Putin Placates Trump, But Dodges a Peace Deal
President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin held an extended phone call today to discuss the war in Ukraine, which the U.S. president has touted as a major step toward kicking off peace talks in the devastating conflict.
However, statements from both the Kremlin and the White House indicate only a limited agreement was reached – while Putin has shifted the onus for further progress onto Ukraine, demanding that Kyiv stop mobilizing and arming its soldiers before Moscow will agree to a broader ceasefire.
“My phone conversation today with President Putin of Russia was a very good and productive one,” Trump wrote in a social media post. “This war would never have started if I were president!”
While no full transcript of the call has been made public, the White House released a brief read-out with carefully curated details.
“The leaders agreed that the movement to peace would begin with an energy and infrastructure ceasefire,” the White House read-out said. “The two leaders agreed that a future with an improved bilateral relationship between the United States and Russia has huge upside.”
In its version, the Kremlin noted that it had agreed to a 30-day ceasefire on energy targets, but emphasized that it wanted a full halt to all foreign military and intelligence assistance to Ukraine as a precondition for ending the conflict.
The tenor of the discussion between the two leaders described in the read-outs accords with the analysis of several experts, who see Putin’s intentions as placating the American president, while staving off meaningful progress toward a ceasefire as Russian forces advance on the battlefield.
“Today’s Putin-Trump conversation will be about Russia-U.S. relations and what they each think they can extort from Kyiv, not peace in Ukraine,” Prof. Ruth Deyermond, a senior lecturer at King’s College London’s Department of War Studies who specializes in U.S.-Russia relations, observed ahead of the call.
