Thank you!

Putin is the Hyacinth Bucket of great power leaders: it's all about keeping up appearances. Russia's a great power only to the extent that it can persuade others it is, because there's very little material basis for its pretensions to great power status. That's why Trump's deference is so important.

Russia's multiple weaknesses mean that the pillars of its self-identified great power status rest wholly on 2 Cold War relics (nukes and UNSC P5 membership) and the ability to persuade the rest of the world that it's influential inside its region and beyond.

Russia's extra-regional influence is also patchy and limited, though it has improved its diplomatic position since the 1990s when it had little to no substantial engagement with many parts of the world. In some cases it's already declined from its peak (e.g. Syria).

Ties with other states remain, of course, but no region of Russia's neighbourhood (Central Asia, the South Caucasus, Eastern Europe, the Baltic region) is a sphere of exclusive Russian influence in the way that great powers have traditionally been understood to have a sphere of influence.

Of all the other states on the former territory of the USSR, only Belarus (or, more accurately, Belarus's leadership) has been a consistent junior partner for Russia. Influence over others has been variable; sometimes Russian influence has declined relative to that of other states (China, Turkey).

Russia's attempts to create a sphere of influence failed in the early 90s. The idea of a Russia-led Commonwealth of Independent States was DOA because Ukraine and others (but particularly Ukraine) made it clear they weren't interested. Nothing else has worked, either.

Russia's great power identity has rested on 3, latterly 4 things: 1. its Soviet nuclear weapons inheritance; 2. its UNSC P5 membership, also inherited from the USSR; 3. The idea it has a sphere of influence; and 4. extra-regional influence.

Since the collapse of the USSR, Russia's lacked almost all the attributes of a great power. It's an economic middle power; its not a technological or conventional military great power; diplomatically it lacks attractive or persuasive capacities. The organisations it leads are pretty useless.

The idea that Russia is a great power is absolutely fundamental to the way that the Russian state, and those in its key positions, think about Russia as a nation. Great power-ness is understood an innate and necessary quality of Russia. No great power-ness = no Russia.

Yes, absolutely.

Witkoff advising the Russians how to handle Trump is a reflection of Trump's personality, not an indication Trump was otherwise inclined to be favourable to Ukraine or tough on Russia. Some commentary (not from
@christopherjm.ft.com) is straying into "good tsar, bad boyar" territory.

That's very likely part of it, but I think the issue is that he lacks the capacity for the kind of thinking required and the willingness to put the hours in. He's never had to understand details or make complex decisions - others have always done the work of knowing things for him.

His issues were always more extensive than that, though - e.g. that despite the fact that a core premise of his most notable book was that there had never been a global hegemon, he avoided defining the term (because, of course, there had been). That kind of sleight of hand isn't good scholarship.

Nothing about the last 10 months suggests that Trump has much understanding of or involvement in his administration's foreign policy decision-making. It was hardly likely to be different this time.

I doubt Putin would have much problem with frozen Russian assets being spent on reconstruction projects in what the Kremlin claims is Russian territory. Particularly since nothing in the "peace plan" would preclude the money being spent on military assets in these regions.

In theory, then, if "Ukraine" is understood in this plan as in one sense existing within its internationally recognised borders, then the frozen $100bn - and, for that matter, the $100bn the plan expects from Europe - could all be spent in Russian-occupied regions.