Trump talks tough with Putin on ending Ukraine war

President Trump is turning up the heat on Russian President Vladimir Putin in his first days in power, seeking to pressure Russia’s leader to come to the negotiating table for a deal to end the war in Ukraine.

A little more than 48 hours since returning to the White House, Trump said Putin is “destroying his country” with the nearly three-year war against Kyiv and threatened increased sanctions on Russia and its enablers if a deal is not quickly reached.

He has qualified his threats with flattery, saying that he loves the Russian people and has “always had a very good relationship with President Putin.”

“I’m not looking to hurt Russia,” Trump posted on his social media site Truth Social on Wednesday. “I’m going to do Russia, whose Economy is failing, and President Putin, a very big FAVOR. Settle now, and STOP this ridiculous War! IT’S ONLY GOING TO GET WORSE.”

The posts are an opening salvo in Trump’s efforts to show that his “peace through strength” policy can end Europe’s biggest land war in almost a century.

The president has seen some early diplomatic successes in the Middle East. He dispatched his special envoy for the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, to pressure Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to accept a ceasefire and hostage release deal with Hamas in the last week of the Biden administration.

But the president has said that resolving Russia’s war in Ukraine is a harder challenge compared to the Middle East.

Former President Biden’s team did a lot of heavy lifting over a year of negotiations to the final ceasefire text between Israel and Hamas. When Trump stepped in, he deployed political capital built up during his first term with Israel and regional partners.

But Russia’s war in Ukraine is a different beast.

Russia’s full-scale invasion against Ukraine in February 2022 marked a shocking violation of the post-World War II order, with Moscow seeking to change the borders of a sovereign country by force.

Ukraine succeeded in preserving its country — repelling Russian forces surrounding Kyiv in those first few, fraught days — but has failed to expel Russia from about 20 percent of Ukrainian territory in the east of the country. This is on top of territory Russia invaded and annexed in 2014, the administrative regions of Luhansk, Donetsk and the Crimean peninsula.

Three years into the war, Ukrainian forces are struggling to replenish their troops, and the population is suffering under almost daily attacks on civilian areas and energy infrastructure — an attempt to freeze the country during the winter. And Russian forces are allegedly carrying out targeted drone attacks against civilians in front-line cities.

Ukrainian public opinion is increasingly open to negotiating an end to the war as soon as possible. And Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said he’s optimistic Trump’s decisiveness could shift the dynamics of the war.

“He can be decisive in this war. He is capable of stopping Putin or, to put it more fairly, help us stop Putin. He is able to do this,” Zelensky said.

Trump, in remarks from the Oval Office on Monday, said he viewed Zelensky as wanting to make a deal.

“I don't know if Putin does, he might not, I don't know. He should make a deal,” Trump said.

But Russia and Ukraine are not the only players. International coalitions are entrenched on either side of the fray, with a number of countries straddling the line.

If Trump wants to exercise leverage on Russia, he’ll need unity with Europe, said Sam Greene, director for democratic resilience at the Center for European Policy Analysis, a think tank based in Washington, D.C.

That could prove difficult if he fulfills his promise to impose hefty tariffs on the continent.

“I think the reality is that Trump does not have — the U.S. in general does not have — tremendous leverage over either of the parties in this conflict,” Greene said.

“It’s not beyond the realm of possibility where Trump, Waltz and Rubio — and whoever is going to be important when it comes to foreign policy — sit down and map out all of the overlapping and interlocking interests and start to prioritize,” he added, referring to national security adviser Mike Waltz and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

“We’re not there yet. Until we get there, I think it's foolish that the Russians are going to feel like they’re under much pressure from Washington.”

Zelensky chastised Europe during a speech at the World Economic Forum on Tuesday as failing to harness its power.

“Will President Trump listen to Europe or will he negotiate with Russia and China without Europe?” he asked in a blunt warning. “Europe needs to learn how to fully take care of itself so that the world can’t afford to ignore it.”

Putin may be bruised by the war, but he is not beaten down. The Russian leader has used domestic military production to buoy the economy and relied on a network of countries to circumvent international sanctions — from global powers like China and India to international pariahs like Iran and North Korea.

Chinese President Xi Jinping is Putin’s most important ally in the war, with the two declaring a “no limit partnership” in February 2022, shortly before Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, and a “new era” to their partnership in May. Both Putin and Xi view the U.S. and democracies as a threat to the survival of their authoritarian regimes.

In a call between Putin and Xi on Monday, the two discussed deepening bilateral ties, while Putin said he was ready for dialogue with the U.S. related to Ukraine.

Greene said Putin can likely sell a deal to Russia’s public but would still find it hard to agree to halt the war.

“Putin can find a way to raise the mission accomplished banner even if he doesn’t control all of Ukraine or all of the territory that the Russian government has claimed. But what Russia will struggle to do is to pivot away from conflict and confrontation with the West,” Greene said.

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