Vladimir Putin’s initial plan to capture Ukraine in a few days ended in disaster. But after Donald Trump set up direct peace talks with Moscow, bypassing Kyiv and European allies, the Russian president is now closer than ever to getting what he wanted from his three-year-long invasion.
Putin’s main ambition, said people who have spoken to him during the war, is to establish a new security architecture that gives Russia a sphere of influence in Europe — much as the Yalta conference did for the Soviet Union at the end of the second world war.
Now, the US may be open to letting him have it. Defence secretary Pete Hegseth has dismissed Ukraine’s aspirations to join Nato and reclaim its territory from Russia. Putin and Trump discussed “bilateral economic co-operation”, suggesting that the US was prepared to roll back its sanctions against Moscow.
And Trump appears intent on rolling back the US’s commitment to Nato and leaving to European countries the job of sustaining a peace.
“The situation looks much more favourable for Putin than at any point during the entire war over the last three years,” said Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin. “If the US just unilaterally ends its military and diplomatic support, as well as intelligence sharing, then Ukraine will be in a very tough position. And it’ll be hard to get out of it even if the Europeans get more involved.”
In Moscow, there was palpable joy following Wednesday’s call between Trump and Putin.
“A single call can change the course of history — today, the leaders of the US and Russia have possibly opened a door to a future shaped by co-operation, not confrontation,” said Kirill Dmitriev, a Russian sovereign wealth fund chief involved in back-channel talks with the US over prisoner exchanges.
The call marked a dramatic about-face from US policy under Joe Biden, Trump’s predecessor, who pledged to support Ukraine for “as long as it takes” while working with other western countries to isolate Russia. Now, the US has said victory on Ukraine’s terms is not “realistic” — a shift that Moscow hailed as a return to reason.
“Finally, the Americans are taking things seriously without the pointless illusions they have been feeding to the Ukrainians since the start of the war. It’s common sense. And a chance to stop the war,” said a former senior Russian official.
“Putin rid himself of any illusions three days in,” when Russia realised its plans for a blitzkrieg victory had failed, the former official added. “But the Europeans and Americans have been under them ever since, and they’re only starting to see sense now.”
Senior Ukrainian and western officials said Trump and Putin would probably try to secure a ceasefire by one of two significant upcoming dates: Easter, which the Orthodox and Catholic churches will both celebrate on April 20 this year; or May 9, when Russia celebrates the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany.
“Putin will want [a deal] on a notable day like this,” said a Ukrainian official.
In Moscow, markets reacted with glee. The rouble strengthened 5 per cent against the dollar and Moscow’s main exchange index rose 2.8 per cent to its highest level in nine months.
Pro-war hardliners hailed the call as a sign that Russia’s victory was at hand.
“It must really hurt for the EU and Ukraine to hear this. But their opinion doesn’t matter any more,” said Konstantin Malofeyev, a conservative tycoon who runs several Russian volunteer units fighting in Ukraine. “Ukraine is just the pretext for a grand dialogue between two great countries about the start of a new era in human history.”
Putin told Trump he wanted to “settle the reasons for the conflict”, indicating that Russia has not dropped its goal of stopping Ukraine’s ambitions to join the west and rolling back the post-cold war security order.
Moscow is also demanding that Ukraine cede control over four south-eastern regions, none of which Russia fully controls, and expects the west to lift all sanctions imposed since 2014.
“The most important thing for Russia is for Ukraine to have the weakest security guarantees possible,” Gabuev said. “Ideally they want Ukraine to remain a country with no investment potential that’s as weak as possible and tearing apart internally.”
Since Russia holds the upper hand on the battlefield, Putin could choose to continue the war if Trump does not agree to all his demands, said Dmitry Trenin, a research professor at Moscow’s Higher School of Economics.
“Russia is serious about the need to solve the Ukraine issue. It is not suing for peace. It knows that the only guarantees it can rely on are those it can provide itself,” Trenin said. “A deal that falls short of Russia’s vital security requirements would only guarantee that there will be another war soon. Russia will not permit that.”
He added: “The fighting will not stop with the start of the talks; and if there is no deal, it will go on.”
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Ukraine and its European allies are shocked at Trump’s apparent eagerness to accommodate Putin.
“Why are we giving [Russia] everything that they want even before the negotiations have been started?” asked EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas.
One European official said: “It’s quite extraordinary that the president has chosen to play his hand like this. I don’t think there’s any negotiating position left — he’s laid it all out.”
But any kind of comprehensive deal will still require significant input from Nato members and Ukraine. “On the thorny substantive issues it’s too early to say what Trump is willing and able to give,” said Samuel Charap, a senior political scientist at the Rand. “He’ll need Ukraine and allies on board for those and related issues.”
The delegation Trump appointed to negotiate with Russia does not include his own envoy on the conflict, Keith Kellogg, who had been the most outspoken US official calling to increase sanctions pressure on Moscow and maintain arms supplies to Ukraine.
“It suggests the administration is not going to take Ukraine’s core concerns seriously,” said a former senior US official. “Putin would have seen that as an endorsement of his view of the world and a step towards realising his dream of having really deep friction between the US and Europe.”
Trump’s drive to end the war quickly has blindsided Kyiv. A person close to Volodymyr Zelenskyy told the Financial Times that the Ukrainian president was unaware of Trump’s call with Putin until the American president called Kyiv.
Zelenskyy told reporters on Thursday that it was “not very pleasant” to know that Trump spoke to Ukraine’s adversary first. He insisted he “will not accept . . . any bilateral negotiations about Ukraine without us”.
What was imperative, Zelenskyy added, was to “not allow everything to go according to Putin’s plan”.
Kyiv had hoped it could convince Trump to work out a common position on bringing Russia to the table, and had offered access to its reserves of rare earth metals in return for US support.
For now, Kyiv and its European allies are looking on, aghast, from the outside, fearful the US will strike an unfavourable deal with Putin to end the war — and stick them with the bill.
“Trump is proving to be as bad as we feared. He is willing to make a deal with Putin at the expense of Ukraine, and still wants Ukraine to pay him in mineral resources,” said Volodymyr Kulyk, a professor of political science at the Kyiv School of Economics. “The question is what Ukraine and Europe will do.”
Additional reporting by Polina Ivanova in Berlin, Lucy Fisher and Daria Mosolova in London, and Henry Foy in Brussels
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