So here is how the meetings in Rome, must have went:
Hey Donald - Its a me Macron, with me buddy Starmer, and our prop department from the Vatican! Early in the day, lets do this photo op - where Selenskyj talks to you about HORRIFYING rocket attack with 9 civilian deaths - which is two below the normal daily average for civil deaths per day.
Then it was confirmed, that Trump was swarmed by at least a dozen other world leaders during the rest of the day - and slowly (!) “turned around” opinion wise.
The alternative story here is, that the position change came more from within the Trump department, and that the Mearsheimer - Karaganov interview was instrumental for that. Whoever told Karaganov to double down on “Crazy Ivan who can demand it all” was responsible for a “russia will continue the war” shift in “russian friendly US reporting”, which could have spooked the Trump administration - if it indeed looked at public polling figures droping at that time - or the realization of the immense issue of selling a continuing war to its own population spooked the Trump team.
Issue: If you pressure russia into a temporary seize fire - at least for 30 days, which will only be a benefit to Ukriane but 30 days MAYBE could be short enough, so structural battlefield changes may be small enough so russia could be seen to be pressured into this -- Trump can sell it to his domestic audience as the 100 day success of his war diplomacy. Now the issue:
A continuation past said 30 days is almost impossible, and all sides should understand this, but by then the european narrative would have gotten enough traction in US media to be swapped over to -- with the blame being put on Russia for having moved too little, to keep peace talks alive.
The blame stacking is already underway (“if russia doesnt grab this opportunity now, it doesnt want peace”), and the european counter proposal simply means 2-4 years of more war, in its current form.
Europe will prevent against more concessions being extracted from the ukrainian side - and will make sure, that de jure annexation of Crimea will not be put into play--
and then the key political game turns back to getting Ukraine financed for another 2-4 years, with US support, because by now the US and European narrative is shared again.
So ways for russia to work against this resulting in the mess it will result in?
Play along. Use better PR than what Lavrov put out there in the past few days, simply to state, where you are pressured towards NEW concessions, and how you have fulfilled everything that Trump demanded from you prior. Minus the “the energy infrastructure seize fire we stuck to -” talk because that doesnt play well. Focus on post “historical moment, with US photographer” changes.
Issue - Kiew might sabotage the seizefire in every way imaginable - if it is indeed limited to 30 days. So narrative dominance might be hard to attain.
But if Russia can get it - Trumps “flip” will become so obvious, that essentially he gets an issue in the messaging to his core voter base, with the fact of him flipping meaning, that now the war will continue for another two to four years.
Which it likely will.
But the US is working on the flip to “the Trump position change was Russias fault” as we speak. (See video.) So - a counter strategy would have to be clean, fast, and close to passive aggressive, but not passive aggressive - which is not easy to pull off.
And which If I am not mistaken Russia doesnt have the trained talent for.
The alternative is to instill in Trump the fear, that his base will understand what he is pulling here, and that it will prolong the war, and he knew it, and they will know, that he knew it.
Which would break ties earlier.
All presumed on that Russia might experience serious hardships within the next two years, battlefield, or economy related. Which it looks like it likely might.
(If it doesnt. The response is very simple. Pull a “Trump went too far -” right about now.)
Russia running into serious problems in my understanding (well thats not right: as far as I can fathom) is the only explanation for why the EU is currently pushing for positions that will make it very hard for russia to retain the occupied territories after 10 years.
edit: Part one - done:
src: click (Der Standard)
10th, 11th, who cares, right? Certainly not Der Standard.
