U.S. President Donald Trump says resolving the Russia-Ukraine issue will be a top priority, but analysts in Moscow warn of many sticking points and question Trump’s ‘inspiration and resources’ Trump has threatened Russian President Vladimir Putin with high tariffs and sanctions if he does not end the Ukraine war soon, saying: ‘It’s time to make a deal.“
Trump is turning up the heat on Putin in his first days in power, seeking to pressure Russia’s leader to come to the negotiating table for a deal to end the war in Ukraine. A little more than 48 hours since returning to the White House, Trump said Putin is “destroying his country” with the nearly three-year war against Kyiv and threatened increased sanctions on Russia and its enablers if a deal is not quickly reached. He has qualified his threats with flattery, saying that he loves the Russian people and has “always had a very good relationship with President Putin.”
Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine, retired US General Keith Kellogg, told Fox News on Jan. 8, “I would like to set a goal on a personal level, professional level, I would say let’s set it at 100 days.”
As optimistic as that sounds for a war that will reach its third anniversary next month, 100 days represents a step back from an even more optimistic timetable. In May 2023, Trump said the conflict would be “absolutely over” within “24 hours” of him officially becoming president.
“I’m not looking to hurt Russia,” Trump posted on his social media site Truth Social on Wednesday. “I’m going to do Russia, whose Economy is failing, and President Putin, a very big favor. Settle now, and stop this ridiculous war. It’s only going to get worse.”
The posts are an opening salvo in Trump’s efforts to show that his “peace through strength” policy can end Europe’s biggest land war in almost a century.
During his campaign debate with U.S. Vice President Kamala Harri, she asked, “Do you want Ukraine to win this war?” Trump answered, “I want the war to stop. I want to save lives.”
President Trump has seen some early diplomatic successes in the Middle East. He dispatched his special envoy for the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, to pressure Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to accept a ceasefire and hostage release deal with Hamas in the last week of the Biden administration. But the President has said that resolving Russia’s war in Ukraine is a harder challenge compared to the Middle East.
Former President Biden’s team did a lot of heavy lifting over a year of negotiations to the final ceasefire text between Israel and Hamas. When Trump stepped in, he deployed political capital built up during his first term with Israel and regional partners. But Russia’s war in Ukraine is a different beast. Russia’s full-scale invasion against Ukraine in February 2022 marked a shocking violation of the post-World War II order, with Moscow seeking to change the borders of a sovereign country by force. Ukraine succeeded in preserving its country — repelling Russian forces surrounding Kyiv in those first few, fraught days — but has failed to expel Russia from about 20 percent of Ukrainian territory in the east of the country. This is on top of territory Russia invaded and annexed in 2014, the administrative regions of Luhansk, Donetsk and the Crimean peninsula.
Three years into the war, Ukrainian forces are struggling to replenish their troops, and the population is suffering under almost daily attacks on civilian areas and energy infrastructure — an attempt to freeze the country during the winter. And Russian forces are allegedly carrying out targeted drone attacks against civilians in front-line cities.
Ukrainian public opinion is increasingly open to negotiating an end to the war as soon as possible. And Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said he’s optimistic Trump’s decisiveness could shift the dynamics of the war.
“He can be decisive in this war. He is capable of stopping Putin or, to put it more fairly, help us stop Putin. He is able to do this,” Zelensky said.
Trump, in remarks from the Oval Office on Monday, said he viewed Zelensky as wanting to make a deal. “I don’t know if Putin does, he might not, I don’t know. He should make a deal,” Trump said.
But Russia and Ukraine are not the only players. International coalitions are entrenched on either side of the fray, with a number of countries straddling the line.
If Trump wants to exercise leverage on Russia, he’ll need unity with Europe, said Sam Greene, director for democratic resilience at the Center for European Policy Analysis, a think tank based in Washington, D.C.
That could prove difficult if he fulfills his promise to impose hefty tariffs on the continent.
“I think the reality is that Trump does not have — the U.S. in general does not have — tremendous leverage over either of the parties in this conflict,” Greene said.
“It’s not beyond the realm of possibility where Trump, Waltz and Rubio — and whoever is going to be important when it comes to foreign policy — sit down and map out all of the overlapping and interlocking interests and start to prioritize,” he added, referring to national security adviser Mike Waltz and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
“We’re not there yet. Until we get there, I think it’s foolish that the Russians are going to feel like they’re under much pressure from Washington.”
Zelensky chastised Europe during a speech at the World Economic Forum on Tuesday as failing to harness its power.
“Will President Trump listen to Europe or will he negotiate with Russia and China without Europe?” he asked in a blunt warning. “Europe needs to learn how to fully take care of itself so that the world can’t afford to ignore it.”
Putin may be bruised by the war, but he is not beaten down. The Russian leader has used domestic military production to buoy the economy and relied on a network of countries to circumvent international sanctions — from global powers like China and India to international pariahs like Iran and North Korea.
Chinese President Xi Jinping is Putin’s most important ally in the war, with the two declaring a “no limit partnership” in February 2022, shortly before Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, and a “new era” to their partnership in May. Both Putin and Xi view the U.S. and democracies as a threat to the survival of their authoritarian regimes.
In a call between Putin and Xi on Monday, the two discussed deepening bilateral ties, while Putin said he was ready for dialogue with the U.S. related to Ukraine.
Greene said Putin can likely sell a deal to Russia’s public but would still find it hard to agree to halt the war.
“Putin can find a way to raise the mission accomplished banner even if he doesn’t control all of Ukraine or all of the territory that the Russian government has claimed. But what Russia will struggle to do is to pivot away from conflict and confrontation with the West,” Greene said.
After nearly three years of heavy battles and mass strikes, Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine is showing signs of accelerating toward what could be its final act, for now at least. Over the summer and autumn of 2024, the battlefield situation markedly turned for the worse for Kyiv, as Russia has begun capturing territory at a greater pace since the first months of the full-scale invasion.
The resounding victory in the U.S. presidential elections of Donald Trump, who has been openly scathing of U.S. military and financial aid to Ukraine and the inner circle of whom have spread anti-Ukrainian narratives on the war, has put the future of Ukraine’s ability to hold Russia back in grave doubt. He has claimed repeatedly to be able to end the war quickly after his inauguration.
Given the slow-burn failure of the West’s current policy to support Ukraine enough to simply survive rather than win in the face of Russia’s war of attrition, many Ukrainians, from officials to soldiers and civilians, have expressed quiet hope that Trump could get tough with Russian President Vladimir Putin in an effort to stop Russia’s advance.
But Washington is not a direct belligerent in the full-scale war, which began with Russia’s attempt to decapitate independent Ukraine through an attack on Kyiv, and which has since continued with all evidence that Putin’s maximalist goals remain in place.
Stirred already by the full-scale invasion, European nations have meanwhile realized the urgent need to scale up defense production in light of an incoming president Trump, who has openly questioned if he would honor Article 5 of the NATO Treaty. But behind loud public statements from European leaders on taking more responsibility for the continent’s own security, the question of whether these plans also include brave steps to secure Ukraine’s future is usually left unanswered.
Both Kyiv and Moscow are jostling to best improve their negotiating positions ahead of what is likely to be a dynamic winter, both on the battlefield and in the geopolitical arena.
Despite Trump’s promises to swiftly end the conflict, many doubt his ability to deliver.
Russian analyst and columnist Andrei Sitov expressed skepticism about Trump’s capacity to fulfill his campaign vows: “I doubt that Trump will have enough inspiration and resources to implement all he promised during the election campaign, including the promise to end the conflict in Ukraine ‘in one day.’”
Sitov noted that Trump likely views the prolonged conflict as a failure of the previous administration, rather than a challenge to his personal capabilities.
On the legal complexities of any future peace treaty, Sergey Markov, director of the Russian Institute of Political Studies argued that the agreement must be signed by Ukraine’s “legitimate authorities,” but Russia does not recognize President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as such.
“This is not because Putin dislikes Zelenskyy personally. It’s a legal issue – if Zelenskyy is not the legitimate head of state, any agreement he signs could be nullified by Ukraine’s Constitutional Court,” Markov explained.
Zelenskyy was elected for a five-year term in March 2019 that ended last year, but Ukraine has yet to hold new elections because of the ongoing war.
Earlier in January, Zelenskyy reiterated in a televised interview that Ukraine will not hold elections under martial law – imposed since February 2022 – even if Moscow insists on it as a condition for talks.
In such a scenario, Markov suggested that the treaty should either be signed by the head of Ukraine’s parliament or be validated by a Constitutional Court ruling affirming Zelenskyy’s legitimacy. “Russia does not demand Zelenskyy’s resignation. This is not about personal preferences but ensuring the agreement’s legal durability,” he said. Moscow will also seek international legal recognition of its “newly integrated territories,” said Markov.
Acknowledging that full Western recognition is unlikely, he asserted that Moscow wants a practical agreement that could affirm the de-facto status of these regions. “This would include provisions ensuring that Western countries refrain from imposing political or administrative penalties on citizens of the Russian Federation residing in these areas, particularly Crimea and Sevastopol,” Markov explained.★
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