OPINION: How to Negotiate With Putin, New York Style

President Trump’s desire for a stable, long-term peace agreement in Ukraine is bold and  righteous, for he desires, as do America’s allies in Europe and Ukraine, the ceasing of hostilities and an end to three years of bloodshed in a war of genocidal proportions, which has caused hundreds of thousands of casualties on both sides, in addition to migration flows where several million Ukrainian citizens have fled their homeland.  But negotiating with Russians – particularly with Russia’s President Putin – raises numerous negotiating challenges for even the most experienced of negotiators, such as President Trump and his national security team.

By now, after 25 years in power, and given his prior service as a KGB officer, politician, and now, world leader (and indicted war criminal), Putin’s personal characteristics, formidable political skills, strategic thinking, tactical maneuvering, and negotiating style are well-known to all.  Putin possesses leadership personality characteristics known as the ‘three Rs’ – rationality, ruthlessness, and resilience; one could also add revanchism, in which he sees himself as a world leader intent on restoring Russia’s sense of greatness and importance on the world stage as a nuclear power and member of the UN’s Permanent Five.

Putin’s style of negotiation is classically Russian, and further emboldened by his vast negotiating experience, his prior KGB training and service, and his own core strengths which he brings to the table.  Putin only respects strength and abhors weakness.  He stands firmly by principles of reciprocity. 

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But what has also become clear at the run-up to the Ukraine war in February 2022 is that Putin has consistently presented a maximalist set of negotiation demands and has shown no indication of compromise regarding the said demands.  Part of this is personality, and part of it is due to history, both Russia’s history and Putin’s legacy.  Putin’s demands have included: no foreign troops as peacekeepers on Ukrainian soil; legal recognition of the four Ukrainian provinces ‘annexed’ by Russia; no NATO membership for Ukraine; complete lifting of sanctions against Russia; and the removal of Ukraine’s President Zelensky (whom he considers illegitimate).

Concepts championed by Harvard’s well-known negotiation experts, such as BATNA (‘best alternative to a negotiated agreement’) and ZOPA (‘zone of possible agreement’) carry little weight with Putin and his national security team.

Putin’s BATNA is to keep on fighting, believing that Russia can win and achieve its aims long-term; his ZOPA is to walk away if his maximalist demands are not met.  President Zelensky knows this all too well, due to Putin’s history of violating numerous diplomatic agreements and cease-fires.  And by now, it should be clear to outside observers, that threats and external sanctions have had little impact upon Putin’s political behavior, nor have they weakened Russian resolve.  Those who think otherwise don’t understand Putin, who has no real ‘pain points’ – or they’ve never met a real Russian.

President Trump and his special envoy Steve Witkoff bring their unique background in ‘hardball’ negotiations and a transactional style – born out of their respective experiences in the combative world of New York commercial real estate – to the current negotiations with Russia. 

While neither has explicitly said so, they have implicitly borrowed from the FBI’s well-known hostage negotiation concepts (developed by retired special agents Gary Noesner and Christopher Voss) of ‘tactical empathy,’ in which one attempts to empathize and understand the hostage-taker’s demands and position, as well as their psychological makeup. 

Both President Trump and special Witkoff appreciate Putin’s (and Russia’s) need for respect, which makes their initial offers and enticements of better diplomatic relations between Russia and America, no NATO membership for Ukraine, and suggesting that Russia return to the G-8 and rejoin the family of nations – all bold and worthwhile opening gambits. 

These moves harken back to the late President George H.W. Bush’s 1989 inaugural address, where he stated, “good will begets good will.”  Such negotiating offers are predicated on concepts of reciprocity and good faith, which show respect towards President Putin.  These enticements by President Trump are worthy and have now been linked, both explicitly and implicitly, to the cease-fire agreement (which Putin, today wearing combat fatigues like Zelensky (!), has initially rejected, for now) proposed by the American and Ukrainian negotiating teams. 

The cease-fire proposal was brilliant, because it clearly puts the ball in Putin’s court, or to borrow President Trump’s metaphor, Putin surely believes that he holds all the cards.

President Zelensky, after his ill-fated and disastrous public meeting with President Trump and Vice President Vance in the Oval Office several weeks ago, has wisely rebounded, both by agreeing to President Trump’s minerals deal and to the cease-fire proposal.  Zelensky, a proud, courageous, and heroic leader, must now realize that he must create a new sort of legitimacy, not by posturing and continuing his image of being a wartime leader, but by shifting more towards the persona of a peacetime leader. 

Traveling to Saudi Arabia this past week and meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed bin-Salman was a key step in that direction, as Saudi Arabia has become a key and critical mediator in ending this war. 

Turkey and its leader Recep Erdogan can also play a similar role, as Turkey, with its shared history and geography, has true skin in the game.  Zelensky and his leadership team (Defense Minister Rustem Umerov has a close relationship with Turkey’s Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan) should likewise reach out to Turkey’s President Erdogan.  Zelensky’s sole reliance upon the EU and NATO countries for legitimacy and political and military survival is both flawed and fraught with difficulty, and clearly a non-starter with Putin.

President Trump’s negotiation instincts, and his desire to draw Russia back into the family of nations, auguring closer alliances with Europe as well as America, are wise. 

But with Russia, even given America’s goal of weakening the Russia-China axis, such gambits have often bedeviled prior American Presidents. 

President Trump’s latest ‘art of the deal’ with Russia is a high-risk, high-reward proposition. 

And as President Trump knows all too well, and wrote in his famous book, “sometimes you have to know when to walk.”  The stakes – for America, Ukraine, Europe, China, the Middle East, and even for Russia – could not be higher.

The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.