Putin Is Stalling, but Trump Should Stay the Course in Ukraine
The U.S. president should keep walking a middle path between escalation and giving up.
The Russia–Ukraine war looks bad.
Russia is hammering Ukraine, with intensified drone and missile attacks over Memorial Day weekend. Across the Atlantic, the U.S. president took notice.
Before boarding Air Force One on Sunday, President Donald Trump told reporters that Russia’s President Vladimir Putin was disrupting peace talks by “killing a lot of people” in Kiev and other cities. “I dunno what the hell happened to Putin,” he shouted over jet engines. By nighttime, Trump had figured it out. “He has gone absolutely CRAZY!” he wrote on Truth Social.
Maybe so. More likely, Putin—a cold-blooded strategist who rationally, often ruthlessly, pursues Russia’s perceived interests—smells absolute victory in Ukraine and aims to achieve it. Alternatively, Putin may be trying to wear down the Ukrainians so that Kiev loses leverage at the negotiating table and consents to a deal that addresses what Moscow calls the “root causes” of the conflict, namely, Ukraine’s Western tilt in recent decades.
Amid Putin’s apparent intransigence, some foreign-policy analysts want Trump to “walk away” from Russia–Ukraine diplomacy and cease America’s involvement in the conflict. Other, hardline voices are urging Trump to escalate the war to show resolve and punish Putin.
He should do neither, which is to say, he should keep doing what he’s doing. That means nudging diplomacy along while providing Ukraine enough aid to hold off the Russian invaders.
Despite setbacks, Trump’s approach may be paying off. This week brought signs that Putin, who has rejected a U.S.-proposed ceasefire that Kiev agreed to in March, may be warming to the kind of peace settlement that Ukraine and the West could be satisfied with.
Reuters reported Wednesday, citing three well-placed Russian sources, that Putin’s “conditions for ending the war in Ukraine” include the following: partial sanctions relief, Ukrainian neutrality, protection for Russian speakers in Ukraine, an agreement on Russian assets frozen in the West, and a written pledge by major Western powers that NATO will stop expanding eastwards.
These are reasonable requests, none which Washington or Kiev should dismiss outright, and all of which seem compatible with a peace deal the White House presented in April.
Wednesday brought another non-depressing development. Hours after the Reuters report came out, news broke that Russia proposed another round of direct ceasefire talks with Ukraine in Istanbul, to be held Monday. Like Russia’s proposal for the first round two weeks ago, this one came amid intensifying pressure from Trump. The previous day, he had posted on Truth Social that Putin was “playing with fire”.
Putin, of course, may also be playing for time. At the first round of Russia–Ukraine talks, Moscow’s delegation made outrageous demands and seemed disinclined to cease fire anytime soon. Some analysts saw silver linings, but most judged that the talks were a Russian ruse. Kiev suspects that is happening again, in part because Moscow, at the time of writing, still hasn’t presented a promised memorandum outlining its vision of a peace settlement.
Nevertheless, this week’s diplomatic developments raise hopes that the brutal war in Ukraine can be resolved diplomatically, and soon. And they present Trump a momentous decision about how to navigate what may be the final phase of the Russia–Ukraine war, or just another cycle of foot-dragging by Putin.
Whether Trump wants to even participate in another phase of diplomacy isn’t clear. Vice President J.D. Vance warned in April that if the Russians and Ukrainians didn’t agree to a ceasefire, then the U.S. would “walk away from this process.” Since then, some on the right have urged the White House to do just that. These pro-restraint conservatives generally also recommend that the Trump administration, while it’s at it, cut support for Ukraine.
America-Firsters see at least one good reason for Trump to wash his hands of the conflict and let Moscow, Kiev, and Brussels hash it out: America lacks vital interests in Ukraine. Put more bluntly: It’s none of our business.
I understand the sentiment. But the truth is, the war is our business. The U.S. helped provoke Putin’s invasion and afterwards enmeshed itself deeply in the war. One of the belligerents, Russia, is an adversary of the United States. The other, Ukraine, is in this mess largely because of misguided U.S. foreign policy that for decades antagonized Moscow.
Trump himself seems to think that the fact of our involvement in the conflict means we have an interest in resolving it. During the now-infamous Oval Office meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in late February, Trump offered this defense of America’s trying to settle the war diplomatically:
It’s a pathway to getting something solved. And I feel that as the head of this country, I have an obligation to do that. Plus, we’re very much involved. We got involved. It’s too bad we got involved because there should have been no involvement because there should have been no war.
Trump is right, and it’s useful to lay out the reasons why abandoning our involvement now would entail serious domestic-political and geostrategic risks.
On the domestic-politics front, Trump would pay a steep political price if, after withdrawing military support from Ukraine and ceasing diplomacy, the Russian military proceeded to overrun the country. As Trump knows, President Joe Biden’s poll numbers never recovered from the botched Afghanistan withdrawal. The grim spectacle of Moscow gobbling up a former Soviet republic thanks to American retreat would likely play even worse.
Moreover, Trump promised on the campaign trail to resolve the Russia-Ukraine war “within 24 hours” of winning the election. If, instead, he enables a Russian triumph within months of reentering the White House, the media would flail him, and the conservative political establishment could turn on him.
As for the geostrategic risks, they are in large part a problem of America’s own making. Its decades-long mishandling of the relationship with Moscow made more likely a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine. In my view, wiser U.S. policy might have not only averted the invasion, but led to a harmonious Global North, with North America, Europe, and Russia integrated in a stable security order.
But that didn’t happen.
Instead, Washington dismissed Moscow’s legitimate concerns about NATO expansion and strategic instability, and the Kremlin took a revanchist turn. While normal security interests motivated Putin’s decision to invade, the Russian leader had also developed extravagant historical views that deny Ukraine’s status as an independent cultural entity.
Over the course of the war, Russia has boosted its defense-industrial capacity, reversing its strategic decline relative to the West. At the same time, the antipathy of Russian elites toward the West has been inflamed to alarming levels. This is a disconcerting combination of factors.
Worse, Moscow’s military appetite seems to have grown with the eating, with high-profile politicians, intellectuals, and media figures increasingly describing the Baltic states and other eastern European countries as part of Russia’s sphere of influence, if not part of its rightful territory. Given Russia’s difficulties in conquering Ukraine, we shouldn’t exaggerate its capabilities—but we also shouldn’t discount the imperial ambitions and anti-Western animosity of Russian hardliners, nor their rising influence throughout the Ukraine war.
Russian–Western tensions are more likely to ease if the war ends in negotiations that address the concerns of all parties, rather than in a Ukrainian capitulation that leaves the West humiliated and Moscow emboldened. And the war is more likely to end that way if Trump, whom Putin respects, sustains America’s involvement. With Putin signaling a moderation of demands ahead of this week’s proposed talks, now is no time to give up on negotiations and withdraw U.S. military support that Ukraine desperately needs.
Rather, Trump should stay the course, continuing to use carrots and sticks to keep the two sides talking, while mostly avoiding actions and (until this week) rhetoric that needlessly alienate Moscow. Kiev has, for the most part, lately been going along with Trump’s peace efforts, thanks to his threats to cut off security assistance. But with U.S. military stocks depleting and the Russian economy resilient amid Western sanctions, Trump has smaller sticks to use against Putin.
Fortunately, by putting on the table a broader rapprochement and economic partnership with Washington, Trump has dangled a big carrot in front of Putin’s nose, which may yet distract from the scent of looming military triumph. Based on my own conversations with Russian diplomats and academics, I know to a virtual certainty that Moscow finds the carrot enticing.
To increase the odds that the carrot will help lead Russia to peace, Trump should make absolutely clear that concrete steps toward rapprochement can only happen after the war ends in a negotiated settlement.
As for the sticks, foreign policy experts assess that the U.S. still possesses some capacity to keep Ukraine in the fight. Trump can and should exercise his “drawdown authority” to quickly transfer billions of dollars in security assistance, thus continuing that feature of the diplomatic strategy. But he should calibrate the aid to bolster Ukraine’s defense, not to empower Kiev to try recapturing lost territory or to strike deep inside Russia.
That last point is crucial, especially following the German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s remarks this week backing Ukrainian long-range strikes with Western-supplied weapons. Last year, after the Biden administration authorized Ukraine to strike inside Russia with U.S. weapons, Moscow revised its nuclear doctrine, lowering the threshold for nuclear use and declaring that such strikes constitute a joint attack on the Russian Federation. Since Ukraine cannot use Western-supplied long-range missiles without targeting assistance from NATO, Russia’s view on the matter is valid.
To manage nuclear risks and maintain constructive relations with Putin, Trump should prohibit Ukrainian strikes inside Russian territory with U.S.-supplied weapons. At the same time, he should make clear to Putin—as he promised to do on the campaign trail—that the U.S. will continue underwriting Ukraine’s defense until Moscow makes peace.
Trump’s diplomatic efforts have brought the Russia–Ukraine war nearer a resolution. The process has taken longer than the president had hoped, but sustaining those efforts is his best chance to avoid political calamity, end a terrible war, and begin the hard work of repairing Russian–Western relations.
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