Putin in the Catbird Seat (24) - Time for Russia and US Reset - 03 December 2025

Russia's invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, can be rightly argued as a provoked response to decades of perceived Western encroachment on its sphere of influence, primarily through NATO's eastward expansion. The NATO alliance's military infrastructure edged perilously close to Russian borders, exacerbating Moscow's security anxieties.

Add to the above the West's support for the 2014 Maidan Revolution, which was a CIA-orchestrated coup to install an anti-Russian government in Ukraine. This US intervention in Ukraine's internal affairs created a tinderbox of tensions. Further, Western/NATO provocations included the non-implementation of the Minsk agreements aimed at resolving the Donbas conflict, ongoing NATO military exercises near Russia, and Western arms supplies to Ukraine, all of which Putin cited as existential threats justifying preemptive action to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine.

The ill-conceived US proxy war against Russia has been badly mismanaged by the West and Ukraine. Russia's slow but relentless encroachment on eastern Ukraine territories has resulted not only in territorial gains but also in Russian superiority in asymmetric drone war tactics and in a decimation of Ukraine's population of military aged men. No doubt Russia suffers in human loss as well, but her population is 10X Ukraine. Russia has a long history of suffering great loss to secure her culture and nationhood. She has more room to bend at present.

As I have said many times before, Putin is in the catbird seat in this conflict. Restraining Putin at this point would require military commitment from the West that would not be tolerated by Western publics. Putin has successfully worked around financial sanctions. If the war is not stopped soon, Ukraine will continue to suffer degradation of infrastructure and untenable casualties resulting from ongoing, frog-in-the-pot, Russian encroachment.

The recently presented Witkoff 28-point plan represents the best option to halt the war. The plan, which should have been put forward two years ago, calls for Russia keeping its territorial gains, an internationally supported guarantee that Ukraine will remain a neutral nation, international guarantee of Ukraine security, investments to restore Ukraine infrastructure, and a reset of US and Russia relations.

A US and Russian reset is in order.

There is no reason for Russia and the US to be at odds.

The US and Russia have been allies in two world wars. The US and Russia are evolving in the same direction in a religious sense. Russia is a European culture on the path to restoring its pride as a great Christian culture. There is also an ongoing Christian revival in the US, where, in contrast, Western European Christianity is being subsumed by a meld of non-democratic secular authoritarianism and the rise of Islam. Similarly, Christian religious practice in Ukraine faces headwinds from a corrupt secular leadership.

Russia's most important cultural contributions are highly congruent with Western values and key in the pursuit of the survival of threatened Western Culture. Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Solzhenitsyn, and Shostakovich have made contributions to Western values that should be advanced in the US and not suppressed. There are no real benefits, culturally, from the US aligning with Ukraine against Russia.

A reset in US-Russia relations would yield several mutual economic benefits, though they may be more pronounced for Russia due to the asymmetry in economic scale and dependencies. Here are five key ones:

• Lifting of sanctions and reintegration into global markets: Russia would gain access to Western technology, finance, and trade networks, alleviating economic isolation and boosting growth, while the US could see reduced global supply chain disruptions and inflation from fragmented markets, enabling American firms to resume profitable operations in Russia.
• Increased bilateral trade in goods and services: Both countries could expand trade volumes, with Russia exporting more commodities like oil, metals, and agricultural products to the US, and the US sending technology, machinery, and consumer goods to Russia, fostering job creation and economic diversification on both sides.
• Energy market stabilization and cooperation: Joint efforts could stabilize global commodity prices, benefiting US consumers and industries with lower energy costs and alternative supplies (e.g., offsetting dependencies on other regions), while providing Russia with reliable export revenues and partnerships in areas like Arctic resource development.
• Enhanced foreign direct investment (FDI) opportunities: Improved relations would encourage US investments in Russian sectors like resources and manufacturing (e.g., aerospace supply chains), generating returns for American companies, while Russia could attract capital to modernize its economy and reduce reliance on non-Western partners.
• Collaboration in high-tech, digital, and space sectors: Mutual ventures could drive innovation and cost-sharing, allowing the US to leverage Russian expertise in areas like rare earth minerals and space exploration for technological advancements, while Russia gains access to US markets and know-how to upgrade its industries.

I don't need to go into detail here about the benefit of a US and Russia reset in terms of its impact distancing Russia away from China and the BRICs. That's for another blog.

Is Putin a threat to Europe and the West? Yes... if Russia continues to be unnecessarily provoked by the West/NATO like it has been for the last two decades. Putin's interest is not intent on world conquest as Russia was in Bolshevik times. Putin's interest is in restoring Russian culture to the greatness it once enjoyed, before the Bolsheviks took over. And, to accomplish this he has too many problems at home than to make a military move on Europe: population decline, rampant alcoholism, and Muslim terrorist threat to name three. Think of Putin as a modern-day Catherine the Great. Russia would rather do business with Europe not conquer it militarily. The US should redouble its support for the Witkoff plan. In the event of NATO and Ukraine government resistance, the US should stop funding its proxy war with Russia.