Why doesn't Putin want to negotiate with Zelensky?

MoscowAccording to journalist Mikhail Zigar, Vladimir Putin learned of Volodymyr Zelensky's existence in May 2014. The then comedian starred in a gag on Ukrainian television in which he imitated former gymnast Alina Kabayeva, who had long been rumored to be an AM. Before then, no one had dared to joke about the subject, and after that, Zelensky would never set foot in Russia again.

Putin has always politically despised the Ukrainian president because he considers him a simple comedian, inexperienced and dominated by the oligarchsBut before reaching the point of no return in the war and invalidating him as an interlocutor, the Kremlin had placed some remote hope. When Zelensky ran for office in 2019, he did so raising the banner of peace in the Donbas. Despite having been critical of Putin in his sketches, he was a Russian-speaking man from eastern Ukraine, and during the campaign he decided not to antagonize the Russian president.

Moscow had lost its influence in Kiev in 2014 with the Maidan Uprising, after its ally, Viktor Yanukovych, fled the country and the elections were won by the moderate nationalist Petro Poroshenko. Five years later, the only pro-Russian candidate, Yuri Buiko, had no chance (he would win just 11% of the vote), and Zelensky, who was not aligned with anyone, seemed the lesser evil.

Putin and Zelensky have only met face to face once, for fifteen minutes. It was in December 2019, in Paris, after the comic had become president, and it was already clear that the differences between them, which still resonate today, were difficult to reconcile. The Russian leader called for autonomy for the Luhansk and Donetsk provinces., while the Ukrainian demanded Kiev control over those territories. The order of the factors was important: Ukraine demanded an end to the fighting before any political reform, and Russia did not want to stop supporting the separatists militarily until the Constitution was amended.

However, after that meeting, Zelensky was open to implementing part of the Minsk peace agreements, which provided for a special regime for the secessionist regions. However, the most nationalist sectors of Ukraine and the army opposed it, and the new president feared the specter of another Maidan and put a stop to it.

This reluctance drove Putin to despair, and he saw all possibility of controlling Zelensky vanish. The final straw was the Ukrainian leader's decision in 2021 to ban the broadcasts of three Russian propaganda channels run by the Kremlin's last strongman in Kiev, Viktor Medvedchuk. This further infuriated the Russian leader, who criticized Zelensky for being influenced by the West.

"Neo-Nazi" and "drug addict"

From that moment on, the dialectical escalation was unstoppable. Zelensky came to embody the most radical Ukrainian nationalism, becoming, in the eyes of the Kremlin, a US puppet, and accusations of being an "illegitimate" leader at the head of a "failed state" arose. Up until the eve of the invasion, the Ukrainian president tried to call Putin, but he didn't pick up the phone.

With the Russian army trying to besiege Kiev, the Kremlin toughened its rhetoric even further, and epithets like "neo-Nazi" and "drug addict" began to gain popularity, which are still repeated today by the most furiously loyal voices in the Russian government. Furthermore, according to Western intelligence sources, Russian guerrillas failed in their attempt to assassinate Zelensky.

Since the beginning of the war, Putin has consistently blamed the Ukrainian president for the conflict and the alleged crimes against the Russian-speaking population of eastern Ukraine. He has used the falsified argument that Zelensky's mandate has expired as an excuse to dismiss him as a negotiator, ignoring the fact that he cannot call elections under martial law. He has insisted that it is the Ukrainian president who is prohibited from negotiating with Putin by a presidential decree, and not the other way around.

The lifting of this veto, which Zelensky claims does not affect him, is one step in the Kremlin's strategy to undermine the Ukrainian president's authority and impose a sympathetic leader in his position. If any Kiev politician is free to negotiate with Moscow, Putin will be able to seek out interlocutors more willing to accept peace on his terms and, ultimately, achieve one of the objectives that led him to invade Ukraine: the imposition of a Ukrainian government aligned with the Kremlin's interests.

That's what denazification is all about, Putin's absurd condition for agreeing to a ceasefire, which a large part of the Russian population has accepted. The Russian president dreams of correcting Boris Yeltsin's mistake of allowing Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine to separate. If he can't reunite them, he at least aspires to control them with leaders who obey him, like Aleksander Lukashenko. That's why Zelensky is an obstacle. The question is whether, after more than three years of war, even if Putin manages to force elections, the next Zelensky won't be even less receptive to the Kremlin's dictates and whether the Ukrainian people will ever again vote for a president sympathetic to the aggressor.