of a change in power in key countries, so it will not make any sudden moves right now.

8. So, none of this will amount to anything. The talk of major breakthroughs that you’ll hear is just diplomatic posturing. This message isn’t for you. Everything will remain as it was before. Don’t get your hopes up. Hang in there and help others.

Now I’ll write something you won’t like.

Objectively, the picture is quite good; subjectively, however, it’s very bad. Morale began to decline in July following the government’s resignation without any explanation. This was followed by all sorts of other disappointments (and don’t be fooled), the corruption scandal in the Presidential Office, the clash between the security services, the corruption scandal in the Prosecutor General’s Office—and everyone has the feeling that this isn’t the end of it. When this kind of process is underway, good news is generally ignored or given minimal weight. To counteract a single piece of bad news, you’d have to sink not one, but ten cruisers of the Black Sea Fleet. You’d have to bomb not ten, but a hundred oil refineries.

It’s hard to come up with anything here other than Viktor Frankl’s advice: focus on what needs to be done today.

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