Ukraine supporters focus on hope and resilience as US relations sour and war carries on
The theme of 'hope' was chosen long before this year's deterioration of Washington-Kyiv relations, but participants at an international Ukrainian studies conference said that hope is needed more than ever — not only in Ukraine but in the United States itself.
Religious leaders, scholars, artists and diplomats have been gathering at Notre Dame University in Indiana since Thursday for a three-day conference focused on 'Revolutions of Hope: Resilience and Recovery in Ukraine.'
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Yahoo
7 hours ago
- Yahoo
Putin Isn't Actually Enjoying This
The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. Within weeks of Donald Trump's second inauguration, pundits began saying that his return to office opened new doors for Vladimir Putin, offering Moscow opportunities it hadn't seen in years. The deference the new administration afforded the Kremlin appeared to be rivaled only by its hostility toward its own national-security establishment. Trump entered negotiations to end the war in Ukraine by presenting Putin with a bouquet of inexplicable concessions. Washington ruled out NATO membership for Ukraine—then proposed that it might recognize the illegally occupied Crimean peninsula as Russian (in a reversal of long-standing U.S. policy), allow Russia to retain most of the territory it had seized since 2022, and lift sanctions. The U.S. even sided against its European allies when they presented a resolution at the United Nations condemning Moscow—and then it drafted a peace proposal that omitted any criticism of Russia. You'd think Putin would be delighted by all of this. Instead, he's been thrown on his heels. Trump's efforts at rapprochement have left Russia's propaganda apparatus, foreign policy, and economic stability in worse shape than they were before January 20. Whatever the intent, Washington has robbed the Kremlin of its north star: opposition to the United States. After years of routinely threatening to drown the Eastern Seaboard, Moscow can no longer afford the luxury of calling America its enemy No. 1. Thanks to Trump, the Kremlin now has to portray Washington as a rational negotiating partner—even as American-made missiles continue to rain down on Russian troops. The title of Russia's civilizational enemy has been reassigned to the European Union. The Russian propaganda machine has some flexibility, but being locked in an existential struggle with the Netherlands is far less flattering to the imperial mindset than going up against the world's leading superpower. And so Russia's information mills seem to be glitching out. In a May 25 Truth Social post, Trump wrote that Putin was absolutely 'CRAZY' for bombing Ukrainian cities in the middle of negotiations. 'We are really grateful to the Americans and to President Trump personally,' Putin's spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said in response. The last time I scanned Russia's top propaganda sites, I couldn't find a single hostile reference to the United States. On May 20, Konstantin Kosachev, the deputy speaker of the Russian senate, described two emerging camps: a 'Russian American' one 'discussing prospects for achieving peace,' and a 'Ukrainian European' one 'exploring options for continuing the war.' The reversal isn't just a problem for Putin's media proxies. The Russian leader himself has been forced to improvise. For years, Putin claimed that direct talks with Ukraine were impossible because President Volodymyr Zelensky's government was illegitimate and, more important, Ukraine wasn't a real country—merely a proxy for the American imperial project. He framed the war as a conflict that only Russia and the U.S. could resolve, in a Yalta-style deal between great powers—preferably in occupied Yalta itself. Along came Trump, who repeatedly sidelined Ukraine and the EU to speak with Putin one-on-one. Putin looked set to get what he wanted. But then that changed, as all things Trump tend to do: By May, Putin wasn't carving up Europe with Trump—he was competing with Zelensky to convince the White House that the other side was out of control. Trump's point man for Russia is the billionaire real-estate developer Steve Witkoff, whose bewilderingly affectionate approach to Putin continues to flummox the Western media. His meetings with the Russian dictator last for hours. He forgoes American translators (relying instead on Russian intelligence assets), sits alone with top Kremlin negotiators, and emerges voicing Moscow's talking points without even being able to name the Ukrainian regions Russia claims as its own. Even seasoned diplomats have to resist being crushed by Russia's imperial grandeur when they are received like state dignitaries inside the Kremlin complex. Someone who devoted his life to building condos barely stands a chance. Still, the Kremlin surely knows that Witkoff has no authority over what America can offer Russia. Only Trump does. For now, the man trying to rebuild the Russian empire is forced to negotiate with the king of Manhattan real estate. And negotiate he must, because Trump has made forging a settlement between Russia and Ukraine a defining foreign-policy objective. The goal is an elusive one: Washington has so far failed to secure even a 30-day cease-fire. On May 1, the administration threatened to withdraw from the peace talks. Many in the West expected that this would translate into a win for the Kremlin: Trump, they assumed, would abandon Ukraine and strike a separate deal with Moscow. But Russia has reason to be wary that a thwarted Trump administration might not prove so amenable. The U.S. president apparently wants a diplomatic victory, and if he feels that he's been pushed aside, he may have less reason to end arms shipments to Ukraine—especially now that Kyiv is purchasing munitions—and more reason to blame Moscow for sabotaging the peace process. For the Kremlin, standing between Trump and the Nobel Peace Prize is risky, but agreeing to a cease-fire while Russia is making steady, if incremental, gains on the battlefield is a step too far. So it opted for a third path: Putin held a rare late-night press conference inviting Ukraine to bilateral negotiations, dodging the cease-fire while handing Trump a symbolic win that he could sell as a breakthrough. For the Russian dictator, whose foreign and domestic policy is shaped by Brioni-clad men playing by prison-yard rules, the need to appease the U.S. president in this way is a distinctly uncomfortable—and demeaning—shift from the predictable antagonism of the Joe Biden years. Trump frequently holds out the prospect of lifting sanctions or striking lucrative deals as incentives for Moscow to end the war. Russia was even spared from Trump's sweeping tariffs. But what the U.S. can offer Russia is ultimately underwhelming. The sanctions that hurt Russia the most—an oil-export ban, the freezing of two-thirds of its foreign reserves, and its exclusion from the SWIFT bank-to-bank payment network—all came from the EU. Russian exports to the United States were at their peak in 2011—before the annexation of Crimea, the full-scale war in Ukraine, and the U.S. energy boom—and amounted to just $34.6 billion worth of goods. That figure offers little hope for meaningful bilateral trade, especially now. What does matter to Russia is oil sales. And in the months before the renewed conflict between Israel and Iran, oil prices dropped by 20 percent, largely because of the Trump administration's global tariff war. This forced Moscow to revise its federal budget for 2025–26; triple this year's expected budget deficit, from 0.5 to 1.7 percent of GDP; and, as a result, tap its fiscal reserves for $5.51 billion, or about one-tenth of its liquid assets, to balance the budget. It also cost Russia $39 billion in anticipated hydrocarbon revenue—more than the proposed deals with the U.S. could make up for. In other words, without imposing a single new sanction, Trump has significantly intensified fiscal pressure on the Kremlin simply by dint of his erratic economic policies. Washington's public stance on Russia has certainly changed. One popularly circulated YouTube clip shows Secretary of State Marco Rubio refusing to call Putin a war criminal during a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on May 21. But as someone who once worked with the Kremlin (I produced a talk show for Russian state media in the late 2000s), I can assure you: Putin would much rather be labeled a war criminal with oil at $70 a barrel than a rational leader looking to end the war with oil at $56. During the first three years of Russia's all-out war in Ukraine, the United States and the EU presented a united front against Russia that proved, perhaps paradoxically, manageable for the Kremlin, in terms of both propaganda and strategic positioning. Trump has shattered that coherence, and now the Kremlin finds itself in an uncomfortable position, despite its triumphalist rhetoric and maximalist demands: It's scrambling to keep pace with an American president who has no idea where he's going.
Business Insider
8 hours ago
- Business Insider
Zelenskyy opens up about his clash with Trump in exclusive interview
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy talks about his relationship with Donald Trump, his doubts, and whether Ukraine can win the war with Russia in an interview with the Axel Springer Global Reporters network, of which Business Insider is a part.
Newsweek
9 hours ago
- Newsweek
Trump Slammed for Nod to Putin Mediator Role: "Astonished"
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. Ukraine's former prime minister told Newsweek he was "astonished" U.S. President Donald Trump would consider Russian President Vladimir Putin as a mediator for talks to bring Israeli and Iranian air strikes to an end. Trump said at the weekend he would be "open" to the possibility of the Kremlin leader wading in as a mediator for talks between Iran and Israel. Putin "is ready," Trump told an ABC reporter on Sunday. "He called me about it." The Kremlin leader told Trump Russia was willing to "engage in possible mediation efforts" with Israel and Iran, according to Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov. In an apparent cooling of his enthusiasm to involve the Kremlin chief in the Middle East strikes, Trump told the media on Wednesday: "Vladimir, let's mediate Russia first — you can worry about this later." Trump pledged to end the war in Ukraine in just 24 hours, but six months into his second stint in office, the Republican has failed to get Russia to ink a ceasefire. Ukraine agreed to a U.S. proposal in March. Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump, left, during a meeting at the Presidential Palace in Helsinki, on July 16, 2028. Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump, left, during a meeting at the Presidential Palace in Helsinki, on July 16, 2028. Sergey Guneev / Sputnik via AP Trump has pursued a thawing in relations with the Kremlin and has personally flattered Putin, who launched Russia's full-scale invasion of its neighbor in February 2022. But as Moscow intensified often lethal strikes on Ukrainian cities and progress toward a deal stalled, Trump's criticism of the Russian leader grew sharper. "I was frankly astonished that President Trump is even considering an option that Putin can be a mediator," Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who served two terms as Ukraine's prime minister between 2014 and 2016, told Newsweek. "How can he [Putin] mediate if he has a security defense pact with Iran?" Yatsenyuk said. Tehran last month ratified a two-decade strategic partnership with Moscow, bringing two countries commonly grouped under the "axis of evil" label closer together. The phrase is currently used to broadly refer to Russia, North Korea and Iran. Iran has supplied Russia with its Shahed explosive drones, also known as kamikaze uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs) that have long menaced Ukrainian cities. While slow-moving, the Shaheds—and the Russian domestically-made equivalents, the Geran drones—are hard for Ukraine's overworked air defenses to detect. The drones are known for their distinctive, low buzzing sound, and can carry warheads that shatter or explode when the UAV reaches its target. U.S. and European officials told The Wall Street Journal last fall that Tehran had delivered short-range ballistic missiles to Moscow. Russia has also received significant munitions and ballistic missile deliveries from North Korea, which last year became the first country outside the two countries at war to commit troops to the frontlines. Ukraine's military intelligence said earlier this month that Russia had agreed to help North Korea set up sites on the divided peninsula to manufacture Shahed drones, which would dramatically alter the threats countries like South Korea will have to contend with. Putin is a "collaborator with the Iranian regime," Yatsenyuk said. Israel on Friday launched what it described as "preemptive" strikes on key Iranian sites and personnel linked to Tehran's nuclear program, as well as the country's ballistic missile facilities and other military installations. Iran responded with waves of drone and ballistic missile strikes. Both Israel and the U.S. say they could not accept an Iran with nuclear weapons. Tehran says its program is peaceful, but its officials have publicly discussed the possibility of weaponizing nuclear sites. Israeli authorities say 24 people have been killed in Israel and more than 800 people injured since Friday. Iran's health ministry said earlier this week that 224 people had been killed in Israeli strikes, while a U.S.-based human rights group put the combined military and civilian death toll in Iran at 585 as of Wednesday. Trump said on Wednesday Iran is seeking a "deal," speaking shortly after Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khameini, said Iran would cause the U.S. "irreparable harm" if Washington joins Israeli operations. Speculation has surrounded whether the Republican president will authorize a U.S. entry into the conflict. The ongoing question is whether Trump will deploy U.S. B-2 stealth bombers, equipped with bunker-busting bombs, to target Iran's Fordow nuclear site. The facility, built under a mountain roughly 100 miles from Tehran, has not sustained any damage in Israeli strikes across the country, observers say. B-2s carrying 30,000-pound GBU-57/B bombs, known as Massive Ordnance Penetrators, are widely considered the only viable choice for targeting the site. Sergey Ryabkov, Russia's deputy foreign minister, said on Wednesday that U.S. military involvement would "radically destabilise the entire situation."
