Douglas Murray: A 50-day deadline is 50 days to kill. Force Putin's hand now

New York Post

3 hours ago

Who would ever have thought that dealing with the Middle East would look easy?
But that is what President Trump has shown since he came into office.
And though there is still needs to be a hostage-return and cease-fire deal in Gaza, the President's strong and decisive action against the mullahs in Iran helped pacify the world's least pacifist region.
By contrast, the other great foreign policy challenge President Trump inherited remains as complicated as hell.
The president and vice president's duffing-up of President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office in February might have been a low point in US-Ukraine relations.
But in the months since then it is Vladimir Putin who has started to annoy President Trump.
Because it is Putin who has been so completely unwilling to budge.
Every time a cease-fire has looked close, the Russian president has sent even more rocket and drone barrages towards Ukraine.
As the months have progressed Trump has admitted to losing patience with his Russian counterpart.
That culminated this week in the president's announcement of two new steps in his efforts to stop the war.
The first, mentioned alongside NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in the White House, is for America to sell high-quality US weapons to America's European allies, who will in turn pass them on to the Ukrainians.
This is a clever move on the president's part — making sure that Ukraine continues to be able to defend itself without committing the financial resources that Trump has repeatedly told his voters he wouldn't send.
The second announcement was that America could impose secondary tariffs on Russia.
Again, it is a smart idea.
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The allegedly 'stringent' sanctions that the Biden administration placed on Russia since the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine in 2022 have failed to work.
The Russian economy has not faltered. It has gone onto a wartime footing and a full armaments-producing capability.
And while America and other Western allies might not have any dealings with the Russian economy, much of the rest of the world still does.
In fact, despite all the tough talk from Europe, there are reports that EU countries bought more Russian natural resources in the past year than they sent in financial aid to Ukraine.
Talk about mixed ­messaging.
But for the past three years, Russia has had plenty of other countries it can still sell its oil and natural gas to.
These include Turkey, India and South Korea.
So Trump suggested this week that he is considering putting secondary tariffs on such countries.
That is, if countries want to help fund Putin's war efforts by buying his natural resources then they will have to pay at least 100% tariffs when dealing with the United States.
In effect these countries would have to choose which market they'd rather operate in.
Would they rather have access to the greatest market in the world — the US — or would they like to continue to barter at Vladimir Putin's decrepit trade stall?
It's a smart policy, and we'll see if the president follows through on it.
But in the meantime there is one vast, looming problem.
The president has given Russia 50 days' notice on the secondary tariffs issue.
As President Zelensky said in an exclusive sit-down with The Post this week, this gives Putin 50 days to continue escalating the conflict.
As Zelensky said to Caitlin Doornbos, 'Fifty days, for us, is just — every day is scary.'
He is right. It is hard to communicate to readers living in the realm of peace just what a 'normal' night is like even in the capital of Kyiv these days.
Even a quiet night will include the sound of multiple Russian drones and UAVs flying at the city, plus the bursts of gunfire as under-equipped Ukrainian forces try to shoot the Russian weapons down from the sky.
Putin has shown before that he likes to 'outsmart' Trump.
In March, the two leaders agreed to an immediate cease-fire against all energy and infrastructure.
Within hours, Putin carried out one of his biggest attacks to date on Ukraine's energy facilities.
It is almost certain that if Putin thinks he has 50 days before anything happens he will use those 50 days to up his attacks and then stall for more time.
Perhaps Trump can do with Putin what he so successfully did with the Iranian mullahs.
Which was to offer to count to 10 and then go ahead and surprise them.
We'll see.
The battle is not just a fight for Ukraine's survival.
It is also a battle of nerves between two of the most steel-nerved leaders in the world.
How many voters really care about Epstein?
Twitter (X) is not the real world.
Who knew?
If you were on the social media site for the past week you'd have thought that the most important issue to American voters is the dead criminal Jeffrey Epstein.
There´s a huge amount we still don't know about the convicted sex offender.
And there's plenty about him — the sources of his wealth, high-profile connections, and manner of his death — the public deserve to know about.
But outside the Twitter-sphere Epstein isn't the story at the moment.
Some MAGA influencers have decided that the release or otherwise of all known information about Epstein is a 'make or break' issue between them and the President.
The President has expressed understandable frustration that he should be distracted from matters like, say, the economy, and keep getting asked about Epstein.
Online personalities threaten that Trump is going to lose all support from his base unless every file relating to Epstein is released.
And yet despite this bragging threat, the polls show otherwise.
President Trump's approval rating among Republican voters actually went up this week, according to two separate polls.
So whether or not the administration is right in its attitude towards the files, Trump himself is absolutely wise to look at his Twitter critics and say, 'Oh yeah, you and whose online army?'