Vladimir Putin is still in charge! Trump can’t end the war in Ukraine and he knows it

The phone call between Russian President Vladimir Putin and President Donald Trump was a painful reminder that Trump is the junior partner in Russian-American relations and that Putin will continue his campaign of mass murder in Ukraine as long as he gets away with it. Nothing else of substance came out of the conversation. When it comes to the biggest armed conflict in Europe since World War II, Putin is still in charge. This is what Tom Nichols, a contributor to The Atlantic, wrote in a commentary with the original title: "Putin is still in charge. Trump cannot end the war in Ukraine and he knows it.”

Putin, exuding confidence, stepped forward just minutes after the call and spoke to the media in person, allowing him to make the first move in shaping the discussion. (Today’s Russian autocrats understand public relations far better than their somber Soviet predecessors.) Putin’s quick personal reading of the call was the perfect “nothingburger”:

“We agreed with the president of the United States that Russia will offer and is ready to work with the Ukrainian side on a memorandum for a possible future peace agreement, which will define a number of positions, such as the principles of the settlement, the deadlines for a possible peace agreement.”

I speak Russian, but there is no need for an interpreter here: It is the universal language of political procrastination. “Russia will offer” means "We will delay, and then we will come up with an unacceptable set of points of support". "We are ready to work on a memorandum" means "We will agree in principle to talk about, that we will talk about things". "Defining a number of positions" means "We will propose a list of non-binding conditions". And "the timing of a possible peace agreement" means "We will set some unattainable date on the ceasefire schedule and then we will blow it".

The official description of Putin's remarks, published later by the Russian news service TASS, is even less conciliatory, explicitly excluding any mention of an agreement with the American president. But none of that matters: Trump spent more than two hours on the phone with Putin and got absolutely nothing.

Of course, Trump doesn’t see it that way. After Putin’s statements came to light, the president posted his own version of the conversation on his social media platform Truth Social (which, it must be admitted, is more authoritative than anything from the White House press office). “Russia and Ukraine,” Trump wrote, “will immediately begin negotiations to end the fire and, more importantly, to end the war.” After rhapsodizing about all the money everyone could make if the two sides could end the war, Trump repeated: “Negotiations between Russia and Ukraine will begin immediately.”

The problem, of course, is that nothing Putin said could be interpreted as “immediately” beginning anything. That’s probably why Putin went public first; he has a long history under Trump and knows that the American president likes to announce deals even when none exist. Putin’s statement effectively preemptively undermined anything too positive about Trump. (The Russians also launched a massive drone attack on Ukraine that night, which should have been a sign that the talks were unlikely to make much progress.) Having rejected Trump’s efforts, Putin will continue his war and people will continue to die. Perhaps the only positive sign today is that Trump appears to be abandoning American involvement in peace talks. That’s fine, but only because Putin was using the president’s self-interest in being a peacemaker to pressure Trump and prevent the Americans from sending aid to Kiev or imposing more sanctions on Moscow.

Now Trump has said that the terms of the ceasefire “will be negotiated between the two sides, as they can only be because they know details of the negotiations that no one else could know.” This is a far cry from Trump’s foolish campaign promise that he could end the war in a day, perhaps even before he takes office, but if it dissuades Trump from his fantasy that he can stop the fighting by simply scolding Putin, so much the better.

Trump’s retreat could also open the door to renewed sanctions. The president doesn’t like to appear weak, and if Putin continues his carnage, other Republicans might be able to pressure Trump to respond. At best, they could even persuade Trump to help Ukraine with more weapons, but that seems unlikely; Trump has turned America into a functional ally of Russia, and Trump seems afraid of personally angering Putin.

(J.D.) Vance and the other “both sides” apologists have a superficial knowledge of international conflicts and almost none of Russia, which is why they seem bewildered by Putin’s persistence. To them, this is just another costly, dead-end war over land, churches, or whatever. To them, it all has to end, lest Trump look like a fool who has once again been played by the Kremlin’s sharpshooters. They fail to understand that Putin, who so far appears to be in no political danger at home from this war, still has the cheap option of simply destroying Ukrainian civilian targets while the West stalls.

Putin may be open to some kind of ceasefire agreement, if only to give his forces a breather and a chance to regroup, to get his government off some sanctions, and to keep order in his own political house on Red Square. He has done this before in Crimea, playing with time while he plots his next move. But if that happens, it will not be because of Trump’s efforts—and even the president himself seems to know it already.