President Donald Trump has made it clear he wants to see Russia’s war in Ukraine end, but his dramatic blowup with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office on Friday has thrown new uncertainties into the war.
U.S. and Russian officials held their second meeting regarding possible negotiations to end the war in Istanbul, Turkey on Thursday. Sonata Coulter, the deputy assistant secretary of state for Russia and central Europe, led the U.S. delegation while Ministry of Foreign Affairs North Atlantic Department Director Ambassador Aleksandr Darchiyev led the Russian delegation. Ukraine was excluded from both meetings.
A day before the meeting, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the United States will know “pretty quickly” about whether the Russians are “serious about stopping the war.”
“If they’re making maximalist demands that they know can’t be met, then we know they’re not serious about it,” he added. “But we have to test that, right? It’s the only way you’re going to find out if this is possible or not.”
His comments came a day before Trump, Zelensky, and Vice President JD Vance’s conversation in the Oval Office devolved into each other talking over one another and the vice president accusing Zelensky of being insufficiently grateful for U.S. support.
“Mr. President, with respect. I think it’s disrespectful for you to come into the Oval Office and try to litigate this in front of the American media,” Vance said. “Right now, you guys are going around and forcing conscripts to the front lines because you have manpower problems. You should be thanking the president for being willing to bring an end to this conflict.”
Zelensky was effectively kicked out of the White House after the heated moment and the two sides did not end up finalizing and signing the U.S.-Ukraine minerals rights agreement designed as a long-term economic partnership that would result in the U.S. effectively getting reimbursed for the tens of billions of dollars worth of military had the U.S. has already provided.
Russian officials celebrated the fight that occurred in the Oval Office, an acknowledgment that the disintegration of U.S. support for Ukraine could be consequential on the battlefield.
Russia’s aggression in Ukraine dates back more than a decade and is part of a larger pattern of Moscow’s imperialist efforts toward former Soviet conquests. In Russian President Vladimir Putin’s own words from 2021, Ukrainians and Russians are “one people — a single whole,” and the creation of a sovereign Ukrainian state in 1991 was “also the result of deliberate efforts by those forces that have always sought to undermine our unity.”
“Putin could end the fighting in Ukraine at any moment. He refuses because his aim is nothing less than a recreation of the Soviet Union — a dream further emboldened by four years of weak Biden administration policies. However, the Kremlin understands both fear and strength, which President Trump consistently projects and leverages to advance U.S. interests,” Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX) told the Washington Examiner. “I am optimistic his negotiation efforts will not only benefit the U.S. economy but will also bring an end to Putin’s war and pave the way for lasting peace in Europe.”
Russian forces currently occupy about 20% of Russian territory in the eastern and southern parts of the country, far from their goals of overthrowing the Zelensky government and installing a Russian-friendly, anti-Western government.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov declared on Thursday that ceding Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory it annexed — Donetsk, Lukansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson — in a negotiated settlement to end the war is “nonnegotiable.” He said the territories “are an inseparable part of our country.”
Putin himself said on Thursday that Moscow’s “first contacts” with the Trump administration “inspire certain hopes,” adding, “Our partners demonstrate pragmatism and a realistic vision of things, and have abandoned numerous stereotypes, the so-called rules and messianic, ideological cliches of their predecessors.”
Before the minerals deal seemingly fell apart, Trump said on Thursday the U.S. would “have a lot of people working there,” which would serve as a deterrent for renewed Russian aggression, “I don’t think anybody’s going to play around if we’re there with a lot of workers.”
“I think he’ll keep his word,” the president said of Putin.
Kurt Volker, the former U.S. ambassador to NATO, does not believe Russia wants to end the war and believes he’d use a ceasefire to alleviate the burden on the military and economy only to restart the conflict when it’s in his interest.
“First off, I do not believe Russia wants to end the war in Ukraine. They want to defeat Ukraine. They want to demilitarize it. They want to take over the government, replace Zelensky with a pro-Russian puppet. They want to eliminate Ukrainian national identity and culture,” he told the Washington Examiner. “Putin will use any ceasefire to regroup, rearm, conduct hybrid attacks, and prepare future conventional attacks.”
Similarly, George Barros, an expert on Russia and Ukraine with the Institute for the Study of War, told the Washington Examiner, that Russia wants to see Ukraine “tender a surrender document, the terms of which are essentially the Russians get everything that they’ve been demanding since 2021, [while] Ukraine, the United States, and allies basically make a series of concessions and get very little in return, and become less secure in return. And then we shake hands and we call it negotiations.”
France and the U.K. have discussed deploying tens of thousands of “reassurance forces” to Ukraine if a ceasefire deal is agreed upon. French President Emmanuel Macron visited the White House earlier this week.
Putin warned on Thursday of a “portion of Western elites [who] are still committed to maintaining instability in the world, and these forces will try to disrupt or to compromise the newly resumed dialogue,” which was seemingly a reference to European leaders.
One of Trump’s national security advisers from his first term, former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton, said Putin may be willing to accept a deal now if it “looks like a temporary interim settlement for the ceasefire that becomes permanent until Russia decides to invade again,” given the damage done to Russia’s military, including its Black Sea Fleet.
Bolton, who is not on good terms with the former president, told the Washington Examiner that Putin likely views Trump as “manipulatable,” and said he believes that’s what’s currently going on. “Trump thinks he and Putin are friends and he doesn’t think he’s friends with Zelensky. So, since Trump sees things on personal terms, it puts the Ukrainians in a very difficult position. It’s why he didn’t call Putin a dictator. You don’t call your friends dictators but he calls Zelensky a dictator.”
Trump has already ruled out one of Zelensky’s main requests from the West, admittance into the NATO alliance, even though the alliance declared last July that Kyiv was on the “irreversible” path to membership.
On Wednesday, Trump said Ukraine “can forget about” it.
The U.S.’s European allies were alarmed by Trump’s comments about Ukraine and his public fight with Zelensky.
US-UKRAINE RELATIONSHIP REACHES INFLECTION POINT ON THIRD ANNIVERSARY OF WAR
Putin has long claimed NATO was moving closer to its borders as one of its justifications for the war, even though it’s an entirely defensive alliance. Since Russia launched the full-scale invasion, NATO added Finland and Sweden, which effectively doubled the length of the shared border between the alliance and Russia.
There have been discussions for an in-person meeting between Trump and Putin but no date has been publicly announced yet.