Holding off on punishing Moscow isn’t getting President Donald Trump any closer to peace: Hitting Vladimir Putin with fresh secondary sanctions looks like the best, maybe only, way to get him to both sit down with Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky and get serious about doing a deal.
Putin and Zelensky “have to have something of a relationship, otherwise we’re just wasting a lot of time,” Trump told Fox News viewers Tuesday morning, yet it’s plainly Putin who’s refusing to meet.
Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov tossed cold water on hopes of a face-to-face meeting soon, insisting “any contacts involving top officials should be prepared very carefully” — even though Moscow scrambled plenty fast to set up last Friday’s Putin-Trump meet.
More, Lavrov set new preconditions for a Vlad-Zel sitdown, such as Ukrainian repeal of some laws that offend Putin’s devotion to civil liberties.
Also meanwhile, the Kremlin is amping up its offensives, including its bombing of innocents (as First Lady Melania Trump has pointed out).
A drone attack Monday night killed eight Ukrainian civilians and wounded 54 more; by Kyiv’s count the invaders have slain roughly 13,000 civilians in total, including 569 kids.
Hmm: Trump says he excoriated a European leader Monday for thinking diplomacy might take months: “You’re going to have another 40,000 people dead in a month or two!”
That’s why the prez rang Putin immediately after the Oval Office summit to start “to work out a meeting with President Zelensky.”
How then can Trump put up with Lavrov’s stalls — which, of course, are actually Putin’s?
Look: Even if Putin is to get some of what he’s demanding as his price for a long-term peace, he’ll have to bend some, too.
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So “tapping along” Trump and Zelensky has to carry a price.
As NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte noted late Monday, “Without President Trump, this deadlock with Putin would not have been broken. He is the only one who could do this.”
Now Putin’s rushing to a new deadlock — and Trump is again the only one who can break it, this time by finally imposing those secondary sanctions.
You used tariff threats to forge a peace deal between Thailand and Cambodia, Mr. President.
And you pressured Zelensky and the Europeans to get them behind your vision for a Russia-Ukraine peace.
Now keeping up the momentum is key, and Putin is the last piece to get in place.
Lower the sanctions boom to get him to the table.