Trump-Putin call shows peace in Ukraine remains elusive

Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin spoke by phone on Monday for about two hours. The initial reports following this dialogue between the White House and the Kremlin sounded optimistic.

Donald Trump announced that "negotiations between Russia and Ukraine will begin immediately." He said at the White House, referring to the efforts to end the war: "I believe we have a good chance to achieve this. I think Putin wants it," he declared.

In turn, Putin said after his conversation with Donald Trump that Russia is ready to work on a memorandum with Ukraine, which would include a ceasefire. According to Putin, the most effective path to peace and "fair compromises" needs to be found. However, he did not specify what these compromises might be.

However, on Monday evening, during a phone conversation with the European heads of state and government, it was perceived that the US president was not ready to force the Kremlin leader to sit at the negotiation table by applying more pressure. In their opinion, Putin has not abandoned his demands since the outbreak of the war in 2022, which include "eliminating the fundamental causes of the crisis". The Kremlin interprets this as, among other things, the abandonment of NATO ambitions, demilitarization, and "denazification" of Ukraine.

According to global media, the messages from both leaders are one thing, but the actual agreements are another.

According to the American news network CNN, Putin seeks peace, but only on terms that would be unacceptable for Ukraine as a sovereign nation. In their assessment, the recent conversation between the parties merely underscored the deep divisions and highlighted how distant a peaceful resolution remains.

Similar comments appeared on Tuesday in the German press. "Trump is roughly taking Putin's stance, who does not want to stop fighting but always offers negotiations," ironizes Der Spiegel.

Meanwhile, the weekly Die Zeit emphasizes that anyone who had hoped that Donald Trump would exert pressure on Russia is disappointed. "Negotiations regarding Ukraine are at the same stage as they were a few months ago," it reports.

"I see no breakthrough after Trump’s conversation with Putin. It seems the Russian leader is still outmaneuvering everyone, mainly the American president. He pretends to be ready for talks, but nothing really comes out of these conversations. After all, there were supposed to be talks in Istanbul involving Putin, Trump, and Zelensky. And they didn’t happen," says WP professor Tomasz Płudowski, an American studies expert at the Academy of Economics and Human Sciences in Warsaw.

In his opinion, Trump still focuses on the commercial aspect of the talks with Putin.

"This has been his approach from the very beginning. He thinks about what he could get from his involvement in ending the war. This was the case with Ukraine. He quickly picked up on the idea suggested to him by Volodymyr Zelensky, which was about utilizing rare earth resources. So, if he does this in relation to a country defending itself against an aggressor, he will be even more inclined to do business with Russia," the Americanist tells us.

In his view, Trump is increasingly crafting a narrative that he has nothing to do with the war, and it’s not his responsibility.

"All this in case the negotiations don’t end successfully. And as we see, much points to that. He tries to blame the Democrats for the war. However, the responsibility falls on him, especially as he promised to end the war," assesses professor Tomasz Płudowski.

Meanwhile, as Crimean political scientist Nedim Useinov notes, the arrangements following the phone conversation between the two leaders sound like the same old tune we have heard before.

"Putin keeps playing a game with Trump. He tells him he is 'interested in peace, but…' And constantly presents a long list of conditions. Unfortunately, Trump is not a specialist on Russia. He doesn’t understand the nature of the Kremlin’s demands. Trump assumes that the goal of both sides is to strike a deal. But Putin is not willing to strike a deal. Apparently, his advisors are afraid to make him realize the truth, which the American president has not yet matured to emotionally," says Nedim Useinov, an expert from the think tank The German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF).

In his opinion, there is a lot of improvisation in Trump's approach, relying on his intuition, brilliant ideas, and tactics.

"The problem is not knowing much about Russia and not allowing experienced advisors to speak up, which keeps him a bit on Putin’s leash. The Russian leader says: 'I want peace' and plays on Trump’s vanity. And then quickly adds: 'I won’t talk to Zelensky, only with you. Go, appeal to the Ukrainian president’s reason to bend. And then you, on his behalf, will sit with me at the table,'" comments Nedim Useinov.

"I wouldn’t be surprised if, in the phone conversation, Putin told Trump that there is no point in talking to the Ukrainian president at all. That they should agree on terms between themselves. And Zelensky has to accept them," believes the political scientist from Crimea.

After the conversation with Putin, Trump also talked to Volodymyr Zelensky.

"I asked him not to make any decisions regarding Ukraine without Ukraine being involved," Zelensky said later. He added that Ukraine will not withdraw its troops from its own territories and will not accept Russian ultimatums.

Zelensky said that indeed, a memorandum with Russia is possible, which would lead to an agreement ending the war. "We will wait for the Russian version of this memorandum. Our position is clear: we want to end the war, but I do not know the true position of the Russians. Perhaps they themselves do not know what they want," added Zelensky.

According to the Russian news agency Tass, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov emphasized that there is no time frame for developing the memorandum. "There are no deadlines and there cannot be any," said Peskov. He added that everyone wants to make progress as quickly as possible, but "the devil is in the details." Peskov also stated that the place for new contacts with Kyiv has not been determined.