The three-day truce between Russia and Ukraine, brokered by US President Donald Trump, is deemed meaningless by CDU foreign expert Norbert Röttgen. According to the CDU/CSU parliamentary group co-chair, the arrangement is merely a superficial deal that fundamentally changes nothing. Röttgen suggested that Moscow was primarily concerned with avoiding a major public embarrassment-the inability to hold its Red Square parade normally-and secured a prisoner exchange desired by Kyiv in return. He maintains that, despite the localized truce, the war is set to continue.
Röttgen posits that Russian President Vladimir Putin is under increasing pressure. The reduced scale of the military parade on May 9th, he claims, is “an undeniable sign of Putin’s mounting strain”. He notes that the conflict remains highly unpopular economically within Russia. Furthermore, he highlighted Ukraine’s growing success in shifting the battleground into Russian territory, with Ukrainian drones operating all the way to Moscow, posing the risk of significant damage.
The expert views Ukraine as gaining an increasing advantage in its defense against the Russian military. In his view, the nation has managed to advance its industrial and technological capacities in a striking manner, allowing it to compensate for personnel deficits in certain areas and inflict substantial losses on Russian forces. He pointed out that Ukraine now possesses weapons with greater range, which has significantly curtailed Russia’s oil output.
Additionally, Röttgen predicted that the conflict in Iran will impact Russia negatively rather than Ukraine. He added that the higher global oil prices resulting from the reduced Russian production would be balanced out by the damage to Russia’s global standing. “Moreover, the world is learning that Russia is not a reliable partner that can count on its allies in times of real crisis” Röttgen stated. He cautioned that Trump’s current focus on Iran represents a significant distraction for Putin. Ultimately, Röttgen suggests that Putin is “strategically caught in a dilemma” finding himself needing to maintain complex relationships with no single entity-not the US, nor Iran, nor the Gulf states, nor Israel.
