After delaying their phone call and then laughing about it to assembled Russian industrialists and state media (a very Russian attempt to show President Donald Trump who is boss), Russian President Vladimir Putin appears to have thoroughly manipulated Trump during their conversation on Tuesday.
Trump was willing to put extraordinary pressure on Ukraine to agree to a full 30-day ceasefire, but Putin has now somehow persuaded Trump that the ceasefire should be limited to attacks on infrastructure and energy targets. This deal is a gift to Russia for three reasons.
First, because it shows Ukraine and U.S. allies in Europe and elsewhere that Trump is not a fair arbiter for peace and can be corralled by Putin’s word games.
Second, because this deal is not a ceasefire so much as it is the absolute minimum fiction Putin evidently decided he had to give Trump in order to avoid U.S. sanctions. Absent a full ceasefire, Russian forces will be able to maintain their offensive pressure against Ukrainian forces along the front lines. They are escalating that pressure to exploit Ukrainian and European fears over the reduction of U.S. support.
Third, because the Russian leader will continue to attack most Ukrainian civilian and government facilities under the guise that those targets do not constitute “infrastructure” or that any Russian strikes on these targets are accidental. In contrast, and of key benefit to Russia, Ukraine will now have to suspend its strikes on Russian energy targets. Those strikes offered Ukraine its key means of weakening Russia’s war machine and denying Putin the sole export industry via which to earn foreign capital to fund his continuing war.
To consider how masterfully Putin has played Trump here, consider the contrast in how Trump dealt with Ukraine and how he has now dealt with Russia. Trump suspended munitions and intelligence support to a country defending itself from invasion in order to secure its commitment to a full ceasefire. In contrast, Trump has now accepted Putin’s refusal of a full ceasefire without Russia suffering any U.S. consequences whatsoever. Even for a president who had already made abundantly clear his delusional trust in Putin’s nonexistent better intentions, his acquiescence to Putin’s gambit is an embarrassment. Trump warned Putin that playing games over a ceasefire would result in U.S. sanctions. Instead, he will now surely thank the KGB man on Truth Social for playing him for a patsy.
HOW TRUMP FEARS AND TRUSTS PUTIN TOO MUCH
Trump’s action undermines America’s moral and strategic credibility, weakens the already fraying trust of allies from Australia to the United Kingdom (already weak because Trump has declared trade wars on most of them), and suggests that Trump prefers the Russian art of a deal to no deal at all.
Even if, that is, the Russian deal is built on the destruction of human lives, democratic nations, and, in the future, the security of America’s best European allies. Still, the American president can at least be grateful that the Russian leader has given him another thinly veiled “Tennis balls, my liege” insult gift via his proposition for NHL and Russian hockey league exhibitions.