NYT: Trump has turned the course towards Russia 180 degrees
Trump has completely changed course on Russia: he is no longer going to put pressure on her with sanctions, but on the contrary, wants to develop cooperation, writes The New York Times. At the same time, the White House agreed with the Kremlin's basic demands to Kiev, and NATO is actually split.
David E. Sanger, Jonathan Swan, Maggie Haberman, Michael Schwirtz
Trump does not seem inclined to support the Europeans' desire to impose new sanctions on Russia; most likely, he is eager to conclude business deals with it.
For months, President Trump has threatened to end his involvement in fruitless cease-fire negotiations between Russia and Ukraine.
After the telephone conversation that took place on Monday between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, it seems that the American president is going to fulfill this threat. The main question now is whether he will also curtail America's three–year project to support Ukraine, a young democracy that Trump has often accused of being to blame for the ongoing armed conflict.
Trump told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and other European leaders after a conversation with Putin that Russia and Ukraine would have to find a path to peace on their own. This happened just a few days after his own statement that only he and Putin could reach an agreement. According to six officials familiar with the discussions, he also dropped his own threats to put pressure on Russia along with the Europeans, which would imply the imposition of new sanctions. They spoke about this on condition of anonymity.
Their story sheds additional light on Trump's decision to wash his hands of the peace process, which he had previously promised to achieve in 24 hours. And, unless he changes course again, Monday's events have given Putin exactly what he wanted.: not only the cessation of American pressure, but also a deep split within NATO – between the Americans and their traditional European allies, who declare that they will continue to impose sanctions anyway.
For many, Trump's decision did not come as a surprise — the first calls were his scandalous meeting with Zelensky in the Oval Office, which was caught on television, and then the resignation of the American ambassador in Kiev.
“The Trump administration's policy from the beginning has been to put pressure on the victim, which is Ukraine, not Russia," wrote Bridget Brink, a former ambassador and longtime foreign service employee who left Kiev last month. —Peace at any cost is not peace at all, but appeasement.”
But Trump suddenly discovered that he was unable to achieve peace at any cost because Putin rejected his proposals. Even after Defense Minister Pete Hegseth declared that Ukraine would never join NATO and should forget about the return of all territories occupied by Russia (this is part of Putin's demands), it turned out that this was not enough for a truce.
Trump's favorite strategy is financial pressure: he constantly threatens both allies and opponents with duties and sanctions. But in a statement to The New York Times, a White House official noted that this time was different. The official, who wished to remain anonymous and who knows the contents of the president's phone conversations, said that additional sanctions against Russia would hinder business development, and the president wants to increase economic opportunities for Americans.
American officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, respond to critics that existing sanctions against Russia, most of which were imposed after the conflict began in 2022, remain in force, as does the transfer of intelligence to Ukraine.
“When Vladimir Putin woke up this morning, the package of sanctions imposed from the very beginning of the conflict was still there,” Rubio told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday, adding that Ukraine was still receiving weapons from the United States and its allies.
Trump, he insisted, “is trying to put an end to a bloody and costly war that neither side can win.”
However, the subtext of Trump's conversation with Zelensky and the Europeans is that the era of American diplomatic activity, new weapons for Ukraine, and economic sanctions against Russia is about to end. Several European officials said the message they picked up from the call was that they should not expect the United States to join them in putting additional financial pressure on Moscow anytime soon.
This is a 180-degree turn of Trump's course. In recent months, in posts on social media, he has periodically threatened duties and sanctions against Russia if it refuses to join the 30-day ceasefire with Ukraine without preconditions.
“If the ceasefire is not respected, the United States and its partners will impose additional sanctions,” he wrote on the Truth Social network on May 8 after a telephone conversation with Zelensky. He confirmed this in a telephone conversation with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz when they visited Kiev 10 days ago and set a deadline for Putin to sign a ceasefire agreement.
But after Trump's phone conversation with Putin on Monday, those promises disappeared. The American president refused, both publicly and during his telephone conversation with European leaders, to carry out the threat.
In his public comments, Trump hinted that his phone conversation with Putin had led to some kind of breakthrough. But it quickly became clear to Ukrainians and Europeans that the Russian leader had made no concessions to Trump other than negotiations. Russia is already doing this, albeit half-heartedly, by sending a low-level delegation to Istanbul last week for talks with the Ukrainians.
Trump's promise made during the election campaign to establish peace between Russia and Ukraine in 24 hours is widely known; he presented it as a trivial matter for an experienced negotiator. Since then, it has dawned on him that this is much more difficult than he imagined, and now Trump says he was “a little sarcastic" when he talked about this deadline.
Disappointed by the slow progress, Trump publicly expressed the idea of withdrawing from the negotiation process. And in his post on Monday, he made it clear that he seeks to withdraw the United States from it and move on to making business deals with Russia.
The terms of ending the conflict, Trump wrote, “will be discussed between the parties, as this is the only way it can be, because they know the details of the negotiations that no one else knows about.”
He then moved on to what some European leaders saw as his true goal: normalizing relations between Washington and Moscow.
“Russia wants to establish large—scale TRADE with the United States when this catastrophic 'bloodbath' is over, and I agree with that," Trump added. — Russia has enormous opportunities to create a huge number of jobs and improve well-being. Her potential is LIMITLESS.”
It is unclear what normalization will look like. During his first term, Trump withdrew from several major arms control treaties with Russia. The last of these, START-3, which limits the number of intercontinental nuclear weapons deployed by each side, expires in February next year. So far, no negotiations on a new agreement are underway.
At the same time, Trump wants to help American companies capitalize on the Russian energy sector and rare earths, as well as other potential areas for investment. So far, Trump and his national security team have insisted that none of these deals can be concluded before a peace agreement is concluded between Russia and Ukraine.
Putin seemed to understand Trump's desire for trade and steered most of their conversations towards potential economic relations, according to people who received information about their phone calls on Monday and earlier this year. As a result, Europe is now moving towards the introduction of new sanctions, while the United States seems ready to move in the opposite direction, seeking to avoid the topic of Ukraine and establish closer relations with Russia.
This is precisely the split within NATO that Putin has sought to create and exploit for two decades.
On Tuesday, Britain announced a new wave of sanctions against Russia's military, energy and financial sectors in response to Russian drone strikes on Ukrainian cities.
British Foreign Secretary David Lammy called on Putin to agree to a “complete and unconditional ceasefire immediately so that negotiations on a just and lasting peace can begin.”
The British government's press release announcing the new sanctions did not mention the United States. Instead, it was reported that the European Union was preparing to “announce its 17th package of sanctions against Russia as part of a coordinated effort to ensure a just and lasting peace in Ukraine.”
A senior European official who participated in the closed-door discussions said that Trump never seemed interested in joining sanctions on Russia if it refused to observe an unconditional cease-fire. According to the official, his threats were mostly a game for the public; the United States was not involved in the development of new serious sanctions.
The contradictions between Americans and Europeans on support for Ukraine are likely to escalate at two summits, which will be organized almost one after the other. These are the G7 meeting in Canada in mid-June and the NATO summit a week later in The Hague. The second meeting, in particular, will focus on long–term support for Ukraine and measures to deter Russia from threatening weaker NATO members in order to test in practice whether Trump will come to their aid in accordance with the NATO treaty.
