For two months, the White House attitude towards the Kremlin has been hot opening.
For his part, the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, has given little in return, despite his declared will to cooperate.
Their forces have continued to bombard Ukraine, both in the front and in the interior of the country. He has barely yielded in the peace negotiations, carrying an agreement to the unconditional fire of 30 days with innumerable conditions. Their subordinates have lengthened the conversations, demanding in recent days a limited truce in the Black Sea.
Then, during an appearance in the Arctic at the end of last week, Putin suggested that it may be necessary to install a temporary Ukrainian government under the auspices of the United Nations and celebrate elections to pave the path to a lasting end of the war.
The involvement was that a quick peace was not on the horizon, with Putin, suggesting that he could not reach an agreement with the Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelenski, whom Moscow has been crossing illegitimate for months.
President Donald Trump took note.
The US president declared this weekend to NBC News that he was “very angry” for the comments, and threatened to impose tariffs on any country that bought Russian oil, a measure that could make a dent in the most crucial source of income in Moscow for war.
“If Russia and I are not able to reach an agreement to stop the spill of blood in Ukraine, and if I think it has been Russia’s fault – which may not be – but if I think it has been Russia’s fault, I will impose tariffs secondary to oil, to all the oil that comes out of Russia,” Trump said.
The result is a matter of increasing relevance to the US government that has been more favorable to Russia in decades: is Washington prepared to press Putin, whose authoritarian power, despised by the limits of the mandates and crossed against the liberals have attracted Trump for a long time?
“I think Trump wants both an agreement with Putin that he will not immediately go in the other direction to press Russia,” said Stefan Meister, an expert in Russia of the German Foreign Relations Council in Berlin. “But I think we are approaching a turning point in which Trump understands that Putin might not be interested in any agreement and that he will always put something additional on the table of what he wants to get.”
On the battlefield there are no signs that Putin intends to go back.
Russian drones are bombing Ukrainian cities with intense frequency and ferocity. In recent weeks, the attacks have adopted a deadly pattern as Russia concentrates a storm of drones, many of them armed with powerful thermobaric eyes, on different population centers.
The Russian forces are preparing to launch another large -scale offensive, according to the Ukrainian controls, amid intense fighting throughout the front. Putin, far from seeing a stagnant conflict, boasts that his army is preparing to “end” the Ukrainian military.
“There are reasons to believe that we will end them,” Putin said during a visit to a nuclear propulsion submarine in Murmansk. Russia, he said, is “advancing towards the achievement of all the objectives declared at the beginning of the special operation.”
These objectives, ultimately, consist of putting Ukraine again under the domain of Moscow.
Despite annoying before Trump’s demand to obtain rights over his minerals, Ukraine has accepted all the fireproof proposals that the Trump government has presented to stop the violence: from an unconditional pause of 30 days in the attacks on the energy infrastructure until the cessation of violence in the Black Sea.
The efforts have generated for kyiv only a little good will in Washington, which is now directed to a large extent by skeptical leaders with respect to Ukraine.
Trump also threatened Zelenski during the weekend, accusing the Ukrainian leader of trying back in the agreement to grant the United States mining rights as compensation for US aid.
“He is trying to back down in the agreement on the rare earths and, if he does, he will have problems. Great problems,” Trump told reporters on Sunday aboard the Air Force One.
Putin has been questioning the sovereignty of Ukraine for a long time, and the US government said that his invasion of Ukraine in 2022 aimed to overthrow the Zelenski government. On Friday Putin seemed to reiterate that objective, asking that a “temporary international administration” be installed.
While Putin expands his demand list, Russian attacks with drones do not cease. In recent days, Russia attacked a hotel complex in Dnipró, in the center of Ukraine, killing four civilians and hurting around 20 people, as well as a hospital and residential housing in Jarkov, killing two people and hurting more than 50.
“The geography and brutality of the Russian attacks, not only occasionally, but every day and every night, show that Putin does not care about diplomacy in the least,” Zelenski said Sunday night. “For several weeks, the United States has proposed a stop to unconditional fire. And almost every day, in response to this proposal, there are Russian drones, bombs, artillery bombings and ballistic attacks.”
Until now, Trump’s government has refused to take any significant measure to press Russia. Trump has refused to recognize that it was Russia who started the war, falsely declared that Zelenski was a “dictator” and briefly suspended US military aid and the exchange of intelligence with Ukraine after a disastrous meeting in the oval office.
At the same time, the White House has taken measures that benefit the Kremlin, such as stopping the work of several US security agencies to counteract sabotage, misinformation and Russian cyber warmen, dissolve an FBI team that confiscated the assets of Russian oligarchs and dismantle organizations that Moscow has hates for a long time, such as the use agency.
Trump said he planned to speak with Putin this week. His threat of imposing new punitive measures against Russia took place after several hours playing golf with the president of Finland, Alexander Stubb, firm supporter of Ukraine.
After the meeting, Stubb said at a press conference in London that he had suggested to Trump to set a deadline for Russia to accept a loss of unconditional fire: April 20, which is Domingo de Resurrection.
The limited agreement of Russia and Ukraine to stop attacks on energy infrastructure for 30 days, which did not contain any application mechanism, seems to be falling apart. Both parties have already accused each other of violating the agreement.
Dmitri Peskov, spokesman for Kremlin, said Monday that there was no scheduled call between Putin and Trump this week, but said that a “very quickly” could be arranged. Peskov fell importance to Trump’s threat related to oil, and said Russia continued to collaborate with the United States.
Trump has already threatened Russia on other occasions. In January he wrote in Truth Social that Putin had to “reach an agreement now and stop this ridiculous war” and warned the Russian leader that “we can do it for good or bad.”
The first government of the US president, full of critical figures with Russia, approved measures that challenged Moscow. But in the second there are many of those figures, except Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who in the past has promoted a firmer position against Russia.
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Trump promised during his campaign that after becoming president he would end the conflict in 24 hours. Putin’s comments made peace seem further, raising questions about what the US leader will do if he realizes that his negotiations with Moscow have reached a dead point.
“It is an illusion of Trump’s team to think that Putin will give them what they want,” said Meister. “Putin has completely different interests. There are no points in common. In a way it is an idea built by Trump’s team, and they will understand it for bad.”