The New York Post: Make no mistake! Putin will pay dearly for mocking Trump

We expect Russian President Vladimir Putin and his closest aides will soon regret their decision to mock U.S. President Donald Trump, the New York Post reports.

At their Alaska meeting, Putin gave Trump new hope for a peace deal over the war in Ukraine, but now it looks like Lucy preparing Charlie Brown for another humiliation with a soccer ball.

After initially signaling that he was open to meeting, Sergei Lavrov, Putin’s foreign minister, has simply poured more cold water on any possibility of Putin meeting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

On "Meet the Press" on NBC, Lavrov announced: “There is no planned meeting“ and one will not take place without a preliminary agreement that fits Putin's “presidential program“.

And that program is “not ready at all“: Ukraine must publicly agree that it will never join NATO, Zelensky must repeal laws that Lavrov says ban the “Russian language“, and make concessions in advance on “territorial issues“, which Lavrov did not specify.

Oh, and he reiterated the Russians' belief that Zelensky is not the “legitimate” president of Ukraine, even though "we recognize him as the de facto head of the regime".

This follows a week in which Lavrov and company insisted, for example, that no European peacekeeping troops could be deployed in Ukraine, and in effect demanded a veto on any postwar security guarantees for Kiev.

The Russians are also insisting that Ukraine agree in advance to cede half of the Donbass, which Putin has been trying to seize since 2014.

All of this clearly contradicts the essence of what Vice President J.D. Vance said Putin accepted in Anchorage: "They have recognized that they will not be able to establish a puppet regime in Kiev, and, more importantly, they have recognized that there will be some guarantee of the security of the territorial integrity of Ukraine," Vance said on the same NBC show.

Yes, Putin has since beginning of his invasion, he claims that he intends to overthrow the alleged "neo-Nazi" regime in Kiev (even though Zelensky is Jewish!) and generally insists that Ukraine is actually just a part of Russia that was never supposed to be independent. So what?

If Vlad were really ready to discuss a lasting peace agreement, he would be ready to put aside these delusions and order Lavrov and his associates to abandon them. Instead, Putin has his subordinates exerting direct pressure not only on Zelensky, but also on Trump himself.

The American president has been slowly showing signs of his discontent, saying a few days ago that "it is very difficult, if not impossible, to win a war without attacking" the aggressor– a clear warning that Washington could withdraw its support and give Kiev an additional opportunity to strike deep into Russia.

This is in addition to the threats that Trump has so far apparently left on the table, including secondary sanctions that would paralyze the Russian economy and with it its entire military machine.

After Alaska, Trump was more than clear that Putin only had two more weeks to take a public step towards a face-to-face meeting with Zelensky as a key step towards reaching a peace agreement.

A week has already passed, and Russia has done nothing but signal that there will be no meeting unless Ukraine surrenders in advance on all issues to be discussed.

That is, Putin is demonstrating the “art of no-deal” and treats Trump like a fool because he believed everything he said in Anchorage.

The Russian clearly thinks he can get away with humiliating the leader of the free world, it won't be pleasant when Trump finally decides to dispel that illusion.