Temuri Yakobashvili, Georgia's former ambassador to the U.S. and someone who has dealt with Russia for years, predicted that Vladimir Putin will get some concessions over Ukraine in talks with President Joe Biden and the EU leaders.
"At the end of the day, he'll get some slices but not the whole sausage," the former diplomat and onetime deputy prime minister of Georgia, told Newsmax on Thursday.
He said that Russian diplomacy and the way Putin operates is to "imagine you have a sausage — it's yours and you own it. Suddenly he demands you give him your sausage and thus give him something that doesn't belong to him. This is a ridiculous premise from the beginning and there is no reason to negotiate."
"But countries do negotiate with him," he added. "If he gets anything from Biden and the EU, it is a victory for Russia."
Yakobashvili estimated the chances of an invasion by the 175,000 Russian troops stationed at the Ukraine border at "4 in 10 at this point. This has been going on for some time."
He said that Putin was almost certainly emboldened to make his move — as well as the eight "demands" about Ukraine that will almost surely be rejected by Biden — by a perceived weakness on the part of the U.S.
He added that Putin was "probably surprised" that the U.S. rallied so strongly to Ukraine when his forces amassed on its border.
"Americans are firmly behind Ukraine and NATO is standing firm behind its view that no country can be denied admission, so Putin may have pressed the wrong button," said the Georgian.
But he was also pessimistic about any action by the West against Russia.
"Don't expect that the U.S. or the Europeans will do anything [if Putin attacks Ukraine]," warned Yakobashvili. "Putin knows there is no appetite in the West for a military response after [the withdrawl from] Afghanistan. So there is a dilemma on how the U.S. should respond to him.
"Whenever the West is perceived to be weak, Putin will find weak points and start to exploit them," said Yakobashvili, recalling how Putin sent troops to support the break of South Ossetia and Abkhazia from Georgia in August of 2008 when George W. Bush had five months left as president and record low popularity ratings.
The former ambassador also noted that Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, as President Barack Obama was facing difficult midterm elections that ended in Republicans winning both houses of Congress.
The former ambassador is also a past deputy premier of Georgia, and as minister of reintegration in 2008, Yakobashvili oversaw the government's engagement with the Russian-occupied regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.
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