Trump abandons carrot and wields stick over Putin in Ukraine talks

A week ago I had the feeling that today was Groundhog Day, or as the Russians call it. Dyen Surka.

Amid US threats to pressure Moscow by supplying Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine, Vladimir Putin and President Donald Trump had a phone call. Result: Announcement of the US-Russia summit in Budapest.

Last August, amid the threat of additional US sanctions against Russia, Putin met with Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff. Result: Announcement of a US-Russia summit in Alaska.

Déjà vu.

But Groundhog Day appears to be over.

The Alaska meeting proceeded with minimal preparation and little result.

However, the Budapest summit was cancelled. To be fair, he barely had time to be “on.” Now President Trump has canceled it.

“I didn’t feel like we were going to get where we needed to get,” the US president told reporters.

And that’s not all.

Previously, Trump did not follow through on his threat to put more pressure on Russia and preferred carrots rather than sticks in his relations with the Kremlin.

He put his carrots aside for now.

Instead, it imposed sanctions on two major Russian oil companies, Rosneft and Lukoil.

This is unlikely to force President Putin to make a U-turn on the war. But it is a sign of Trump’s frustration with the Kremlin’s unwillingness to make any compromises or concessions to end the war in Ukraine.

Russians are not very fond of sticks.

On Thursday, President Putin told reporters that new US sanctions were an “unfriendly act” and an attempt to pressure Russia.

“But no self-respecting country and no self-respecting person decides anything under pressure.”

Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev was less diplomatic.

“The USA is our enemy and their loud-mouthed ‘peacemaker’ is now fully on the warpath with Russia,” he wrote on social media. “The decisions taken are an act of war against Russia.”

Thursday morning’s edition of tabloid Moskovsky Komsomolets was a little less dramatic, but frankly not very pleasant. The newspaper criticized his “capriciousness and indecision”. [Russia’s] “Main negotiating partner.”

So what changed?

Instead of rushing to get to the top of no. As he did during summit No. 2, President Trump was a little more cautious this time around.

He had asked Secretary of State Marco Rubio to lay the groundwork for a summit with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to make sure there was point in fleeing to Budapest.

It soon became clear that this was not the case and that a new summit was now unlikely to produce any progress.

Russia strongly opposes Donald Trump’s idea of ​​freezing the current battle lines in Ukraine.

The Kremlin is determined to gain control of at least the entire Donbas region in eastern Ukraine. He captured and occupied most of it.

But President Volodymyr Zelensky refuses to cede to Russia the parts of Donbas that Ukraine still controls.

Moscow would welcome a second US-Russia summit.

The first coup in Alaska was a diplomatic and political coup for the Kremlin. President Putin’s red carpet welcome in Anchorage symbolized Russia’s return to the international stage and the West’s failure to isolate Moscow.

For the past week, Russian state media has been entertaining the idea of ​​a summit in Europe with President Trump where the European Union is not on the table. Russian commentators interpreted the meeting planned to be held in Budapest as a slap in the face of Brussels.

At the same time, few here seemed to believe that the Budapest summit, even if it did take place, would produce the kind of outcome Moscow wanted.

Some Russian newspapers are calling for the Russian army to continue fighting.

“There is no single reason for Moscow to accept the ceasefire,” Moskovsky Komsomolets said yesterday.

This does not mean that the Kremlin does not want peace.

Like that. But only on his own terms. And right now these are unacceptable to Kiev and, apparently, Washington.

These terms include more than region. Moscow is demanding that what it calls the “root causes” of the Ukraine war be addressed: a catch-all phrase in which Russia has broadened its demands to include a halt to NATO’s eastward expansion.

Moscow is also widely believed to pursue its goal of bringing Ukraine back into Russia’s orbit.

Is Donald Trump ready to further increase pressure on Russia?

Probably.

However, it is also possible to wake up one morning and find ourselves in Groundhog Day.

After the announcement of the Budapest summit, Moskovsky Komsomolets wrote, “Russia is ahead again in Trump’s tug-of-war.”

“A few weeks before the meeting in Budapest, Trump will be pulled in the opposite direction with phone calls and visits from Europe. Then Putin will pull him back to our side.”