The focus of the long-awaited meeting in Astana between Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdogan is not the conflict in Ukraine, but the gas. The two leaders “did not discuss” what is happening between Moscow and Kiev, interrupted Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. The key theme of the bilateral 90 minutes was energy, where Russia decided to play the ‘joker’ to attract Ankara. Putin’s proposal is to create a gas hub in Turkey, where he “quietly adjusts prices to a normal market level, without political nuances”. Russia defines Turkey as the “most reliable” route for natural gas to the EU and, at the same time, announces several arrests of alleged “saboteurs” who intended to damage the Turkish Stream gas pipeline on Russian territory. Thus, the good intentions expressed by the ‘sultan’ of Ankara before the meeting regarding “stop the bloodshed” and “peace through diplomacy” remain in the drawer. The same fate for the proposed five-way negotiations between the Russian Federation, the United States, France, Germany and Great Britain over Ukraine. “I don’t know who proposed it, we read in the newspapers. We have never heard such an option from Erdogan,” Yury Ushakov, an adviser to the Russian president, interrupts.
If Putin with Erdogan prefers to talk about energy, the diplomatic game is played through Sibylline messages from Moscow to Washington. No Putin-Biden meeting in preparation, not even at the G20 in Bali, but if “serious and concrete proposals” arrive from the West, and in particular from the United States, then Russia is “ready to consider them”, says the minister of Exterior, Sergey Lavrov. Words echoed by Dmitry Peskov. “The special military operation continues to allow us to achieve our goals that do not change, but we remain open to negotiations,” he explains. Volodymyr Zelensky thinks differently, according to which diplomacy is the “most powerful” tool, but only when weapons “don’t work”. For the Kiev leader, Russia “deliberately rejects any real dialogue and wants to speak only the language of terror”.
Finally, on the ground, the Russian military continues to bomb Ukrainian infrastructure across the country. The last to be hit is a military base in the Lviv region. If the Russians attack from the air on the mainland, the advance of Kiev’s military continues. Successes are mainly recorded in the Kherson region, where the local pro-Russian administration urges civilians “who wish to” evacuate to other regions “to protect themselves from missiles”, asking Russia for help in carrying out the operation. Moscow announces that it will organize match attendance, but it is yet another demonstration that the Ukrainian counter-offensive continues to advance.
Source: IL Tempo
Emma Fitzgerald is an accomplished political journalist and author at The Nation View. With a background in political science and international relations, she has a deep understanding of the political landscape and the forces that shape it.
