Can the West force Russia to stop its war in Ukraine?

RTÉ News​

9 hours ago

Monday's announcement by US President Donald Trump that Russia must agree to a ceasefire in Ukraine within 50 days or face heavy sanctions was the clearest indication yet that he and his administration have lost patience with Moscow.
Russian President Vladimir Putin's nice talk during their phone calls since February had amounted to "bulls**t", Mr Trump had told reporters the previous week.
During five months of US-led efforts to bring about a ceasefire, Russia has continued to strike Ukrainian cities with drones and ballistic missiles, killing civilians.
It was time for Mr Trump to save face and try to show that he still has some leverage over Mr Putin.
His commitment this week to send 17 Patriot air defence systems and other military equipment to Ukraine, paid for by NATO countries, will help Ukraine take out more Russian cruise and ballistic missiles – the very weapons that destroy Ukrainian apartment blocks and can kill scores of civilians in a single attack.
But Patriots are designed to take out heavy weapons, not smaller objects like drones.
Each Patriot missile costs around $4 million. Given that Russian forces are now launching about 400 drones at Ukraine on most nights, it would be too costly and impractical to use such a defensive weapon to win a drone war.
Ukraine will stick with its own drone interceptor units to shoot down Russia's Iranian-made Shahed drones.
For Russia's leader and the Kremlin's power base, Mr Trump's 50-day ultimatum changes nothing. Moscow's war continues unabated.
At least, that was the message stemming from senior Russian officials on Tuesday, one day after Mr Trump's comments alongside NATO chief Mark Rutte.
Sergey Lavrov, Russia's foreign minister, claimed that Mr Trump was acting under pressure from other NATO countries and the European Union to help Ukraine continue fighting, now a customary Kremlin narrative.
The seasoned diplomat also seemed to belittle Mr Trump's ultimatum too.
"We want to understand what is behind this statement on 50 days. It used to be 24 hours, and it was 100 days. We've all been through this," said Mr Lavrov.
Beyond the theatrics, he had a point.
Previous ultimatums have been given by the US, only to be quickly forgotten about.
Back in May, the US said it would walk away from the process if both Russia and Ukraine did not agree to a ceasefire within within a week. (Around the same time, the leaders of France, Germany, Poland and the UK issued their own 48 hour deadline for Russia to come to the negotiating table or face heavy sanctions).
But Mr Putin outfoxed the Americans and the Europeans and called for direct talks with Ukraine, which Mr Trump blessed.
Two sets of brief mid-level talks between Russian and Ukrainian delegations in Istanbul were a token gesture from Russia to keep the US onboard.
And bar two large-scale prisoner exchanges and the return of soldiers' bodies by both sides, Russia has used the Istanbul talks as a platform to air its hardline demands for ending the war.
So given the past record of lapsed ultimatums, it is little wonder that Russia has shrugged off this latest one too.
"I think the Russians don't believe anything will happen after 50 days. They see the Trump court as divided on what to do," Witold Rodkiewicz, a Russia foreign policy expert at Warsaw's Centre for Eastern Studies, told RTÉ News.
The 50-day deadline, he said, confirmed Russia's view that Mr Trump is "looking for ways to avoid confrontation with Moscow".
Overall, the reaction from senior Russian officials to both the 50-day ultimatum and news that Kyiv would receive more Patriot batteries, was cautious and fell short of citicising Mr Trump too harshly.
Mr Putin has remained silent, but sources close to the Kremlin told Reuters on Tuesday that the Russian president would continue the "special military operation" and not yield to Western pressure.
However, the supply of more new Patriot batteries is a huge boost for Ukraine's defences and its troops in the field.
Ukrainian officials had asked for at least 10 new Patriot batteries to combat Russian missile attacks. They will now receive up to 17, which would bring their total number of Patriot systems to 25.
That kind of defensive weaponry will make it harder for Russian heavy missiles to hit their targets.
Deliveries of the first German-owned Patriot systems are expected to happen quickly according to NATO's top military commander Alexus Grynkewich.
But employing Patriots is a short-term, defensive measure that does not remove Russia's ability to launch aerial attacks on Ukrainian cities.
Mr Trump this week ruled out sending long-range missiles to Kyiv, which would enable Ukraine to destroy military targets in Russian-occupied Ukraine and Russia itself from where missiles are launched. Taking out those sites directly would be a more conventional approach to stopping Russia's missile attacks.
Last November, the Biden administration (during its final weeks in office) approved such a move leading to heightened tensions between Washington and Russia. Mr Trump wants to avoid that kind of hostile relationship with Moscow.
It also seems unlikely that the spectre of new EU sanctions will force Russia to agree to a ceasefire.
Whereas the US has given Russia 50 days to stop fighting before introducing hard-hitting sanctions, yesterday the EU introduced its toughest sanctions package against Russia since the start of the war.
The new sanctions will lower the existing $60 per barrel price cap on Russian oil exports to $47.60.
They will also ban more than 100 ships from Russia's so-called 'shadow fleet' - vessels that carry exported Russian oil - from docking at ports across the EU.
Reuters reported that sanctions will also be placed on a Russian-owned oil refinery in India and two Chinese banks, which will frustrate Russia's oil trade with the two countries.
Mr Zelensky hailed the sanctions as "'essential and timely".
However, like its response to the Trump ultimatum, the Kremlin has appeared unfazed by these new economic penalties.
Former Russian president and nationalist firebrand Dmitry Medvedev said yesterday that Russia would withstand the bloc's new sanctions and that Russian forces would intensify their attacks on what he called "so-called Ukraine".
It was a reminder that European sanctions alone are unlikely to force Russia's leadership to end its three and a half year war.
To even come remotely close to achieving that goal, the US would need to follow through on its ultimatum to impose 100% tariffs on countries that trade with Russia.
A more drastic measure could come in the form of a bipartisan US Senate bill that Republican senator Lindsey Graham has been working on for months.
The Sanctioning Russia Act of 2025 now has the support of 85 senators and, if passed through Congress, would enable the US president to impose 500% tariffs on countries that buy Russian oil and gas exports.
Mr Graham told CBS News this week that the act would give Mr Trump a "sledgehammer" to end the war.
Many other experts believe that economic penalties alone will not force Russia to halt its war.
"The only solution to end this war is the defeat of the Russian army on the battlefield," said Mr Rodkiewicz.
Yet, Monday's statements in the White House did not bring about a change in Russia's ground offensive.
Russia's defence ministry this week claimed its forces captured another handful of settlements along the frontline, including the southern Zaporizhzhia region.
Moscow's air war on Ukraine has also continued as usual.
In the early hours of Wednesday morning, Russia fired 400 drones at Ukrainian regions in the east, south and centre of the country, but only one ballistic missile.
Later that day, Russian forces dropped a 500kg bomb on a shopping district in the town of Dobropillia in Donetsk region, killing two people and injuring 27. The attack took place at 5pm when the area was busy with shoppers.
Russia's ministry of defence regularly reports that Ukraine launches drone attacks on targets inside Russia, but such strikes are generally smaller in scale compared to Moscow's massive drone assaults on Ukrainian regions.
Russia maintains that it is ready for more direct talks with Ukraine, while Ukrainian foreign minister Andrii Sybiha indicated this week that Kyiv is also prepared for more talks.
But Moscow's hardline demands to end the fighting remain the same, meaning that any third round of talks in Istanbul will be brief and limited to more prisoner exchanges.
Mr Trump's 50-day deadline looks likely go down to the wire and Russia is more than willing to test the his administration's resolve to implement its threatened tariffs.