So far, all the carrots in the world have failed to persuade Putin to give up his designs on Ukraine and the U.S.-led geopolitical order beyond its borders.
As I wrote yesterday, muscling the Ukrainian government into submission — up to and including throttling its ability to defend the bargaining chip it secured for itself (and the West) in Russia’s Kursk Oblast — was the easy part. Getting Russia to the negotiating table was always going to be the heavier lift. So far, all the carrots in the world — and there have been only carrots — have failed to persuade Vladimir Putin to give up his designs on Ukraine and the U.S.-led geopolitical order beyond its borders.
Jim Geraghty provided a nauseatingly extensive list of sweeteners and concessions Donald Trump’s negotiators ceded to the Kremlin without any apparent reciprocation from the Russian side. True to the form familiar to all who have studied Russian-style statecraft, Moscow appears to regard this as a display of weakness.
On Thursday, the Russian regime responded to Team Trump’s claim that the ball is now on Moscow’s side of the court. For now, the Kremlin appears content to run out the clock.
In remarks to reporters, Russian foreign policy adviser Yuri Ushakov rejected a 30-day cease-fire that would provide “nothing other than a temporary breather for Ukrainian troops.” Those remarks mirror the contempt shown by Konstantin Malofeev, a Russian media mogul believed to speak for Putin, toward the peace plan put forward in December by Trump’s Russia-Ukraine envoy Keith Kellogg (who Malofeev said could “screw himself”).
It seems that both Ushakov and Malofeev were not talking out of turn. In remarks by Putin himself, the Russian autocrat said that he is “in favor” of the cease-fire plan, but “there are nuances.” Among them, his claim that any peace plan “should remove the root causes of this crisis.” If Putin’s pre-war address is any indication, the “root causes” he’d like to address are the offensive notion that a Ukrainian identity separate from Russia exists — a grave insult to the sacrifices made during the tsarist campaigns to take the Black Sea coast from the Turks.
In an even more irksome twist, Putin added that his government would determine how to proceed based on how its offensive operations in Kursk go. Over the last several days, Putin has made sure photographers can find him dressed in military fatigues, promising to treat captured Ukrainian soldiers not as combatants protected by the Geneva Convention but as “terrorists” — although it’s hard to distinguish how that would depart from Russia’s current practices, in which Moscow’s forces are exempt from domestic prosecution for the war crimes they are alleged to have committed.
This is the country that the Trump team constantly reassures us is “ready for peace”? It sounds more like a country ready to prosecute the war Putin started with maximum vigor and brutality, to take the utmost advantage of the gifts their counterparts in Washington have provided. As I also noted yesterday, the Trump administration’s excessive graciousness toward the Russian side might have provided the Kremlin with a distorted view of the concessions it can extract from the White House. It was almost sure to ask for more. But Russia isn’t just beseeching Trump, hat in hand, for a better deal. Moscow is humiliating him.
Trump is reliably sensitive to his perception that he is being disrespected. Only two weeks ago, Americans were treated to a sanctimonious lecture about the violence Volodymyr Zelensky did to American national prestige by failing to wear a suit to the White House and insisting on durable and enforceable cease-fire terms. And yet, the president and his allies have displayed a level of patience for the Russians that is seemingly reserved only for the Russians. It’s reasonable to wonder when Trump’s hostility to impertinent foreign actors will make an appearance.
“Throughout the entire world, we’re no longer respected as a country,” Trump said last year. “They don’t respect our leadership. They don’t respect the United States anymore.” Upon taking office, Trump declared that he would usher in a new era of reverence for America. “From this day forward,” the president said at the outset of his second inaugural address, “our country will flourish and be respected again all over the world.”
It doesn’t look like Putin got the message. The Kremlin and its mouthpieces have taken us for fools. So, what are you going to do about it, Mr. President?