As part of G20 Summit held in Hamburg, a long-awaited meeting of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin took place. That was a main topic in world mass media for several weeks. Though, today it is commonly known that there were no serious decisions adopted during the meeting. Virtually all influential mass media noticed the formal nature of the meeting and absence of impetus to progress in solving of pressing international problems.
According to international experts, this meeting was one another attempt to bring Putin to reason and call him to abandon his destructive policy in respect of Syria and Ukraine. However, Donald Trump, as Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron previously, fell on deaf ears.
In the meantime, Russian propaganda described this meeting as the most important event of this year, and the lack of reaching any serious foreign policy agreements induced Russian media to draw attention to external side of the meeting. Thus, in particular, all Russian media announced that the meeting continued for two hours instead of scheduled half an hour. From the point of view of Russian propagandists that was a breakthrough since Putin supposedly had made such proposals for discussion which were impossible to decline.
Meeting with Trump became an attempt to play patriotic card for Putin who has experienced shortage of serious international achievements for the last years and is striving to retain the political power. And, giving him proper respect, he succeeded in interpreting it as his own achievement, which enabled him to strengthen his own positions and tottering reputation of a global level politician.
In practice the results of the meeting of US and Russia leaders have confirmed once again that any negotiations involving Putin are totally ineffective. And, by contrast, thesis about Russian leader’s ability to listen only to the speech of power and the sanctions as the only appropriate measure to achieve the result was confirmed once again.
Such an attitude was confirmed by the visit of the US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson next day and appointment of Kurt Volker, former US ambassador to NATO and senator McCain’s best friend, as US special representative for Ukraine. In the meantime there was the official visit of the UN Secretary General to Ukraine (for the first time from 1993) who held talks with the highest state officials of Ukraine. At the same time the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation consisting of 29 NATO member states (for the first time from 2008) led by Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg visited Ukraine.
It is possible to come to a conclusion that international community found its position in respect to Moscow. The essence of this position may be stated as the following: pressure on Russia and assistance to Ukraine.
In the light of unprecedented in their density visits of representatives of world political elite following G20 Summit Russia’s attempts to response to these events seem to be both amusing and awkward. Thus, on July 12 the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation announced possible expulsion of 30 US diplomats from the country and arrest of two US real estate properties in Russia, one of which is a warehouse. That shows only Moscow’s disability which has no resources to influence the world policy.
Liberation of Iraq and hereafter of Syria from ISIS militants will limit Moscow’s capabilities to influence the situation in region and affect its foreign political image. Situation in Ukrainian Donbas is also losing for the Russian Federation as they lack proper resources to maintain created terroristic republics.
Thus, July, full of political events, confirms position of those experts who anticipated just three years before that Russia’s actions in Crimea, Donbas and Syria is a crude and dangerous venture which would be fatal for Russia both in political and economic sense.