President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine is learning how to better earn President Donald Trump’s favor. This puts Russian President Vladimir Putin in a more difficult position as Russia and Ukraine negotiate over a possible end to their now three-year war.
Zelensky and Trump plainly do not like each other. One problem is that both men are arrogant. Another is that where Zelensky resents Trump’s moral equivocation over Russia’s responsibility for starting the war, Trump dislikes Zelensky’s lack of deference to him. Still, Zelensky’s new approach to dealing with Trump appears to be paying dividends.
The shift centers on Zelensky’s responses to Trump’s various peace proposals.
Where Zelensky previously reacted to Trump’s ideas with a mix of half-hearted support and counterarguments, he now endorses whatever Trump suggests. Zelensky then attempts to shape the manner of his response in Ukraine’s favor. This strategy serves to cool Trump’s perception that Zelensky is an obstacle to his peace agenda.
Last week, for example, Zelensky was ramping up the pressure on Putin to accept Trump’s call for an immediate 30-day ceasefire. Zelensky also called on the international community to impose new sanctions on Russia amid its refusal to suspend military operations. Trump also demanded that Russia join the ceasefire.
Putin was unmoved. The Russian leader doesn’t want a 30-day ceasefire. He believes that the battlefield is shifting in his favor, and that the summer fighting season will bring territorial gains and thus new leverage for future peace talks. Putin is also determined not to appear as having yielded to European and U.S. pressure. He fears that it would make him look weak domestically. Evincing as much, Putin’s chief spokesman warned Monday that “a language of ultimatums is unacceptable for Russia, it is not suitable. You cannot talk to Russia in such a language.”
Yet, Putin does not wish to suffer new U.S. sanctions. What he really wants is to buy time.
In turn, the Russian leader ended last week by sidestepping Zelensky and Trump’s ceasefire demands and instead calling for direct talks with Ukraine in Turkey on Thursday. Putin likely hoped that Zelensky would respond to this counteroffer with fury, insisting that there could be no direct talks until Russia first agreed to a ceasefire. The Zelensky of February or March may well have done just that. Instead, however, Zelensky stood firm on his “keep Trump happy” maxim.
On Monday, responding to Trump’s Sunday endorsement of Putin’s call for Istanbul talks, and the president’s Monday suggestion that he may join those talks, Zelensky praised Trump’s “very important words” and reiterated his support for “a full and unconditional ceasefire — long enough to provide the foundation for diplomacy.” Zelensky added, “I will be in [Turkey]. I hope that the Russians will not evade the meeting. And of course, all of us in Ukraine would appreciate it if President Trump could be there with us at this meeting” in Turkey.
Think about what Zelensky is doing here.
First, he’s reemphasizing that Putin has supported Trump’s ceasefire plan for nearly two months now, and quietly reminding Trump that Putin hasn’t done so. Second, he’s accepting Putin’s offer for direct talks but shifting the format to the head-of-state level. Third, recognizing both Trump’s ego and the opportunity to show the American president the contrast between his own concessionary stance and Putin’s prevarication, he’s asked Trump to attend the talks.
Zelensky has put Putin between a political rock and a Trump hard place.
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After all, Putin must now choose between looking weak at home by accepting Zelensky’s push for direct talks or risking Trump’s ire by sending a deputy in his place. And if Putin does attend the talks, Zelensky will be emphasizing to Trump that he’s ready for an unconditional ceasefire, now. Putin will then have to choose between joining that ceasefire or risking new sanctions he can ill afford.
Putin will have only one possible alternative strategy in Istanbul: relying on his continued ability to manipulate or intimidate Trump with a distracting prevarication that bears the pretense of progress toward peace. The problem for Putin is that Trump appears to be realizing that the former KGB lieutenant colonel might, as Trump recently put it, “just be tapping me along.”