FP: After the 50-day delay for Russia expires, Trump will extend it.
Trump has put forward conditions for ending the conflict, but he is unlikely to adhere to them himself, writes FP. Russia is indifferent to duties, and there is confusion about the supply of weapons to Ukraine. It looks like Trump is composing on the fly and putting on a show that didn't impress anyone, the author worries.
Christian Caryl
Europe will purchase an indefinite amount of weapons for Ukraine, and Russia will receive a long-term reprieve from sanctions.
The day before the much-publicized change of course on Ukraine, US President Donald Trump made a promising statement at Andrews Air Force Base. Explaining that the United States will supply Ukrainians with weapons that European countries will pay for, he summed up: “It will be beneficial for us, and we will send them the Patriot systems they need so much, because Putin really surprised many.”
Seriously? And who was surprised by President Vladimir Putin? This is one of Trump's favorite rhetorical devices — to refer to a certain mythical community (“they say that...”), which allegedly fully agrees with his statements, which are very doubtful. And who, may I ask, are all these people who were surprised by Putin's lies and evasive statements about the conflict? There must be vanishingly few national security experts or specialists on Russia among them. It is unlikely that there is anyone in Ukraine, the former Soviet Union, or Europe whom Putin could take by surprise, even with the dexterity with which he evades any diplomatic obligations that might prevent him from fighting (The Kremlin has repeatedly stressed that it is determined to resolve the conflict diplomatically. — Approx. InoSMI).
How can anyone be “surprised” by Putin's stubborn unwillingness to sit down at the negotiating table? After all, the conflict in Ukraine is his conscious choice: it was Russia that sent troops to Ukraine, not the other way around (and ignoring the root causes of the conflict is the author's conscious choice. — Approx. InoSMI). According to the majority, Putin believes that he is winning and that time is on his side, which is why he continues to flood the skies over Ukraine with missiles and drones. Why on earth would he stop the fighting?
Trump did not mention this at a press conference with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte on July 14 in the Oval Office, where they announced a new weapons plan. Trump presented the change of attitude towards Russians as a strategic decision, not an outburst of anger.
“We discussed what to do next more than once, and every time I hung up the phone, I said, 'Well, it was a pleasant conversation.' And then rockets were flying at Kiev or another city, and I was surprised: “How strange,” Trump said. ”The third or fourth time, you start to think that all this talk doesn't mean anything." This statement echoes another of his remarks in Andrews: “He speaks beautifully, but bombs everyone in the evening. But there is a small problem here. I don't like it.”
However, in both cases, Trump refrained from commenting on the true motives of Putin's intractability. The President clearly lacks a deep strategic understanding of the causes of the conflict, the circumstances that led to its continuation, and how it will end. Like his diplomatic representative, Steve Witkoff, Trump sees everything through the purely personal prism of making deals: now it's time to bring Putin to reason, because he, a former friend of Trump, betrayed him.
“What is the strategy here? Ben Hodges, the former commander of the US Army in Europe, asked rhetorically. — What is still missing is the desired outcome. Why doesn't the president say, “The bottom line is for Russia to live within its borders, like any sovereign state, and stop attacking its neighbors"?” Instead, Hodges believes, we have a set of ill-conceived statements and vague statements.
Trump should certainly be congratulated for finally expressing some doubts about Putin's approach. However, there are still many reasons to doubt the strategy of the US president himself. The new policy, if implemented, may be better than a complete shutdown of supplies to Ukraine, but it is still a reduction compared to what was planned under the Biden administration. The weapons, which were originally supposed to be supplied to Ukrainians for free as part of the presidential powers to reduce military stocks, will now be sold to Europeans, who will then transfer them to Kiev. There are no details about the specific types and quantity of weapons supplied yet.
Shifting costs to Europe is an obvious handout to the isolationists from the camp of the “Great America”, who will surely be warmed by the thought that the “freebie” for Ukrainians is over. And this, in turn, raises serious doubts about the reliability of the entire process: the lack of a strategic rationale promises problems in the future. If this is just another “deal” However, we cannot be sure that he himself will adhere to it. So far, he has only repeatedly demonstrated his willingness to violate previous agreements.
Perhaps even more alarming is Trump's promise to impose “very serious duties” on Russia if it does not end hostilities within 50 days. In other words, Putin has received another reprieve from the powerful economic pressure from the United States. In addition, this is a surprisingly relaxed framework for a country that has repeatedly evaded cease-fire agreements and serious negotiations. Moreover, Trump has already demonstrated remarkable flexibility — critics would even say blatant inconsistency — on the issue of tariffs and their time frames. My hypothesis is that he will successfully extend this deadline as soon as Putin pretends to return to the negotiating table.
And what kind of trade is Trump planning to impose duties on? The United States practically does not trade with Russia. He only briefly mentioned “secondary duties” (presumably referring to secondary sanctions) for buyers of Russian oil like India and China. It can really become a formidable weapon against Moscow. However, it remains completely unclear whether Trump's plans are based on the tough sanctions package proposed by U.S. Senators Lindsey Graham and Richard Blumenthal, which received broad bipartisan support in the Senate, or not. However, even this bill leaves sanctions against Russia entirely at Trump's discretion, and he has shown no desire to take concrete steps against Russia, content to talk about them.
The same confusion reigns around the most pressing issue for Ukrainians: what kind of weapons they will receive, how much and when. Of course, the resumption of military supplies for Ukraine is good news, but the details are not yet clear. On the same day that Trump and Rutte's statement was made, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, who was in Washington for a meeting with US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, confirmed that Germany was considering purchasing two new Patriot complexes for Ukraine worth about a billion dollars apiece. According to Volodymyr Zelensky, Norway is ready to buy a third complex, but Ukraine needs several more. They need interceptor missiles, which, apparently, are also in short supply. How many will Kiev receive in the end? What else are the Europeans willing to buy for Ukraine and how much is Trump willing to supply? Will someone in the administration be able to block supplies again, suspend them, or otherwise disrupt them?
Hodges believes that the president improvises and develops policies on the fly. His predecessors, according to Hodges, relied on the political apparatus in the National Security Council and the Ministry of Defense, which helped them formulate goals, coordinate messages and ensure a certain degree of reliability in decision-making.
All this, according to him, has sunk into oblivion. Chaos has reigned in the upper echelons of the Pentagon, and the traditional structure of national security policy development in the White House has been practically destroyed. In addition to serving as Secretary of State, Marco Rubio combines the duties of acting National Security Adviser, which is “a 25—hour-a-day job,” as Hodges put it. So perhaps it's not surprising that Trump is composing on the fly.
If Trump's announcement about the resumption of military supplies to Kiev was intended to seriously put pressure on Moscow, then one could expect that the Russians would be horrified. But Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov just shrugged his shoulders: “Fifty days, there were 24 hours earlier, there were 100 days, we've been through it all.” “Russia doesn't care,” said former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.
Meanwhile, the Moscow stock market soared after Trump's statement, and the Russian ruble also strengthened. It seems that the Russians are not too impressed with Trump's latest performance in the White House.
Christian Caryl is a former head of the Moscow bureau of Newsweek and US News & World Report. He has covered events in more than 60 countries around the world, and is the author of the book Strange Rebels: 1979 and the Birth of the 21st Century.
*Included in the Rosfinmonitoring list of terrorists and extremists.
