(Reuters) – Negotiators sent by Russian President Vladimir Putin to broker an end to the Ukraine war are likely to play hardball in future negotiations with their American counterparts whom they perceive as weak, according to a former Russian diplomat.
Putin sent two of his most seasoned representatives – Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov – to talks between Moscow and Washington in the Saudi capital Riyadh on Tuesday.
The two men’s experience – a combined 34 years – dwarfs that of their U.S., who are in their first month on the job.
Boris Bondarev, a former diplomat who spent 20 years in the Russian Foreign Ministry before he quit over the war, said Putin’s negotiators will approach any future talks from a position of strength.
“Sometimes they (the Russians) could think it better to appease the Americans, to flatter them,” Bondarev said.
“The next day they might think maybe now it’s time to threaten them, to blackmail, to be rude, to be very uncompromising.”
U.S. President Donald Trump, in office for just a month, is pushing for a quick deal to end the conflict and has alarmed Washington’s European allies by leaving them and Ukraine out of the initial talks.
As the 4-1/2-hour meeting in the Saudi capital was underway, Russia hardened its demands, notably insisting it would not tolerate the NATO alliance granting membership to Ukraine.
Trump has since suggested that Ukraine was to blame for starting the war, which Putin ordered in February 2022, and denounced Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy as a “dictator”.
“Trump’s behaviour tells them (the Russians) that he’s very much interested in making this deal (to the end the war) as soon as possible,” Bondarev said.
“He thus makes himself dependent on goodwill from Moscow – and Moscow can exploit that.”
Bondarev was serving as a counsellor at Russia’s permanent mission to the United Nations in Geneva when he resigned in May 2022 in protest over Russia’s invasion.
He said the Russians are likely to push the Americans to accept increasingly considerable demands in future talks.
“Putin wants the United States to admit worldwide that the it is weak, that it cannot protect its own strategic interests,” Bondarev said.
Lavrov and Ushakov are “undoubtedly loyal to President Putin,” he said. “He expects no surprises from them.”
(Reporting by Reuters; Writing by Lucy Papachristou; Editing by Angus MacSwan)
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