When US vice-president JD Vance was asked about the war in Ukraine at a foreign policy forum in Washington last week, diplomats were expecting Maga-style criticism of Kyiv and veiled sympathy for Russia.
Instead, they heard something quite different. Vance said of a set of Russian proposals to end the conflict: “We think they’re asking for too much.”
Attendees were surprised. Vance was one of the main protagonists in the now infamous Oval Office showdown in February, when he tore into Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and accused him of failing to show enough gratitude to the US for its support — a scene that seemed to presage a complete rupture in relations between Kyiv and Washington.
Vance’s comments were part of a noticeable shift in tone by the Trump administration. US officials appear increasingly impatient with Vladimir Putin, as suspicions grow that the Russian leader, rather than Zelenskyy, may be the biggest obstacle to peace.
“The Americans had this simplistic idea — let’s charm Russia, put pressure on Zelenskyy, and we’ll get a deal,” said Wolfgang Ischinger, the former German ambassador to the US to whom Vance made his comment at last week’s forum. “It turned out that simply charming Russia is not enough.”
International efforts to end the war have intensified in recent days. At Putin’s suggestion, Russia and Ukraine are due to hold direct talks in Turkey on Thursday — though it is unclear whether the Russian leader will attend in person.
On Tuesday, a White House official said that US secretary of state Marco Rubio and Trump’s special envoys Steve Witkoff and Keith Kellogg will take part.
But Trump’s most desired objective — a ceasefire that could lead to peace negotiations and an end to the war — has so far eluded him. Putin has rejected international calls to halt the fighting, despite threats from western powers — including the US — of tough new sanctions.
Russia’s apparent intransigence is proving an irritant to Trump, say observers. “You hear the frustration in [his] communication,” said Michael McFaul, a former US ambassador to Russia. “He may be understanding that he has given up too much and not gotten anything in return.”
Indeed, under one of the set of proposals circulated by the US last month for ending the war, Washington expressed its willingness to recognise Russia’s rule over Crimea — a concession that enraged Ukraine and the EU, but was rejected by Putin.
Trump’s social media posts reflect his apparent impatience. In late April, after Russia fired missiles into civilian areas of Ukraine, he said he thought the Kremlin was “just tapping me along” and threatened to impose secondary and banking sanctions on Moscow.
“Trump is concluding that Putin is not a friend of the US,” said Bill Taylor, who served as the US ambassador to Ukraine from 2006-09. “There’s a recognition that [he] is not to be trusted . . . that he is not negotiating seriously.”
It is becoming increasingly difficult to blame the Ukrainians for the continued fighting. In recent weeks Zelenskyy has gone out of his way to present himself as a co-operative partner, supporting US demands for a ceasefire. On Sunday he agreed to the Putin proposal of direct talks in Turkey after Trump urged him to accept it.
Relations between Kyiv and Washington have bounced back since February’s Oval Office spat in part thanks to the minerals deal that opens a path to joint investments in Ukraine’s critical resources by the two countries.
Ukrainian officials say the agreement makes it more likely that the US will continue to support Ukraine’s defence. “Now Trump has skin in the game,” said one.
But it remains unclear whether Trump really has shifted his sympathies to Ukraine — or is prepared to punish Russia for its recalcitrance.
While most western leaders, and Kellogg, the US special envoy to Ukraine, were critical of Putin’s offer of direct talks, saying there should first be a ceasefire, Trump praised the Russian leader’s gambit, hailing a “potentially great day for Russia and Ukraine”.
“Trump definitely sees that Putin isn’t playing ball,” said Eric Green, a former aide to president Joe Biden at the National Security Council who is now a non-resident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace think-tank. “But I’m not convinced that the consequence of that is going to be meaningful pressure on Putin.”
Ischinger said he was “delighted” that Vance had shifted on Russia and that the US and European positions on the war in Ukraine were “converging”. But the former German ambassador to the US added that the vice-president “didn’t take the next logical step, which would have been to say we now need to really turn the screws on Russia”.
Other US politicians are keen to get tough with Moscow, however. Senator Lindsey Graham, a Trump ally, has said he has bipartisan support for a bill that would apply “bone-crushing” sanctions on Russia, including a 500 per cent tariff on imports from countries that buy its oil and gas, if Putin doesn’t begin serious negotiations to end the war.
The bill has been backed by 72 senators — a sign that support for Ukraine remains strong on Capitol Hill.
“These sanctions represent the Senate’s view that we see the primary bad guy being Russia,” Graham told reporters late last month. Putin, he added, “would be making a huge mistake to try to play Trump”.
Experts say Russia, meanwhile, is banking on the US president losing patience with the peace process. “Putin’s playing a long game and thinks he has time on his side,” said McFaul. “He’s calculating that Trump will lose interest and the Americans will cut off military assistance, and that will make the Ukrainian army weaker,” the former US ambassador to Russia said.
Others believe that the danger of the US president abandoning Ukraine has diminished in recent weeks.
Thomas Graham, a distinguished fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former senior director for Russia on the National Security Council staff, said Trump would struggle to achieve one of his main goals — a reset of relations with Russia — without first resolving the problem of Ukraine.
“There’s too much at stake,” he said. “Yes, he could still walk away from Ukraine — but if he does that it would look too much like failure.”
Additional reporting by Christopher Miller in Kyiv
