Before he came into office, Donald Trump said he could stop the war in Ukraine in 24 hours. Now he has had more than 24 weeks, but the fighting continues unabated.
Today the possibility looms of a meeting between President Trump and President Putin, so people are excited. They say Trump has hardened against Russia; America has threatened Russia with tougher sanctions. Might something actually happen?
If you look at Trump’s presentation of the issue since coming into office, you will certainly observe some alteration.
In the early months, he spoke almost as if using Russian talking points, and badmouthed President Zelensky of Ukraine. But he probably registered that the disgusting scene in the Oval Office in February in which he and Vice-President Vance tried publicly to humiliate Zelensky had not been such a brilliant idea.
Trump also became annoyed with Putin for not accepting his ludicrously favourable offer to Russia just like that. This burst out in his telling tweet on May 27: “What Vladimir Putin doesn’t realise is that if it weren’t for me, lots of bad things would already have happened to Russia and I mean REALLY BAD.”
He was accidentally admitting that his idea of peace in Ukraine was to give Russia most of what it wanted, and he had been working hard to that end. Why was friend Vlad not grateful? He felt personally affronted that Putin would often (as he still does) kill some more civilians shortly after one of the two men’s friendly phone calls: “He’ll talk so beautifully, and then he’ll bomb people at night.”
Occasional Trump expressions of outrage have continued. But so have his deadlines that pass unnoticed. He has never come through with a major deterrent against Russia. The latest trip to the Kremlin of the president’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, seems to have effaced the sanctions deadline against Russia which Trump claimed, a few days earlier, to have brought forward. One senses that Trump, not Putin, is the one begging for a deal.
Imagine it from Putin’s point of view. Certainly, he wants to keep on the right side of Trump, but he has very different priorities. His quarter of a century in power has been shaped by wishing to rebuild the Russian empire and, in the process, destroy European security as established with the fall of the Soviet Union. In the words of James Sherr, the veteran British-Estonian Russia watcher, Putin sees Ukraine simply as an “amputated vassal” to be subdued. He does not want peace before that work is finished.
Conceivably, Putin might want the sort of ceasefire that Trump advocates, but only if he could extract immediate advantage. He is not currently under enormous pressure to stop fighting. He has enough cash and arms (Russia now gets more shells from North Korea than Ukraine gets from the whole of the EU) and, despite losing about 1,000 a day, enough men whom that money can buy.
At the back of his mind is the long-standing Russian belief that the United States is its permanent enemy: so three more years of the Russophile Trump may seem of little account.
Putin will also sense the danger of losing momentum. Like Macbeth, he is “in blood / Stepp’d in so far that, should I wade no more, / Returning were as tedious as go o’er.” Without the joy of victory or the tension of continued combat, Russians will start asking difficult questions of a leader who has demanded so much of them with so little to show for it and has ceded economic and political power to China.
Strange to say, the psychological position of Ukraine is not so dissimilar. It is true that it has far fewer men and resources than Russia. If the issue comes down to attrition alone, it will eventually lose; but the fashion in the West for saying the Ukraine has lost is not borne out by the facts.
More than two years ago, I helped deliver a field ambulance to a stabilisation point near the Bakhmut front. I was told this week that, despite continuous fighting, the total Russian advance in that area since then has been three miles. A year ago, we were all reporting that Pokrovsk was about to fall. Today, despite the Russian 2025 offensive, we are reporting the same thing. Ukrainian advances in drone warfare in that time have been spectacular – though Russia catches up with technology fast. The raids at the end of May which knocked out Russian UAVs, some of them in Russian bases thousands of miles away, were astonishing.
Before he came into office, Donald Trump said he could stop the war in Ukraine in 24 hours. Now he has had more than 24 weeks, but the fighting continues unabated.
Today the possibility looms of a meeting between President Trump and President Putin, so people are excited. They say Trump has hardened against Russia; America has threatened Russia with tougher sanctions. Might something actually happen?
If you look at Trump’s presentation of the issue since coming into office, you will certainly observe some alteration.
In the early months, he spoke almost as if using Russian talking points, and badmouthed President Zelensky of Ukraine. But he probably registered that the disgusting scene in the Oval Office in February in which he and Vice-President Vance tried publicly to humiliate Zelensky had not been such a brilliant idea.
Trump also became annoyed with Putin for not accepting his ludicrously favourable offer to Russia just like that. This burst out in his telling tweet on May 27: “What Vladimir Putin doesn’t realise is that if it weren’t for me, lots of bad things would already have happened to Russia and I mean REALLY BAD.”
He was accidentally admitting that his idea of peace in Ukraine was to give Russia most of what it wanted, and he had been working hard to that end. Why was friend Vlad not grateful? He felt personally affronted that Putin would often (as he still does) kill some more civilians shortly after one of the two men’s friendly phone calls: “He’ll talk so beautifully, and then he’ll bomb people at night.”
Occasional Trump expressions of outrage have continued. But so have his deadlines that pass unnoticed. He has never come through with a major deterrent against Russia. The latest trip to the Kremlin of the president’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, seems to have effaced the sanctions deadline against Russia which Trump claimed, a few days earlier, to have brought forward. One senses that Trump, not Putin, is the one begging for a deal.
Imagine it from Putin’s point of view. Certainly, he wants to keep on the right side of Trump, but he has very different priorities. His quarter of a century in power has been shaped by wishing to rebuild the Russian empire and, in the process, destroy European security as established with the fall of the Soviet Union. In the words of James Sherr, the veteran British-Estonian Russia watcher, Putin sees Ukraine simply as an “amputated vassal” to be subdued. He does not want peace before that work is finished.
Conceivably, Putin might want the sort of ceasefire that Trump advocates, but only if he could extract immediate advantage. He is not currently under enormous pressure to stop fighting. He has enough cash and arms (Russia now gets more shells from North Korea than Ukraine gets from the whole of the EU) and, despite losing about 1,000 a day, enough men whom that money can buy.
At the back of his mind is the long-standing Russian belief that the United States is its permanent enemy: so three more years of the Russophile Trump may seem of little account.
Putin will also sense the danger of losing momentum. Like Macbeth, he is “in blood / Stepp’d in so far that, should I wade no more, / Returning were as tedious as go o’er.” Without the joy of victory or the tension of continued combat, Russians will start asking difficult questions of a leader who has demanded so much of them with so little to show for it and has ceded economic and political power to China.
Strange to say, the psychological position of Ukraine is not so dissimilar. It is true that it has far fewer men and resources than Russia. If the issue comes down to attrition alone, it will eventually lose; but the fashion in the West for saying the Ukraine has lost is not borne out by the facts.
More than two years ago, I helped deliver a field ambulance to a stabilisation point near the Bakhmut front. I was told this week that, despite continuous fighting, the total Russian advance in that area since then has been three miles. A year ago, we were all reporting that Pokrovsk was about to fall. Today, despite the Russian 2025 offensive, we are reporting the same thing. Ukrainian advances in drone warfare in that time have been spectacular – though Russia catches up with technology fast. The raids at the end of May which knocked out Russian UAVs, some of them in Russian bases thousands of miles away, were astonishing.