Will Trump's 50-Day Deadline Shift Putin? Doubtful, Analysts Say

American Military News

2 days ago

This article was originally published by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and is reprinted with permission.
US President Donald Trump handed the Kremlin a clear warning this week, announcing plans for weapons supplies to Kyiv via Europe and saying the United States will impose 'very severe tariffs' on Russia if it doesn't reach a deal on the war in Ukraine within 50 days.
Trump did not specify whether a cease-fire would suffice, or only a comprehensive peace deal. Either way, many analysts say it's unlikely to happen. Here's why.
Territorial Aims
Russian President Vladimir Putin's goals clearly go far beyond the conquest of part of Ukraine: He has made plain that he wants to subjugate the country and weaken NATO and the West, restoring a measure of Moscow's Soviet-era sway over swaths of Europe.
But a more immediate aim is all about territory. Russia occupies about 20 percent of Ukraine. In addition to the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia has controlled since 2014, Putin formally and falsely claims that the Ukrainian mainland regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhya, and Kherson are now Russian — including the substantial portions that Russia does not occupy.
Russia has said a full Ukrainian withdrawal from those four regions is a prerequisite of any peace deal — a demand that Kyiv says is unacceptable. And while analysts say Putin could weather any backlash at home if he agreed to a pact that would limit Russia's presence to the land it now holds, he has given zero indication that he might do that.
On the contrary, Russia has stuck to this demand in its rhetoric.
On the ground, it has sought to make its claim a reality, pressing forward in the Donetsk region in particular and bearing down on the ruined city of Pokrovsk.
In one of the first Russian reactions to Trump's remarks, Kremlin-aligned lawmaker Konstantin Kosachyov said on Telegram that 'oh so much can change on the battlefield in 50 days.'
Russia could seek to step up its offensive in the coming weeks, pushing to advance not just in the provinces it claims but also elsewhere, such as in the Kharkiv and Sumy regions north of Donetsk. In June, Putin issued a thinly veiled threat to try to capture the city of Sumy.
Still, there actually is a limit to what can change in six weeks on the battlefield, where incremental Russian gains have come at a massive cost in terms of casualties, which are estimated to be close to 1 million killed or wounded since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.
But while there is no way Russia can seize the remaining parts of the four regions by September — areas that include the capitals of Zaporizhzhya and Kherson — that may only sharpen Putin's desire to secure control over them on paper ahead of any deal.
'To me, it's clear that Putin does not want any cease-fire, at least not until he gains control over all the regions that are defined as Russian in his version of the constitution,' Dmitry Gudkov, a former opposition lawmaker in the Russian parliament, told Current Time on July 16. 'In essence, it would mean Ukraine's capitulation.'
'Ultimatums Are Unacceptable'
Trump has sought to broker an end to the war in Ukraine since he took office six months ago, following an election campaign in which he said he could get it done in a day or two. Facing pushback from Putin, most notably in the form of his carefully worded rejection of the US call for a 30-day cease-fire, Trump has had harsh words for Putin in recent weeks.
But the 50-day warning was the first time Trump has given the Kremlin an ultimatum — a form of pressure that Putin, who has made demands that other countries treat Russia as an equal a formal part of his foreign policy, does not seem to like. So while many in the West have been eager for Trump to make specific demands on Putin, it's not clear whether an ultimatum increases or decreases the chances of a deal.
Putin has not spoken publicly about Trump's remarks, and Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said nothing specific about them. Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, who oversees Moscow's ties with the US, said on July 15 that 'any attempts to make demands, especially ultimatums, are unacceptable to us.'
'If we cannot achieve our goals through diplomacy, then the [war against Ukraine] will continue,' Ryabkov said, delivering the closest thing so far to an official rejection of Trump's call for a deal within 50 days — by September 1 or 2, depending on how it's counted. 'This is an unshakable position.'
The Blame Game
The Kremlin may hope that Trump's turn against Putin in recent weeks is not so unshakable — and that if there's no deal come September, the pendulum will swing back and the US president will lay at least part of the blame on Kyiv.
One prominent view in Russia is that Trump's current focus is 'transient' and the increased support for Ukraine is 'a maneuver designed to increase pressure on Putin and test whether this approach yields results,' Tatyana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, wrote on X.
Those who hold this view believe that when 'it becomes evident that such pressure is ineffective — expected to be soon — Trump is likely to revert to a diplomatic course, including exerting pressure on Ukraine to reach a compromise,' Stanovaya wrote ahead of Trump's remarks.
Trump has put much of the blame on Ukraine at times in the past. And an aspect of his July 14 remarks that flew mostly under the radar was that he stressed that he hopes the push for a deal within 50 days will 'have an impact on Ukraine also.'
'We want to make sure that Ukraine does what they have to do,' Trump said. 'All of a sudden, they may feel emboldened and maybe they don't want [a deal] — this is a very difficult situation.'
'Not Ready For Prime Time'
In any case, though, there are at least two reasons why the threat of sanctions seems unlikely to push Putin much closer to a deal with Ukraine to halt or end the war at this point. One is that it is unclear how the measures Trump threatened — chiefly, tariffs or sanctions on countries that buy Russian oil — would work.
Trump's July 14 announcement was 'laudable in its intention to hit Russia on the economic side' but 'not ready for prime time in its details,' Daniel Fried, a fellow at the Atlantic Council think tank and an architect of US sanctions against Russia after it seized Crimea in 2014, said on the podcast Just Security.
It's also unclear how well they would work if they are put in place, so the Kremlin could be inclined to take its chances.
'China and India are the top two recipients of Russian energy exports, and the expectation that they will pressure Putin to end his war in the next 50 days seems naïve,' Michael McFaul, a political science professor at Stanford University and the US ambassador to Russia in 2012-14, wrote in Time Magazine.
The other reason is that Russia has weathered Western sanctions so far and the Kremlin has made that a point of pride, slotting it into the overarching narrative that Russia — in fact the aggressor in an unprovoked war — is fighting a defensive campaign in a major showdown with West — and winning. Against that backdrop, appearing to bend in the face of the tariff threat is something Putin would be loath to do unless absolutely necessary.
'Two Big Contingencies'
The same may go for the stepped-up weapons shipments that Trump has promised Ukraine, with NATO allies footing the bill by purchasing Patriot air-defense missile systems and other arms from the United States or sending Kyiv weapons they have already received.
Fried, the former sanctions architect, said that if Trump's announcements on weapons for Ukraine and economic pressure on Russia are 'crystallized, sharpened, and implemented,' it could make a big difference in terms of the war and the path to peace.
'Two big contingencies: Get the weapons flowing and keep them flowing; and crystallize our policy options for hitting the Russian economy. You do both and Ukraine's in a very different position,' he said. 'If Putin's assumptions or his hopes for a US failure of leadership and abandonment of Ukraine prove to be false, then he may have to settle.'
Other analysts suggest that's not about to happen anytime soon, if at all.
'I think…we're going to need to see the United States showing a lot more muscle if it really is going to be able to bring Putin to the table in any kind of meaningful way,' Russia expert Mark Galeotti said on the This Is Not A Drill podcast.
The prevailing view in Russia is that 'none of these developments will alter Putin's strategy of coercing Kyiv into capitulation by any available means,' Stanovaya wrote.
'Putin will not be beaten out of his war optimism easily, and he believes [Trump] has few cards,' Alexander Gabuev, director of Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin, wrote on X on July 14.
As far back as winter 'it was clear that Vladimir Putin is convinced [of] one thing: time is on his side,' Gabuev wrote. 'This is why he isn't interested in a deal [that's] not on his terms.'