Vladimir Putin bets Trump delivers on Ukraine while priming for more war
Bloomberg |
Apr 03, 2025 06:14 PM IST
The Kremlin is unconcerned by Trump’s threat to slap punitive secondary sanctions on Russian oil over the lack of progress toward a ceasefire.
Russia is still counting on US President Donald Trump to deliver an acceptable peace deal in Ukraine, though it’s prepared to continue the war if talks fail, according to people in Moscow familiar with the matter.
Russian President Vladimir Putin meets with Head of the Republic of Buryatia Alexei Tsydenov at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, Wednesday, April 2, 2025.(AP)
Russian President Vladimir Putin meets with Head of the Republic of Buryatia Alexei Tsydenov at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, Wednesday, April 2, 2025.(AP)
The Kremlin is unconcerned by Trump’s threat to slap punitive secondary sanctions on Russian oil over the lack of progress toward a ceasefire, the people said. Still, President Vladimir Putin realizes that Trump represents his best chance of bringing the war to an end and wants to continue diplomacy, they said, asking not to be identified discussing internal policy.
Having promised to achieve a rapid end to Europe’s worst conflict since World War II, Trump declared he was “pissed off” with Putin over the weekend as his frustration boiled over at the pace of negotiations. He later dialed back the criticism and said he believed the Russian leader will “fulfill his part of the deal.”
Russia would “prefer to continue certain mutual efforts to search for a settlement,” which requires time and effort to achieve, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, in response to a request for comment. “Everyone would prefer not to fight, but to talk, and not only to talk but to be heard, this is what we have with the current American administration.”
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Putin’s economic envoy, Kirill Dmitriev, who is sanctioned by the US, said Thursday that he’s holding meetings in Washington with administration officials. “Opponents of rapprochement are afraid that Russia and the US will find common ground, begin to understand each other better, and build cooperation, both in international affairs and in the economy,” he said.
The Kremlin is holding out for more US concessions, including some sanctions relief and a suspension of arms deliveries to Ukraine. When talks with the US last month in Saudi Arabia yielded a deal for a moratorium on attacks against Black Sea shipping, Russia announced it was making the accord conditional on getting one of its largest state banks reconnected to the SWIFT international messaging system.
Trump aides including his special envoy Steve Witkoff had voiced optimism about progress in negotiations with Russia. The White House’s aim was for a truce agreement by April 20, a goal that now seems unlikely, and talk of a possible summit soon between Trump and Putin has faded recently.
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Russia announced it was conscripting 160,000 men for the spring draft on Monday, the largest such military intake in 14 years, though the Defense Ministry said they wouldn’t be sent to the war zone in Ukraine. That’s as Russia traded accusations with Ukraine over breaches of a pause in attacks on energy infrastructure that both sides agreed on with Trump.
While Putin has said he wants a deal with Trump, he has also repeatedly insisted that it must resolve what he’s defined as the root causes of the war. He has said Kyiv must abandon its goal of joining the NATO defense alliance and accept restrictions on the size of its military, while also calling for any settlement to reflect the “realities on the ground” of Russian occupation of eastern and southern Ukrainian territory since the February 2022 invasion.
Ukraine and its European allies — as well as the US under President Joe Biden’s administration — accuse Russia of trying to subjugate its neighbor.
While Trump has already conceded many of Russia’s demands, agreeing to all of Putin’s terms would risk opening the US president up to charges of weakness. Still, he made an end to the war one of his major campaign promises.
Russia has dangled the prospect of major business cooperation with the US, including in the Arctic and on rare earth deposits, as part of a revival of relations. Trump is also pushing Ukraine to accept an economic partnership deal that would give the US control of future investment in the country’s infrastructure and natural resources.
Russia was among a few countries excluded from Trump’s announcement of tariffs on Wednesday, though Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent later told Fox News that was because sanctions had severed trade ties. The US imposed a 10% tariff on Ukraine.
“The Kremlin hopes it can secure a one-on-one meeting between Putin and Trump in which they hammer out a deal that stops the war in Ukraine for now — just as Trump wants — in exchange for provisions that leave Ukraine permanently weakened,” Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, wrote in an opinion piece with fellow experts at the organization. At the same time, Moscow “was prepared to keep fighting before Trump won, and it remains so today,” he said.
While Russia’s inching forward on the battlefield and has an advantage in manpower and arms over Ukraine, western analysts say it has incurred massive casualties of more than 1,000 soldiers a day.
A group of 50 Republican and Democratic senators this week introduced a sanctions package that would impose a 500% tariff on countries that buy Russian oil, petroleum products, natural gas or uranium if Putin refuses to engage in good-faith ceasefire negotiations with Ukraine or breaches an eventual agreement.
Russia has weathered three years of sanctions and won’t yield to threats now as the new measures won’t be any more effective, people familiar with Kremlin thinking insist.
“These sanctions will not affect Russia as much as they will affect other countries, those who need our oil and gas,” Anatoly Aksakov, the head of the State Duma’s financial market committee, said in a phone interview. “These are China, East Asia, Asia, developing economies.”
Vladimir Putin
Ukraine
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