US President Donald Trump said on social media that Russia’s recent bombing of civilian areas, including in the capital Kyiv, signals that “maybe [Russian President Vladimir Putin] doesn’t want to stop the war, he’s just tapping me along.”
He then reiterated his earlier threat to impose “secondary sanctions” against those who violate the US’ primary ones.
This followed Trump’s latest meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the Vatican on the sidelines of Pope Francis’ funeral ceremony and comes after reports that the US has finalized its proposed peace plan for Ukraine.
Trump’s apparent volte-face toward Putin likely owes to five significant disagreements that have emerged during the course of negotiations. The first was referenced by Trump in his social media post, where he condemned Russia’s bombing of civilian areas.
Putin argued earlier in April that Russia is targeting Ukrainian troops there, but the optics of continued Russian strikes against civilian areas amidst peace talks with the US have evidently left a negative impression on Trump, who apparently now doubts Putin’s commitment to peace.
The second concerns European peacekeepers in Ukraine, which the reportedly finalized US peace plan suggests, despite Russia’s opposition.
Although US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth already declared that the US won’t extend Article 5 mutual defense guarantees to NATO troops in Ukraine, Russia fears that the Europeans could manipulate the US into mission creep. Putin, therefore, prefers for there to be no ambiguity about this and for Trump to scrub it from his plan.
Third, it’s unclear whether Ukraine will be obligated to at least partially demilitarize like Kyiv provisionally agreed to do during spring 2022’s ultimately failed peace talks, which is one of Russia’s explicitly declared goals in the conflict.
Trump is reluctant to support this since he seems to believe that it could embolden Putin to recommence hostilities in the future, especially in the absence of European peacekeepers, but this demand isn’t something that Putin could easily walk away from.
The fourth disagreement is over America’s refusal to accede to Russia’s demand to coerce Ukraine into withdrawing from the disputed territories that are still under Kyiv’s control.
The New York Times cited a source who described this as “unreasonable and unachievable”, but it’s imperative for Russia after the Kremlin recognized the entirety of these regions as Russian following September 2022’s referenda. As with Ukraine’s demilitarization, Putin also can’t easily walk away from this issue, hence the disagreement.
And finally, the reportedly finalized US peace plan also requests that Russia hand over the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant and Kakhovka Dam to the US, which is as unacceptable for Putin as the preceding points of accepting European peacekeepers, dropping demilitarization, and curbing his territorial claims.
All five disagreements, including the first-mentioned one about Russia’s continued strikes against military targets in civilian areas, have collectively contributed to the latest impasse, reportedly right before the diplomatic finish line of a deal.
If Putin and Trump can’t resolve these issues, after which Trump would then also have to get Zelensky to agree to the new deal, then the peace process will probably go kaput.
Putin and Trump are incentivized to resolve their disputes due to how mutually beneficial the nascent Russian–US “New Detente” is, while Zelensky would struggle to continue fighting if the US once again cuts off military aid as punishment for rejecting a deal. Be that as it may, it will still be very difficult to break this deadlock.
This article was first published on Andrew Korybko’s Substack and is republished with kind permission. Become an Andrew Korybko Newsletter subscriber here.
