In Call With Trump, Putin Concedes Little on Ukraine

by · NY Times

News analysis

Far From Giving Ground, Putin Digs In With His Demands on Ukraine

Although much of what Vladimir V. Putin agreed to during his call with President Trump was spun as a concession, the Russian leader stuck to the positions he has long held.

  • Share full article
  • 249
    249
President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, the Kremlin said, identified his “key condition” for settling the conflict more broadly: a complete cessation of outside military and intelligence support for Ukraine.
Credit...Pool photo by Gavriil Grigorov

By Paul Sonne

Reporting from Berlin

Follow our live coverage of the Trump administration and Ukraine cease-fire talks.

When the Kremlin released its summary of President Vladimir V. Putin’s call Tuesday with President Trump, one thing was unmistakable: The Russian leader hadn’t retreated from his maximalist aims in Ukraine and so far has conceded little.

Much of what Mr. Putin agreed to during the call — including a limited 30-day halt on energy infrastructure strikes by both sides, a prisoner exchange and talks about security in the Black Sea — was spun as a concession to Mr. Trump in the respective summaries of the conversation released by Moscow and Washington.

But all were goals that the Kremlin has pursued and seen as advantageous in the past. Russia and Ukraine previously reached a tacit mutual agreement to refrain from energy infrastructure strikes, which have caused pain for both Moscow and Kyiv. Russia has long conducted prisoner exchanges with Ukraine, seeing the repatriation of its soldiers as a key Kremlin interest. And uninterrupted trading in the Black Sea is critical to Russia’s economy.

The lack of clear concessions on the Russian side stoked fears among Ukraine’s backers that Mr. Putin was playing for time, hewing to his staunch demands while hoping, in the meantime, that Washington’s tattered relationship with Kyiv fully breaks or that Ukrainian forces face a battlefield collapse.

Mr. Putin’s demands on Ukraine appeared unchanged. During the call, according to the Kremlin, Mr. Putin reiterated requirements for a comprehensive 30-day cease-fire that he knows are nonstarters for Ukraine. According to the Kremlin, he claimed that the Ukrainians had sabotaged and violated agreements in the past, and accused Ukraine of committing “barbaric terrorist crimes” in the Kursk region of Russia.

By Wednesday, the Kremlin was already accusing Kyiv of violating the limited cease-fire on energy infrastructure, even though President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine had yet to be briefed by Washington on the call or formally comply with the deal. Later in the day, Mr. Zelensky did agree in a phone call with Mr. Trump to accept Russia’s offer for a mutual pause in attacks on energy targets as a step toward a fuller cease-fire, according to the Ukrainian leader and Trump administration officials.

During Tuesday’s call, the Kremlin said, Mr. Putin also identified his “key condition” for settling the conflict more broadly: a complete cessation of outside military and intelligence support for Kyiv. Such an outcome, analysts say, would make Ukraine, a country far smaller than Russia, permanently hostage to Moscow’s overwhelming military superiority and forever stranded within the Kremlin’s orbit, without any counterbalancing backers.

Mr. Trump, in an interview with Fox News, denied that Mr. Putin set out the cessation of military and intelligence aid to Ukraine as a condition to resolving the conflict.

“We didn’t talk about aid, actually, we didn’t talk about aid at all,” Mr. Trump told the interviewer, Laura Ingraham, contradicting the Kremlin’s summary of the call.

The Kremlin may be hoping that during the course of negotiations, an already impatient Washington walks away from Ukraine for good, freeing Mr. Putin to continue his war while also separately re-establishing relations with the United States. Russia may also be counting on the possibility that Kyiv, facing an increasingly dire picture on the battlefield and the loss of its biggest backer, ultimately agrees to an erosion of its sovereignty that benefits the Kremlin.

“The best outcome for Putin is one where he accomplishes his aims in Ukraine and can normalize relations with the U.S.,” said Andrea Kendall-Taylor, a former U.S. intelligence official who is now an analyst at the Center for a New American Security, a think tank in Washington. “So Putin wants to string Trump along to give him just enough to see if he can accomplish that.”

Ms. Kendall-Taylor added that Mr. Putin will feel he has little to lose, believing that Mr. Trump, who has made no secret of his dim view of Ukraine and of Washington’s European allies, “won’t be willing to really ramp up pressure on Russia or recommit to Europe.”

“There is a lot of incentive for the Russians to participate, to play along and look for every opportunity to use this construct to their maximum advantage,” Ms. Kendall-Taylor said.

Mr. Putin also has significant advantages on the battlefield. His forces are winning back territory. Ukraine’s biggest and most important supporter, the United States, is openly itching to abandon Kyiv, as well as Europe more broadly. Europe, suddenly realizing its peril without U.S. backing, has been caught flat-footed and is now scrambling to figure out how to secure its own defense — let alone that of Ukraine.

“In Russian diplomatic functioning, negotiations often are just tools of winning time and depriving the adversary of its balance,” said Andras Racz, a senior research fellow at the German Council on Foreign Relations.

Mr. Racz said that Washington’s stated desire to reach a quick resolution to the conflict confers a certain advantage to Moscow, which is “not in a hurry.”

He held out the possibility that the Trump administration, faced with Mr. Putin’s refusal to cede ground on Ukraine, could begin applying pressure on Russia. Mr. Trump has made such threats in the past.

The White House could also offer Mr. Putin more.

After the breakup of the Soviet Union, Washington’s power in Europe grew significantly, with many of the countries that once answered to Moscow joining NATO and ultimately the West. Mr. Putin has never accepted that outcome, making him eager to hold broader discussions on European security with the Trump administration. His apparent hope is that Washington will not only agree to an arrangement that places Ukraine in Russia’s orbit but also will concede a broader curtailment of U.S. influence on the continent. Washington’s ability to grant those broader wishes gives the White House some measure of leverage, even if previous administrations ruled them out as impossible.

“Trump has few options to counter either a Russian rejection or protracted feigned compliance,” wrote Alexander Baunov, a Russian author and political analyst. “The most effective method will be the carrot rather than the stick: the temptation of a major deal.”

Russia, while giving little on Ukraine, has begun trying to lure Washington with the fruits of a rapprochement. Russian officials have been touting their vast reserves of rare earth metals, saying they would be happy to exploit them with American companies, and holding out possible deals for American investors in the Russian energy sector.

Mr. Putin and Mr. Trump spent part of the discussion on Tuesday talking about what the Kremlin called “a wide range of areas in which our countries could establish interaction,” including ideas about cooperation in the energy sector. The Russian leader, according to the Kremlin, secured Mr. Trump’s agreement to hold hockey tournaments with Russian and American professional players facing off against one another.

Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, said that the Kremlin would be hoping to get the United States to restore ties without predicating renewed relations on an end to the fighting in Ukraine. That’s why, he added, the Kremlin is front-loading the discussion with all the potential benefits for the United States from a renewed relationship with Russia.

“The impression is that they have a very, very, very good reading of Trump,” Mr. Gabuev said of the Kremlin. “They know where the weak spots are, they know how to massage his ego. To me, the Russian team is winning at this point.”

Our Coverage of the War in Ukraine

  • Energy Infrastructure Strikes: Russia said it would agree to a limited cease-fire that would stop attacks on energy targets as long as Ukraine does the same. Here’s what that could mean for both countries.
  • Putin Digs In: Although much of what President Vladimir Putin of Russia agreed to during his call with President Trump was spun as a concession, the Russian leader stuck to the positions he has long held.
  • Kidnapped Ukrainian Children: The State Department has ended funding for the tracking of tens of thousands of Ukrainian children abducted by Russia, and American officials or contractors might have deleted a database with information on them, according to a letter U.S. lawmakers sent to Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
  • Fresh Sushi in a Frontline Town: Sushi has long been a popular indulgence in Ukraine. For the residents of Sloviansk, a city in Russian cross hairs, it can provide a sense of normalcy that is akin to a necessity in wartime.

How We Verify Our Reporting