For Donald Trump, Monday’s call with Vladimir Putin spoke of the hope of a brilliant future of “large-scale trade” between Russia and the United States, “when this catastrophic” bloodbath “is over.”
Yuri Ushakov, the Russian leader’s foreign policy advisor, said the two -hour tone of conversation was so friendly that the president wanted to be the first to win.
For Ukrainians and allies in Europe, it was like betrayal.
It is not only that the American president did not seem to exert pressure on Russia to make a cease-fire. According to his reading of the call, Trump also clearly indicated that the United States bowed as a mediator in efforts to end the war, leaving Moscow and kyiv to understand things themselves.
The president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, warned the consequences. “It is crucial to all of us that the United States does not distance themselves from talks and the pursuit of peace, because the only one to take advantage of it is Putin,” he said in a statement after talking with Trump.
For observers, it was a turning point after more than three years of conflict. A president who promised to put an end to the Ukrainian war on the first day of his second term seemed to wash his hands of the effort and leave Ukraine at the mercy of his invader. The call confirmed the worst fears of Europeans: the American president, seduced by Putin slots, was ready to pivot in Moscow and to sell kyiv.
Trump even had a suggestion for whom the United States could replace as a mediator: Pope Leo XIV. “The Vatican … said that he would be very interested in organizing negotiations,” he wrote on Truth Social.
In a call to European leaders after talking to Putin, Trump not only pointed out that he was disengaging, but that he also had the intention of applying additional pressure on Moscow while bilateral talks between Russia and Ukraine were underway, according to two people informed of the conversation.
It represented a flip-flop for Trump. A little over a week ago, he had joined other Western leaders by threatening to impose new punitive measures on Russia if it did not implement an immediate cease-fire.
Trump himself admitted to journalists later Monday that he had not even reiterated his previous requests from Putin to stop his attacks on civil zones in Ukraine.
“This call with Trump was a victory for Putin,” said Steven Pifer, a former United States ambassador to Ukraine now at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. “He clearly indicated that a cease-fire will not occur so soon, so that Russia can continue the war. And no additional sanction will be applied. “
Trump and Putin seemed to have agreed that Russia and Ukraine have direct talks, continuing negotiations in Istanbul from last Friday.
Putin said Russia was ready to work with Ukraine on a “memorandum on the possible future peace agreement”. This would include the “principles on which a peace agreement would be founded” and a “cease-fire possible for a certain time, if certain agreements are concluded”.
However, there was perplexity about what Putin was talking about.
A senior Ukrainian official familiar with calls said of the idea of the memorandum that “no one knows what it is, what is the reason [and] Why is it important ”. Zelenskyy himself told journalists on Monday that the memorandum’s proposal was “unknown” to him.
“The Russians will make low-level conversations, will exchange various documents and continue to fight,” said Bill Taylor, who was an American ambassador to Ukraine from 2006 to 2009. “How long will Trump have to endure all this stalling?”
The American desire to disengage himself was reported for weeks by Trump himself, but also by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice-President JD Vance, who have repeatedly expressed frustration towards Russia and Ukraine equal extent. Vance told journalists on Monday that the United States could finally have to say: “It is not our war.”
“We will try to finish it, but if we cannot end it, we will finally say:” What do you know? It was worth trying, but we don’t do it anymore. “”
Trump reiterated that when he told journalists in the White House that something “would happen” to end the war. “And if this is not the case, I get back and they will have to continue. It was a European situation and I should have been a European situation.”
Some experts see Trump’s desire to disengage as understandable. “The approach of each party was to go to Trump crazy to the other side, and it was destructive in its essence,” said Peter Slezkine of the Stimson Center thinking group. “If he can force both parties to talk to each other and withdraw from the photo, it may be necessary to make things happen.”
But Trump now seemed more interested in rapprochement with Moscow than to resolve the war, others said.
“At this stage, Trump seems to see the normalization of the United Russian-state relations as an end in itself,” said Andrew Weiss, vice-president of the Endowment for International Peace Carnegie. “Everything else is subject to this objective.”
Putin’s apparent will could be reflected in Russia’s confidence in the military progress of its large -scale invasion of Ukraine, where it has intensified offensive operations along large sections of the front line.
A Ukrainian military spokesperson said “heavy battles” raged in the strategic city of Pokrovsk in eastern Ukraine and northern Totretsk. A highway that serves as a crucial logistics center undergoes a regular drone attack, threatening Ukraine’s operations in the region, soldiers said.
Deepstate, a Ukrainian analytical group close to the army, described the situation as “unfavorable” to the kyiv forces and declared that the Russian troops “pushed through the positions and approached the administrative edge of the Donetsk region” – one of the regions of Russia annexed unilaterally in 2022 does not yet control completely.
The Deepstate card, where it follows the changes on the front line, shows the Russians less than 5 km from this border where the fights are the most intense.
The capture of the whole region of Eastern Donetsk – with the neighboring regions of Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, the other three areas it annexed in 2022 – remains a key military objective for Moscow. His army has undergone heavy losses in pursuit of this objective. In talks with Ukrainian officials in Türkiye last week, Russia made a conditional cease-fire to the withdrawal of kyiv all its forces from the four regions.
Rob Lee, a principal researcher at Foreign Policy Research Institute, said Russia managed to descend along the first line and had managed to recruit soldiers in large numbers.
“Militarily, I think Russia can support the fight for the moment, given its sustained recruitment of volunteers,” he said. “Russia leaders probably believe they can still improve their position on the battlefield.”
As summer approaches, weather conditions would become more conducive to offensive operations, which could benefit Russia, said Lee.
“Russia has still not achieved its minimum objective of occupying all regions of Donetsk and Luhansk … It can therefore try to grasp as many territory as possible this summer before engaging more seriously in the negotiations.”
Additional James Politi report in Washington
