BRICS Pressure in Vladivostok
Putin’s statement at the Eastern Economic Forum on the issue of peace with Ukraine was delivered in the company of representatives of India, Brazil and a new applicant for BRICS membership, Malaysia, and follows recent meetings between Putin with India’s Modi and China’s Xi Xinping.
His comments may therefore be interpreted as Putin doing his very best to convey his respect to his BRICS partners ahead of the October BRICS summit that Putin will host in Kazan for their efforts to expedite an end to the conflict in Ukraine.
What he (and his foreign minister Sergei Lavrov in similar recent comments) are saying goes little further than Putin’s June comments on the prospects for peace that were made ahead of Ukraine’s Kursk offensive.
In their most recent formulation these posit the preliminary need for Zelenskiy to abandon Ukraine’s current prohibition on negotiations and they do not seem to rule out negotiation with the illegitimate Zelenskiy.
Further, and in a highly resigned fashion, they acknowledge that Russia cannot trust its Western interlocutors, so that any ensuing agreement must be subject to guarantees.
Hence the importance of the presence last Thursday of the BRICS representatives. If BRICS members such as India are mediators does this in a sense elevate them in some way to the status of partners to the deal? I would argue that it does, and that this development is hugely important because it signals to Kiev and its Western controllers that this conflict is fundamentally between the imperial West and the neo-colonialized Global South.
It makes this signal just ahead of BRICS’ tangible progress towards a de-dollarized financial order and a polycentrist global order when in Kazan BRICS is expected to announce some form of international network of member states’ interbank messaging systems, and details of a new trading currency.
The more conciliatory position adopted by Putin on Ukraine conveys respect for the price that must be paid for these strides towards independence by those members or future members of the BRICS , notably Brazil (whose President Lulu remains fairly friendly to Washington, whose defeat over Bolsonaro may have been facilitated, some Internet rumors suggest, by the CIA, and who is distancing himself from the more revolutionary politics of Venezuela’s Maduro), India, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Azerbaijan, each of whom has its own trapezoid balancing strategies to sustain.
Nonetheless, it is questionable whether Putin’s conciliatory position will be sufficient for Zelenskiy or his Western sponsors, and if so, Putin well understands this.
A starting point to negotiation, already mentioned, would be Zelenskiy’s lifting of the ban on negotiation with Putin The recent resignation of Ukraine’s boorish foreign minister Kulebra, might help things along in this respect.
Another starting point would be Ukrainian withdrawal from Kursk. This could be very attractive to Kiev if indeed it is the case that its Kursk offensive has led it into a fatal trap while at the same time gravely weakening its own forces in the Donbass. The prospect of peace talks could supply the regime a justification for withdrawal and save it from further international embarrassment.
The prohibition lifted and withdrawal from Kursk completed, Putin appears to be saying, will be sufficient for talks to begin. But a ceasefire could only be called if Ukraine withdraws from the Donbass and declares its neutrality so far as NATO is concerned.
Russia does not oppose Ukrainian entry into the EU, perhaps because it thinks that any such accession will contribute to the fragmentation of the EU.
It is unclear to me whether we are talking about Ukrainian withdrawal from the entire territories of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zapporizhzhia and Kherson OR about withdrawal from its current positions along the lines of combat.
But withdrawal itself would clear the stage for formal negotiations perhaps now to be shepherded by BRICS intermediaries.
In addition, Putin is once again saying that the starting points of any such formal negotiation must be those agreed and initialed by Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul in March 2022, under Turkish mediation (subsequently sabotaged by the UK’s Boris Johnson on behalf of NATO,) while also taking account of developments since then, including the absorption of the four oblasts into the Russian Federation.
Failure by Kiev and its imperial masters to demonstrate any real progress, well beyond Zelenskiy’s pointless insistence on a return to the 1991 borders, will now consolidate BRICS support for Russia in its further conduct of the war.