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“Nothing’s going to happen until Putin and I get together,” Donald Trump declared last week after Russia’s president failed to turn up for Ukraine peace talks in Turkey that the Kremlin had instigated. The two leaders did get together on Monday, by phone, for two hours. But nothing happened. The US president said Kyiv and Moscow would start negotiations towards a ceasefire, but he was leaving it up to the belligerents to sort things out. There was no sign of the pressure he had hinted he might finally put on his Russian counterpart. Instead, the US president gave the impression he was walking away from the peace efforts.
Trump’s indulgence of a Russian leader who has been stringing him along for months remains baffling. He has repeatedly threatened to get tough unless Putin accepts a ceasefire and comes to the negotiating table. Each time he has held back. By doing so, Trump is playing into Moscow’s hands. He emboldens Putin to fight on, when Russian forces have the edge on the battlefield against a Ukraine that fears US military backing could at any moment be withdrawn. Putin seems to believe that his goal of subjugating Ukraine can either be achieved without jeopardising the economic reset Trump is still promising with the US, or takes precedence over all else.
The US president said later on Monday that Washington was not pulling back from the Ukraine conflict, though it was considering whether to do so. A master of the diplomatic deal would realise now is not the moment to withdraw, but to step up pressure on Russia’s leader to come to terms. If the White House will not, Congress and Ukraine’s other allies must do so instead.
European countries will need to move quickly to implement plans to keep arms flowing to Kyiv if the US walks away, including by buying American weapons and funding Ukraine’s own expanded military industry. They should double down, too, on efforts to shift Putin’s calculus over how long he can keep fighting — by tightening the sanctions noose on Russia’s economy, which, despite its apparent resilience, faces mounting underlying pressures.
Most effective would be to close loopholes and lower the price cap on Russian oil exports, which do most to sustain its war economy. Moscow has partially evaded the cap by using its fleet of “shadow” tankers. But concerted recent sanctions on shadow vessels are estimated to have almost halved the Russian fleet’s usable capacity — forcing Russian exporters to rely more on sanctions-compliant mainstream tankers. That gives policymakers more leverage over oil export revenues.
After further EU sanctions this week targeted nearly 200 shadow ships, Brussels is presenting to G7 finance ministers in Canada a plan to use its next sanctions package to lower the price cap — hoping the White House will sign up. Russia hawks in the US Senate, meanwhile, including some senior Republicans close to Trump, have prepared a bill that would impose secondary tariffs of 500 per cent on imports from countries that buy Russian oil, gas or uranium, if Moscow does not engage seriously in Ukraine talks.
The Senate move is intended to give the president a tool should he choose to use it, but — since it is said to have a veto-proof majority — it opens the possibility of Congress acting on its own if he does not. But by wielding jumbo tariffs, the Senate plan could further destabilise the world economy. The plan should be amended instead to join G7 efforts to push down the oil price cap.
These are dark days for a Ukraine fearful that a US president is about to sell it down the river. It is up to its other friends — in Congress and other western capitals — to come good on their promises of support and avert that disaster.
