WASHINGTON, March 23, (APP/AFP) – US Secretary of State John Kerry heads to Moscow this week for talks with President Vladimir Putin, hoping to build momentum for peace in Syria after a partial Russian withdrawal and to restore a fragmenting ceasefire in Ukraine.
But few experts expect Washington’s top diplomat to make much headway with a Kremlin that has achieved its short-term goals and is seeking new victories.
Having ensured that he has a seat at the top table of world diplomacy and that his allies in Damascus are in no immediate danger of defeat, Putin has ordered the bulk of his forces out of Syria without suffering great losses.
Now, observers say, his separatist proxies in Ukraine are increasing
pressure on the ceasefire line there, hoping that Europe’s commitment to renew sanctions will waver this summer before Russia’s September parliamentary polls.
Joerg Forbrig, a fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, compared this week’s trip by Kerry to Moscow to one he made last year to see Putin in Sochi after Russia helped Washington to negotiate the Iran nuclear deal.
Russia carried through on its support for the Iran deal, helping ship out Tehran’s uranium stockpile, and now Kerry wants Moscow to help push through a Syrian peace plan.
“So he goes to Moscow to see if this positive momentum can be cultivated and perhaps extended. I don’t think it can,” Forbrig, an expert on central and eastern Europe, told AFP.
“Russia has basically got out of this intervention everything that it
needed,” he argued, suggesting Moscow will be content to see peace talks drag on indefinitely if its interests are not again threatened.
“It has a place at the negotiating table, it is sure to be part of the political process that is now underway … So I think they’ve cashed in now.”