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Trump’s Russia–Ukraine Diplomacy Is Working
Foreign Affairs
Trump’s Russia–Ukraine Diplomacy Is Working
Putin’s Easter ceasefire was short-lived, but a welcome turn of events.
(Free Wind 2014/Shutterstock)
The Russian president Vladimir Putin’s sudden announcement last Saturday of a unilateral Easter truce in Ukraine seems to have opened a new path to peace.
That’s somewhat surprising, considering Putin’s promise initially met extreme skepticism. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky suggested it was a publicity stunt and expressed doubts that Putin would honor the ceasefire. “We know too well how Moscow manipulates, and we are always ready for anything,” Zelensky wrote on social media.
Reactions in the West were much the same. A headline in the Economist called the ceasefire a “gimmick.” Putin, the article claimed, views ceasefires as “opportunities to create perpetual instability.”
Such incredulity and even coldness were to be expected; Kiev and Western nations, after three years of war in Ukraine and decades of escalating tensions with Russia, do not trust Moscow. Nor does Moscow trust Ukraine and the West. Indeed, one of the biggest obstacles to peace is that neither side can be sure the other would abide by an agreement.
Still, the extreme degree of the distrust expressed in response to Putin was illuminating. Evidently, relations between Russia and the collective West have gotten so bad that a proposal to pause the killing for Pascha comes across as a dastardly plot to seize the advantage.
Many Westerners felt their suspicions were vindicated when Kiev accused Moscow of committing thousands of ceasefire violations. Moscow countered that Ukrainian forces had broken the truce more than a thousand times. Putin had insisted that Ukraine reciprocate the military pause and instructed Russian soldiers to repel enemy aggression, so it matters which side initiated the Easter attacks. But without credible third-party observers, it’s unclear which side, if either, to believe. What is clear is that shots were fired between 6 p.m. Saturday and midnight Sunday night, when the ceasefire was supposed to be in effect.
Nevertheless, the Easter truce offered reasons for cautious optimism, or in the case of President Donald Trump, incautious optimism. On Sunday late afternoon U.S. Eastern Time—approaching midnight in Moscow and eastern Ukraine—Trump wrote on social media, “HOPEFULLY RUSSIA AND UKRAINE WILL MAKE A DEAL THIS WEEK.” Had the president deemed the ceasefire a disaster, he would not have raised such high hopes.
And a complete disaster the one-day truce was not. Though only partially observed, it brought a dramatic reduction in hostilities and a cessation of air raid alerts. Leonid Ragozin, a Russian journalist who is critical of Putin, wrote on X that the ceasefire, despite its imperfections, “worked as a test in mutual trust.” In this view, Moscow and Kiev proved to one another a willingness to keep the peace, if haltingly and for only 30 hours.
For Putin, the primary aim was probably to earn some trust in Washington. The timing of the Saturday announcement suggests it came in response to the Trump administration’s intensified push for a peace deal—and its threat to walk away from the peace process if a deal isn’t reached soon.
Last week Friday, one day before Putin’s abrupt declaration, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the U.S. would “move on” from negotiations if, “within a matter of days,” a settlement did not seem forthcoming. Rubio’s comments came in Paris after lengthy talks with Ukrainian and European officials.
Later that day, Trump echoed Rubio’s remarks. “Now if, for some reason, one of the two parties makes it very difficult, we’re just going to say, ‘You’re foolish, you’re fools, you’re horrible people,’ and we’re going to just take a pass.”
Given this geopolitical backdrop, Putin’s Easter surprise reveals a desire to keep the White House involved in peace talks. A pro-peace statement, in English, from one of his U.S. envoys reinforced the implicit message. These are good signs for Washington, which surely had been starting to wonder if Putin intended to wait out the Americans and, after Ukraine lost the backing of its superpower patron, intensify Russia’s war effort.
This week brought more diplomatic progress, ostensibly in response to U.S. pressure, with Putin indicating Monday he was open to direct talks between Moscow and Kiev. That night, Zelensky offered to have a “conversation” about stopping attacks on civilian infrastructure. On Tuesday, a Kremlin spokesman said that Zelensky’s proposal made sense to Moscow.
More good news came on Tuesday. The Financial Times reported that Putin had offered, during a meeting earlier this month with the Trump envoy Steve Witkoff, to freeze the invasion along the current battle lines and relinquish the Ukrainian-controlled parts of four provinces that in 2022 Putin claimed to annex.
Putin has at least two good reasons to want U.S. diplomatic efforts to continue: 1) A settlement will be more stable if the Ukrainians consent to it through negotiations, rather than having it forced on them militarily. 2) A Russian rapprochement with the U.S. is in the works, and failure to resolve the Ukraine war could jeopardize the diplomatic project.
Trump thus deserves credit for laying the groundwork for the Easter truce and the more lasting peace it may prefigure. By putting on the table a broader reconciliation with the U.S., the White House gave Russia an incentive to make concessions on Ukraine, despite its upper hand on the battlefield.
Moreover, the ambiguity of Trump’s threat to “take a pass” helped the right signals get sent to the right foreign leaders. Was Trump’s statement a threat to cease diplomacy with Moscow but continue providing Ukraine military assistance? Or was he vowing to also halt the aid and wash his hands of the conflict entirely? No one, including Putin and Zelensky, could be sure, and everyone acted accordingly.
Special credit is also due to Zelensky, who responded wisely to Trump’s Friday threat and Putin’s Saturday declaration. While the Ukrainian leader questioned Putin’s sincerity, he also vowed that, if Russia halted attacks (or if it didn’t), Ukraine would “act in a mirror image.” Additionally, he called on Russia to extend the ceasefire for 30 days in line with a proposal by Trump.
Zelensky has tended to mismanage relations with the Trump administration, as when he appeared last week on CBS’s 60 Minutes—a network and program the U.S. president despises—and said that White House officials had been hoodwinked by “Russian narratives.” But in recent days, Zelensky has acted like a pragmatic statesman willing and able to advance the interests of the country he leads, even when that means giving Putin, whom he loathes, a PR victory.
Of course, there’s no guarantee that the Easter truce will prove a meaningful step toward a permanent settlement. Russia’s advantages in manpower and materiel mean it can win a war of attrition with its smaller neighbor. Last week the White House presented a peace deal, but some sticking points seem to remain, such as Moscow’s ambition to “demilitarize” Ukraine.
But the Kremlin has welcomed White House proposals to keep Kiev out of NATO and recognize Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, and its concessions regarding the four Ukrainian provinces under dispute suggest a deal is closer than previously thought.
The 30-hour truce is increasingly looking like a significant turn of events, even as deep distrust and the pronounced negativity bias of the Western media ensured it was somehow seen as yet more evidence of Putin’s implacable evil. The truce suggested that a longer ceasefire is possible and Trump’s diplomacy worthwhile, and both Kiev and Moscow have built upon the unexpected progress.
At the very least, it brought an Easter of peace for Ukrainians, and surely we can see the good, and the hope, in that.
The post Trump’s Russia–Ukraine Diplomacy Is Working appeared first on The American Conservative.
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