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In Trump-Putin peace gambit, both sides bet on lure of business
Draft peace proposals for Ukraine reportedly include a "long-term economic cooperation agreement" between the US and Russia, featuring energy and rare earths. This initiative, driven by businessmen-turned-diplomats, aims to incentivize President Trump's continued involvement and appeal to his dealmaking instincts, despite significant obstacles to actual business ties.
As diplomats wrestle with core elements of peace in Ukraine, one element of the draft deal has gone largely overlooked: sweeteners based on an imagined blossoming of US-Russia business.
Proposals hashed out mostly by Kirill Dmitriev, who heads one of Russia's sovereign wealth funds, and US envoy Steve Witkoff envisage a “long-term economic cooperation agreement” between the countries, including energy, rare earths and data centers. A US-Russian investment fund for joint projects would create “a strong incentive not to return to conflict.”
There's another interpretation: the two businessmen-turned-diplomats are trying to craft a strong incentive for President Donald Trump to stay on board.
It's become a feature of the US president's engagement with the world that broader foreign policy ventures and commercial opportunities become entwined. Before brokering a Gaza ceasefire, he sketched plans to turn the territory into a Mideast riviera. In his first term, pursuing détente with dictator Kim Jong Un, he mused aloud about North Korea's “great beaches” and their condo potential.
Underlying similar talk in the peace proposal, says Rob Dannenberg — a former Central Intelligence Agency chief for Central Eurasia — is a calculated effort by President Vladimir Putin and his lieutenants to appeal to Trump's dealmaking instincts and desire for business.
“I don't think that Putin cares about commercial deals with the United States in any meaningful sense,” said Dannenberg. “He cares about them to the extent that his negotiating counterparty Donald Trump cares about them.”
To be sure, the initial version of the plan that contained these business-boosting clauses may not survive. US, Ukrainian and European diplomats are haggling over a rewrite. The latter group has pushed back in particular against the proposed use of Moscow's frozen assets to seed the US-Russian investment fund, arguing the cash should go to Ukraine instead.
But some of the proposals either follow on or echo a similar approach from earlier this year, when the administration pushed Ukraine to sign a mineral rights deal and argued it would form a kind of security guarantee. Not much has been heard of the pact lately.
Asked about the business elements of the deal, White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly referred to Secretary of State Marco Rubio's remarks in Geneva on Sunday after talks with Ukrainian officials. Speaking to reporters, Rubio called it a “living, breathing document” and said great progress had been made, though he declined to discuss details of the proposal.
On the US-Russian side, lots of ideas have been floated — including Dmitriev's longshot proposal for Elon Musk to build a tunnel between the two countries under the Bering Strait.
Whatever compromise version they settle on – and even assuming Putin accepts it and the war ends – many obstacles to a new era of business cooperation will remain.
Commercial ties between the US and Russia have long been limited. The countries exchanged goods worth just $4.4 billion last year, according to Bloomberg data. And even before Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, or annexed Crimea in 2014, it didn't rank among the 15 top trade partners. The US typically ran deficits, importing Russian goods like fertilizers and metals including uranium for nuclear power plants.
Now, after more than a decade of intensive sanctions, American firms would face considerable risks in the Russian market. Trump can't promise relief because Congress has a say, as Senator Elizabeth Warren pointed out Monday. And even after a peace agreement on Ukraine, relations could turn sour again.
Most Western companies are likely to remain reluctant to return to the Russian market even after the war ends — and the Kremlin appears just as unwilling to many of them come back.
Elina Ribakova, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, made a comparison with the 2015 Iran nuclear deal with the US and world powers, which failed to trigger a wave of investment.
“I don't see how a big US company would see it as worth the risk to go into Russia right now,” Ribakova says. “The more you have these rounds of sanctions, the fewer companies come back.”
Many US and European companies are still working to unwind their operations in Russia after Moscow imposed restrictions on firms seeking to exit. Putin this month allowed Citigroup Inc. to sell its local unit to a Russian bank.
Earlier in the year, the Kremlin chief warned that there'd be no red carpet for Western businesses that might eventually wish to return, and told local entrepreneurs there'd likely be no return to the pre-war status quo.
Despite the downsides, there's evidence that Russia sees potential benefits in a US business rapprochement. It's made overtures for Boeing Co. to return to the country, as sanctions squeeze the aviation industry's access to spare parts and maintenance, putting safety standards at risk.
The proposal covers areas like Arctic resource development and artificial intelligence, which are “important for Russia's long-term economic development” and great-power status, says Thomas Graham at the Washington-based Council on Foreign Relations, and author of the book ”Getting Russia Right.”
They're also “areas where the United States has significant competence,” he says, “and technology that Russia wants access to.” As diplomacy intensifies, he added, “the Russians would like to have these things on the table.”
There remains no indication that the prospect of warmer business ties with the US is shifting Russia's terms for ending its war in Ukraine. But that hasn't stopped Trump from musing about the possibility.
“I think he wants to come in and he wants to trade with us, and he wants to make a lot of money for Russia,” Trump said of Putin in a CBS interview that aired this month. “I think that's great. That's what I like.”
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Source: EconomicTimes
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