Trump dropped the carrot and turned the stick on Putin in the Ukraine debate

A week ago I realized it was Groundhog Day, or as the Russians call it, Diane Surka.

Amid US threats to pressure Moscow – by supplying Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine – Vladimir Putin and President Donald Trump held a telephone call. Result: US-Russia summit announced in Budapest.

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

already seen.

But Groundhog Day seems to be over.

The Alaska meeting proceeded with minimal preparation and little result.

But the Budapest summit is closed. There was hardly any time to be “on”, to be fair. Now President Trump has canceled it.

“We didn’t think we were going to get to where we wanted to go,” the US president told reporters.

And that’s not all.

In the past, Trump has not followed through on threats to put more pressure on Russia, preferring carrots in dealings with the Kremlin.

For now, he has dropped his carrots.

Instead it has imposed sanctions on the two largest Russian oil companies, Rosneft and Lukoil.

It is therefore unlikely to force a U-turn from President Putin. But it is a sign of Trump’s frustration with the Kremlin’s reluctance to make any compromises or concessions to end the fighting in Ukraine.

Russians do not take kindly to sticks.

Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev wrote on social media, “The USA is our enemy and their vocal ‘peacemaker’ is now fully on the path to war with Russia. “The decisions taken are an act of war against Russia.”

Thursday morning’s edition of the tabloid Moskovsky Komsomolets was a little less dramatic, but distinctly indifferent. The paper criticized “the capriciousness and fickleness of (Russia’s) main negotiating partner”.

So what has changed?

Instead of going for Summit No. 2, as he had done for Summit No. 1, this time President Trump was a little more cautious.

He asked Secretary of State Marco Rubio to lay the groundwork for a summit with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov; To be sure there is a point in decamping to Budapest.

It soon became clear that there was no, and now was, no chance of a new summit succeeding.

Russia strongly opposes Donald Trump’s idea to freeze the current battle lines in Ukraine.

The Kremlin is determined to control the entire Donbass region in eastern Ukraine. Much of it has been captured and occupied.

But President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has refused to hand over the parts of Donbass that Ukraine still controls to Russia.

Moscow would have welcomed a second US-Russia summit.

The first, 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.

Over the past week, Russian state media has been entertaining the idea of ​​a summit with President Trump in Europe, but without the European Union at the table. Russian commentators portrayed the proposed meeting in Budapest as a slap in the face to Brussels.

At the same time, few here believed that, even if it went ahead, the Budapest summit would produce the results Moscow wanted.

Some Russian newspapers are calling for Russian troops to continue fighting.

“There is no reason why Moscow should agree to a cease-fire,” Moskovsky Komsomolets declared yesterday.

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

It does. But only on his terms. And right now they are unacceptable to Kyiv and Washington.

Those terms include more than just territory. Moscow is demanding that what it calls the “root causes” of the Ukraine war be addressed: a catch-all phrase by which Russia expands its demands to halt NATO expansion eastward.

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

Is Donald Trump ready to increase pressure on Russia?

possibly.

But it’s also possible that we’ll wake up one morning and return to Groundhog Day.

After the Budapest summit was announced, Moskovsky Komsomolets wrote, “Russia is again at the forefront of the Trump tug-of-war game.”

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