Trumps’ New Position on Ukraine Conflict, ignores solution
In what seems to be a change of heart, President Trump seems to have changed his mind about joining a European initiative to impose new sanctions on Russia, apparently wanting to proceed with commercial agreements with the country.
President Trump has been warning for months that he would just leave the difficult discussions for a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine.
That’s exactly what the American president seems to be doing after speaking with Russian President Vladimir V. Putin over the phone on Monday. The more pressing issue is whether he is also giving up on the United States’ three-year endeavor to back Ukraine, a fledging democracy that he has often accused of being unjustly attacked.
Just days after claiming that only he and Mr. Putin had the authority to negotiate a deal, Mr. Trump informed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and other European leaders during their conversation with Mr. Putin that Russia and Ukraine will have to resolve the war on their own. Six officials familiar with the conversation said that he also retreated from his own warnings in order to participate in a European pressure effort that would impose further penalties on Russia. They described a private conversation in detail while maintaining anonymity.
Their account explains why Mr. Trump gave up on a peace process that he had earlier said he would settle in 24 hours. Furthermore, Monday’s events gave Mr. Putin precisely what he sought—not just the cessation of American pressure, but also the establishment of division caused within the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, between the Americans and their European ally, who claim they will proceed with sanctions regardless.
The resignation of the American ambassador in Kyiv, followed by Mr. Trump’s heated televised meeting with Mr. Zelensky in the Oval Office, led many to predict Mr. Trump’s choice.
“The policy of the Trump administration has been to put pressure on the victim, Ukraine, instead of the aggressor, Russia,” former Foreign Service official Bridget A. Brink said after leaving Kyiv last month. “Peace with price is not peace at all — it is appeasement.”
However, Mr. Trump learned that, despite his attempts, he could not obtain peace at any cost since Mr. Putin rebuffed him. A ceasefire was insufficient even after Pete Hegseth, Trump’s defense secretary, said that Ukraine would never join NATO and should give up trying to retake all the land that Russia had seized—two of Putin’s demands.
Naturally, Mr. Trump often employs financial pressure, frequently using tariffs and sanctions as a weapon against friends and enemies alike. However, a White House spokeswoman told The New York Times that this was not the case. According to the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the president’s private calls, further sanctions against Russia would limit commercial prospects, and the president is committed to optimizing economic prospects for Americans.
In response to critics, American officials, such as Secretary of State Marco Rubio, have emphasized that intelligence sharing with Ukraine and the current sanctions against Russia, which were mostly imposed after the 2022 invasion, are still in effect.
Vladimir Putin knew he had the same set of sanctions that he’s always had since the beginning of the conflict,” Mr. Rubio told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday, however Ukraine was still receiving weapons from UD and its allies.
According to Rubio, “Trump is trying to end a bloody, costly war that none side can win.”
However, the underlying message of Mr. Trump’s conversation with the Europeans and Mr. Zelensky is that the days of America spending diplomatic effort, providing Ukraine with new weapons, and imposing economic sanctions against Russia are quickly coming to an end. According to several European authorities, the call gave them the impression that the United States will not be joining them anytime soon in increasing the financial pressure on Mr. Putin.
That constitutes a reversal for Mr. Trump. He has sporadically threatened tariffs and sanctions against Russia on social media in recent months if it does not agree to join Ukraine in announcing an unconditional, 30-day cease-fire.
In a Truth Social post on May 8, following a phone discussion with Mr. Zelensky, he wrote, “If the ceasefire is not respected, the U.S. and its partners will impose additional sanctions.” He reaffirmed that position ten days ago in a phone conversation with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron, and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, when they visited Kyiv and gave Mr. Putin a deadline to sign the ceasefire agreement.
However, those commitments vanished after Mr. Trump’s phone conversation with Mr. Putin on Monday. The American president declined to follow up on that threat, both in public and in his conversation with the European leaders.
In his public remarks, Mr. Trump implied that his conversation with Mr. Putin had produced something of a breakthrough. However, the Ukrainians and Europeans soon realized that the Russian leader had not given Mr. Trump any concessions other than negotiation. Even though Russia is now doing it halfheartedly, it sent a junior team to Istanbul last week to speak with the Ukrainians.
During the campaign, Mr. Trump famously pledged to establish peace between Russia and Ukraine in 24 hours, portraying it as a simple task for a skilled negotiator. Since then, he has realized that it is far harder than he had thought, and he now claims that when he proposed that timeline, he was “a little bit sarcastic.”
In public, Mr. Trump has considered abandoning the negotiations out of annoyance with the slow pace and Mr. Putin’s obstinacy. Furthermore, in his tweet on Monday, he made it obvious that he was looking forward to ending the talks with the United States and concentrating on striking commercial agreements with Russia.
“The terms to conclude the war will be negotiated between the two parties, as it can only be, because they know details of a negotiation that nobody else would be aware of,” Mr. Trump wrote.
Next, he turned to what some European leaders think is his true objective: bringing Washington and Moscow closer.
“When this horrific ‘bloodbath’ is over, Russia wants to engage in big business with the United States, and I concur,” Trump said. “There is a tremendous opportunity for Russia to create massive amounts of jobs and wealth.” It has UNLIMITED possibilities.”
The appearance of normalization is unknown. Mr. Trump withdrew from a number of significant arms control agreements with Russia during his first tenure, and the final one, New START, which restricts the quantity of intercontinental nuclear weapons that either party may deploy, will expire in February. There are currently no negotiations for a replacement.
However, among other possible investment domains, Mr. Trump has been keen to assist American businesses in profiting from Russia’s energy industry and rare earth minerals. Thus far, Mr. Trump and his national security staff have maintained that none of these agreements may take place until a peace agreement between Ukraine and Russia.
According to individuals informed about their phone conversations on Monday and earlier this year, Mr. Putin seems to have grasped Mr. Trump’s passion for trade and has focused many of their talks around the possibility of an economic partnership. Consequently, Europe is now heading toward new sanctions, while the United States seems ready to go in the other way, hoping to move beyond Ukraine and foster a more comprehensive connection with Russia.
This is precisely the sort of split inside NATO that Putin has been trying to establish and take advantage of for the last 20 years.
In response to Russian drone attacks on Ukrainian cities, Britain announced a new round of sanctions on Russia’s military, energy, and financial industries on Tuesday.
“Putin’s latest strikes once again reveal his true colors as a warmonger,” British Foreign Secretary David Lammy stated in a statement. He pleaded with Mr. Putin to immediately accept “a full, unconditional cease-fire so there can be talks on a just and lasting peace.”
The British government’s news release announcing the new sanctions made no mention of the United States. Instead, it stated that the European Union was getting ready to “announce its 17th package of sanctions against Russia, in a coordinated effort to secure a just and lasting peace in Ukraine.”
According to a senior European official who has participated in the secret talks, Mr. Trump never appeared committed to imposing sanctions on Russia if it refused to accept the unconditional cease-fire. According to the official, his threats seemed mostly performative, and the United States was not involved in the development of significant new sanctions.
The upcoming Group of 7 summit in Canada in mid-June and the NATO summit in The Hague a week later will likely be the focus of the disagreement between the Americans and the Europeans over support for Ukraine. In particular, the second summit will address the long-term support for Ukraine as well as actions to restrict Russian forces from attacking a weaker member of the Atlantic alliance—and to see if Mr. Trump would intervene to help that member under the NATO treaty.
