Russian President Vladimir Putin again rejected President Donald Trump’s call for an unconditional 30-day ceasefire with Ukraine in a phone call with Trump on Monday. Trump has demanded a ceasefire for two months. While Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has agreed to the proposal, Putin has consistently rejected it. Monday’s call was supposed to be a make-or-break moment to see if Trump could drag Putin into compliance.
Instead, Putin offered a masterpiece of prevaricating nothingness. Following the call’s conclusion, the former KGB officer told state media that he had proposed working with Ukraine on a “memorandum regarding a possible future peace treaty with the definition of a number of positions. These included, for example, the principles of settlement, the timing of a possible peace agreement, and so on, including a possible ceasefire for a certain period if the relevant agreements are reached.”
Note the abundant evidence of equivocation and evasion: pursuing a “possible future peace treaty,” but only after all its conditions have been agreed, and a “possible ceasefire … if the relevant agreements are reached.”
Trump’s foreign policy credibility is now plainly being undermined. In essence, Putin is telling Trump that he does not respect Trump’s demands that both sides make concessions for peace. Indeed, in an obvious signal to his domestic audience of his derision for Trump, Putin conducted the call from a high school. This is vintage Russian political humor: Putin is implying that he is educating Trump on international politics and that he regards Trump as a дебил (debil), or idiot.
The president’s main mistake is allowing his desperation for peace to bind to his overestimation of Russia’s power. Trump also refuses to recognize Putin for the trained liar he is. Unfortunately, Trump keeps dancing to Putin’s waltz of manipulation. In a social media post following the “two-hour call,” Trump said it went “very well.” Giving Putin a pass on his refusal to accept the ceasefire, Trump said Ukraine and Russia will now begin negotiations toward a ceasefire. In doing so, Trump failed to realize the deceptive undertone of Putin’s description of the call as noted above. He also failed to realize that Putin would now drag out ceasefire talks for as long as he could, betting that he could keep leading Trump up the road to nowhere.
Trump is making himself look weak and foolish. Rather than play to Putin’s games, he should consider two alternative solutions.
First, Trump could show the Russian leader that he has games of his own to play. He can alter Putin’s calculus by immediately supporting Senate action to impose secondary sanctions on nations that purchase Russian energy, such as China, India, and Turkey. That would cause immediate and significant pain to a Russian economy already cracking under high inflation, collapsing private investment, a major workforce skills shortage, and dependence on military spending. Without its energy export sector, Russia has very little to offer the international economy beyond corruption and assassination.
Imposing these sanctions would also show Trump is a leader who is willing to impose consequences on the aggressor in this conflict, as well as the victim. This will strengthen U.S. alliances and prove to Putin that Trump is willing to leverage more than words in the pursuit of peace.
The second option is for Trump to abandon his pursuit of peace. While this would damage Trump’s strongman reputation by underlining his unwillingness to play hardball with Putin, it would at least draw a line in the sand. It would then allow America’s allies, and hopefully America as well, to refocus their efforts on supporting Ukraine’s defensive action.
JAMES COMEY PUTS FIDELITY TO PROFITS BEFORE FIDELITY TO FBI AND COUNTRY
But Trump’s current course is highly problematic. Putin is treating the president like a low-ranking courtesan rather than as the commander in chief of the most powerful nation on Earth.
That is not a sustainable proposition for a president who seeks to spend the next 3 1/2 years countering Chinese aggression, controlling Iranian and North Korean nuclear threats, and strengthening America at home and abroad.