By following the play-by-play of this war in Ukraine, one is surprised by the realization that Russian President Vladimir Putin is not a radical, maximalist voice in his society.
Names like former president, current deputy chairman of the Security Council Dmitri Medvedev have advocated for much tougher stances than pragmatist Putin is taking.
But rarely have we had on the western press people like western-sanctioned oligarch Konstantin Malofeyev, a real-life, bona-fide maximalist Russian.
The influential hardliner, who is known to be close to the Kremlin, has warned that Donald Trump’s pledge to end Russia’s war in Ukraine is doomed to failure, unless the US president-elect involve broader talks on Moscow’s security concerns.
Malofeyev has said that President Vladimir Putin was likely to reject a peace plan proposal by Trump’s recently nominated special envoy for the conflict, Keith Kellogg.
Financial Times reported:
“’Kellogg comes to Moscow with his plan, we take it and then tell him to screw himself, because we don’t like any of it. That’d be the whole negotiation’, Malofeyev said in an interview at a luxury resort in Dubai. ‘For the talks to be constructive, we need to talk not about the future of Ukraine, but the future of Europe and the world’.
Malofeyev said Trump could only end the conflict if he reversed Washington’s decision on the use of advanced long-range weapons and removed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy from office, then agreed to meet Putin and ‘discuss all the issues of the global order at the highest level’.”
As so many others before him, he warned that ‘the world is on the brink of nuclear war’ after Kiev was authorized to fire US- and UK-made long-range missiles into Russian territory.
Putin’s response was to fire an experimental, nuclear-capable ballistic missile at a Dnipro defense complex in Ukraine.
Kellogg told the press that Washington should ‘call Russia’s bluff’ and ‘lean in, because Putin will not start a nuclear war in Europe’.
“Malofeyev, however, argued that if the US did not agree to roll back its support for Ukraine, Russia could fire a tactical nuclear weapon. ‘There will be a radiation zone nobody will ever go into in our lifetime’, he said. ‘And the war will be over’.”
A lasting condition for peace would only come if Trump was willing to discuss the wars in the Middle East and Russia’s evolving alliance with China.
“’We want a long-term peace — some sort of general agreement about the global order’, Malofeyev said. ‘Trump wants to go down in history, he’ll be 80 soon, he’s a grandfather. Putin’s not 50 any more either. It’ll be the legacy they both leave us’.”
FT recalls Putin’s conditions for a possible ceasefire, which ‘would require Ukraine to cede four frontline regions to Russia and agree never to join Nato’, but they never remember about the issues of ‘de-Nazification’ and ‘demilitarization’ of Kiev’s regime.
Malofeyev is in western sanctions lists for his role in Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.
He says the war effort has ‘healed’ Russia’s economy by reviving its defense industry, with factories are working around the clock in three shifts, and prompting a consumer boom.
“’The old Soviet military machine is working again, and [across Russia] people are living much better than they did before the war’, he said. ‘People who work in the defense industry, agriculture, the consumer market, on the ground in local markets — that’s 90 per cent of the population and sanctions don’t affect them at all. They are loving it’.”
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