Russians Wonder: Can Trump Really Negotiate Peace in Ukraine?

New York Times

19-04-2025

Many Russians cheered President Trump's election because they thought he could make a deal for a negotiated peace in Ukraine that would satisfy the Kremlin.
Three months into Mr. Trump's second term, the disappointment in Moscow is palpable.
In interviews, people in the Kremlin's orbit have revealed frustration both with Mr. Trump's whirlwind approach to the talks and with President Vladimir V. Putin's apparent inflexibility in the negotiations. With Mr. Trump and his top diplomat warning on Friday that the United States could walk away from the discussion, some of them fear that a collapse in talks could lead to a further escalation of the fighting.
Movement toward peace is going 'much more slowly than it should be, and not the way one would want it to be,' said Grigory A. Yavlinsky, a liberal politician in Moscow who held a rare meeting with Mr. Putin in 2023 to urge a cease-fire. In the meantime, he said, Mr. Putin 'is just fighting, he's seizing the moment. He wants to achieve the maximum before substantive talks.'
The question now is whether Mr. Putin climbs down from demands that seem little changed from the cease-fire conditions he outlined last summer, when he said Ukraine would have to agree not to join NATO and also withdraw from a large swath of territory before Russia stopped fighting.
For now, the increasingly blunt warnings from Mr. Trump and his lieutenants that they could run out of patience have had little effect. Mr. Putin has not budged from his rejection of a monthlong cease-fire that Ukraine agreed to in March.
Given Mr. Trump's lack of sympathy for Ukraine and his deepening conflict with American allies, Mr. Putin only appears to be gaining in confidence that Russia can eventually defeat Ukraine in a war of attrition. The Kremlin is dangling the possibility of lucrative American business deals in Russia in the hopes of appealing to Mr. Trump no matter what happens on the battlefield.
The top American diplomat, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, said on Friday that the United States could decide 'in a matter of days' to 'move on' from trying to end the war. Mr. Trump said later that 'if for some reason one of the two parties makes it very difficult,' the United States could decide that 'we're just going to take a pass.'
But the Kremlin has stayed steadfast in signaling that it's in no hurry for a deal, while claiming to remain 'open for dialogue.' Dmitri A. Medvedev, a former president, on Friday spoke for his country's pro-war commentariat in posting that Moscow wouldn't mind if the United States walked away from Ukraine, because 'then Russia will figure it out faster.'
Russians largely welcomed Mr. Trump's return to the White House — most of all, the independent pollster Levada reported, because it gave them 'hope that the war will end.'
Mr. Putin has said little about the war in public since a visit to an Arctic submarine last month in which he claimed Russia was ready to 'finish them off,' referring to Ukraine. He was host to a Trump envoy, Steve Witkoff, this month for their third hourslong meeting since February. American and Russian officials have met for in-person talks in Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United States.
None of those meetings have produced clear progress in reducing the intensity of the fighting or of Russia's missile strikes on Ukrainian cities. Nevertheless, Vice President JD Vance said on Friday that the White House still felt 'optimistic that we can hopefully bring this brutal war to a close.'
Behind the scenes, some Russians with Kremlin ties are voicing exasperation, though speaking only on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the ongoing diplomacy.
A person in touch with senior officials said that Mr. Putin had proved more recalcitrant than anticipated in agreeing to a cease-fire and that he appeared ready to keep fighting for full control of the four Ukrainian regions he claimed as part of Russia in 2022.
A second person close to the Kremlin said that despite the many hours Mr. Putin had spent speaking to Mr. Trump and to Mr. Witkoff, the Russian president appeared to have struggled to make it clear that he would not stop fighting without achieving some element of his broader goals, like ruling out further NATO expansion.
And an analyst close to the government said that Mr. Putin had yet to show the flexibility that many expected on territorial issues like the future of the four Ukrainian regions. At the same time, he said, the Kremlin was trying to 'diversify the negotiations portfolio' with the United States to include matters like energy, the Arctic and spaceflight, so that rapprochement with Washington could continue even if talks on Ukraine failed.
Some Russians say they believe that the impatience voiced by the White House is driven by American politics, given Mr. Trump's campaign promise to end the war quickly, and that a compromise remains possible. Feodor Voitolovsky, director of the Institute of World Economy and International Relations in Moscow, said that he had been surprised by Washington's 'naïveté' about how fast peace could be achieved but that both countries were 'at the beginning of the road' to getting there.
'Russia is not going to sacrifice its interests or its security in order to help Trump solve his domestic political problems,' Mr. Voitolovsky said in a phone interview.
If the United States does walk away from the Ukraine talks, he said, 'Russia will have to create the conditions for a diplomatic process' with 'new uses of force.'
Mr. Yavlinsky, the liberal politician in Moscow, held a late-night meeting with Mr. Putin in October 2023 to urge him to consider a cease-fire. Like many in Russia's business and political elite, he criticized the Biden administration for not trying harder to achieve a negotiated peace. After last November's election, Mr. Yavlinsky lauded Mr. Trump's stated desire to end the war.
But now, Mr. Yavlinsky said, Mr. Trump is failing to discuss Europe's postwar security — a necessary component for any deal — and urged more European involvement.
'The American administration has only the most general wishes of what it wants,' Mr. Yavlinsky said. 'There is no understanding of how exactly to achieve it.'