Putin Has Really Been Backed Into A Corner

• 13.05.2025, 11:26

The decisive days are coming.

It feels like Putin has really been backed into a corner. The lifelong image of a rat trapped in a corner (he saw it in his youth) is becoming a reality.

An unconditional cessation of hostilities in Ukraine for thirty days. As much as the Russian dictator does not want to go for it, he is given no alternative.

New sanctions devastating to Russia's budget and financial system are being imposed by Europe from May 20 unless Putin orders a cessation of hostilities today. He refused to give such an order and proposed a meeting with Ukraine in Istanbul on May 15, without specifying at what level the meeting should take place.

This was likely to be another stonewalling of the situation at a low diplomatic level. And then President Zelensky, emboldened by Trump, announces that he himself will come to Istanbul on May 15 and will wait for Putin there. And just now, Trump has also announced his possible arrival in Istanbul on May 15. Now it will not be possible to limit ourselves to Ushakov or Lavrov.

Will Putin decide to attend the new Istanbul summit? Zelensky and Trump are unlikely to be able to swallow him. Failure to attend means breaking friendly relations with the United States, the establishment of which has been awaited in Russia as manna from heaven. Putin's stubbornness and intransigence now, in the face of new all-Western sanctions and new deliveries of arms and financial aid to Ukraine, may turn out for Russia a fracture not in its favor on the battlefield and deep disappointment of the army and citizens. And this is already a revolutionary situation.

Reconciliation with the West or internal turmoil amid military failures and the impoverishment of the people - the choice is up to Putin and his friends. It is unlikely that this time the West will give him a crack to slip out. Everyone is serious.

Andrei Zubov, Facebook