The meagre results of yesterday’s 90-minute phone call between President Donald Trump and President Vladimir Putin speak volumes. The announcement of a 30-day ceasefire on energy infrastructure, which Trump claimed as an accomplishment, is a reheated old initiative. It was discussed by Moscow and Kyiv before last summer’s Ukrainian incursion into Russia’s Kursk Region.
By giving little ground, Putin has signalled that he is ready to dance a long, slow tango with Trump while the Russian army continues its battlefield advances. His strategy is clear: to use ceasefire negotiations as a tool to accelerate victory, setting conditions that will later become part of a final agreement.
The Kremlin’s press statement, issued after the call, betrays one striking example. Putin underlined to Trump the need to stop military assistance and intelligence sharing to Ukraine. This was justified as a means to prevent an ‘escalation of the conflict and work towards resolving it by political-diplomatic means’.
Trump was clearly not yet ready to make this concession, even if he recently stopped both military aid and intelligence provision to persuade Kyiv to accept a ceasefire. (Both have since been restored).
Nevertheless, Putin has put down a marker to which he will return. He has set the expectation that a halt in US military support for Ukraine is a prerequisite for an agreement. From yesterday’s statements, there is no indication that the Trump administration responded with its own conditions.
Russia’s strategy
Unlike Trump, Putin is not in a hurry. His military can carry on fighting for several months without additional pain. He will feel reasonably sure that Ukraine’s fighting reserves will dwindle from early summer, since it is highly unlikely that Trump’s administration will agree another military aid package for Kyiv. He also knows that Europe will struggle to fill the gap.
In the meantime, he intends to placate Trump with broader goodwill signals, agreeing to a quick restoration of bilateral relations with the US and embracing the idea of cooperation in the Middle East.
Putin plans to use such gestures, along with minor concessions like the energy ceasefire, to keep Trump’s belief in Russian commitment to negotiations alive. Meanwhile, Russia can pursue greater gains on the battlefield and slowly reset Trump’s expectations for an agreement.
Why would Putin think of anything other than achieving his maximal goals when relations with the US have shifted from deeply antagonistic under President Joe Biden to unimaginably friendly under Trump? Conditions could not be more favourable.
The conditions created by Trump
Since the first days of the new Trump administration, Putin will feel he has been pushing on an open door. Before negotiations began, the US was giving way.
Since his return to the White House, Trump has consistently demonstrated to the world that he is ill-disposed to Ukraine. The president has shown he is ready to negotiate over the heads of Kyiv and its European partners, and, if necessary, to bully Volodymyr Zelenskyy into accepting US demands.
Trump has also continued to demonstrate that he attaches little importance to NATO. And in early February US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth stated that the US does not support NATO membership for Ukraine, offering a commitment from the Trump administration on a major Russian objective without extracting any concession from Moscow in return.
Moscow knows that Trump’s behaviour is partly informed by his craving for a Nobel Peace Prize, leading him to seek peace swiftly, at almost any cost, and without regard for a just settlement for Ukraine.
This creates the opportunity for Putin to impose conditions that will weaken Ukraine’s ability to resist over the long term – including limits on the size of the Ukrainian army and preventing the deployment of European forces on Ukrainian territory.