Gestures are not enough — we need a coherent strategy for Ukraine

Times

2 days ago

In the run-up to the presidential election in 2024, Donald Trump often expressed his confident belief that he could stop the war between Russia and Ukraine within 24 hours. In the months since, despite the US president's frequent oscillations between flattery of Vladimir Putin and exasperation, the latter has done everything possible to disabuse Mr Trump of his initial assumption. Indeed, in recent months Moscow has escalated its offensive with thousands of drones and missiles.
In Scotland on July 28, Mr Trump warned Russia that it had a new deadline of 'ten or 12 days' to reach a peace deal with Ukraine or face tough new sanctions. Mr Putin was not slow to give his reply. Last Thursday morning, just three days later, Kyiv was surveying the grotesque aftermath of a seven-hour Russian aerial bombardment which killed at least 31 people and injured more than 150: the deadliest attack on the city in a year.
Mr Trump's early tensions with President Zelensky, the flashpoint of which was a notoriously ill-humoured meeting in the Oval Office in February, have given way to his growing public frustration with Mr Putin. That anger has translated in modern-day gunboat diplomacy with Mr Trump deploying two nuclear submarines nearer to Russia. In April, after a Russian air attack killed 12 people in Kyiv, Mr Trump pleaded in a social media post 'Vladimir, STOP!'. In May, after a weekend of Russian drone and missile assaults upon Ukraine, he observed that Mr Putin had 'gone absolutely CRAZY'.
• Peace deadline shows Trump has run out of patience with Putin
Following the most recent outrage, the US president's rhetoric has hardened, to describe Russia's actions as 'disgusting' and warn that 'we're going to put sanctions' on Russia. For a man whose abiding creed is the 'art of the deal' this much must now be glaringly apparent to Mr Trump: the US has already made significant concessions with Russia on Ukraine, and received nothing in return. Not least among these were the indications by Pete Hegseth, the US defence secretary, that Ukraine could not expect to reclaim the land which Russia has seized since 2014, and nor would it be permitted to join Nato.
Given Mr Putin's unwillingness to compromise, the time for heavy US sanctions against Russia is long overdue. Without decisive action, Mr Trump will increasingly resemble a spurned and insulted King Lear, threatening, 'I will do such things — what they are yet I know not, but they shall be the terrors of the earth!' Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, recently openly ridiculed Mr Trump's shifting deadlines and ultimatums. So did the excitable former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, who also verbally menaced the US leader with a Russian Cold-War era nuclear system known as the 'Dead Hand'.
Beyond such symbolic gestures as moving the submarines, a much more cool-headed and coherent US approach to Russian aggression is needed. Mr Trump has spoken of sanctions and 'secondary tariffs', suggesting penalties on countries that trade strongly with Russia, such as India, China and Turkey. He has also announced an unspecified 'penalty' on India for its commerce with Moscow in energy and arms. Yet there remain many other potential moves, including pressuring other countries over Russia trade; ramping up the supply of weapons for Ukraine; reaching agreement with Kyiv for the joint production of advanced drones; and encouraging Europe to transfer £230 billion of frozen Russian state assets to Ukraine. A bipartisan bid in the US Congress to provide $54.6 billion in aid to Ukraine over the next two years also deserves widespread support.
The US envoy Steve Witkoff is reportedly being dispatched, yet again, to Moscow. He has little thus far to show for his many chats with Mr Putin. If the US itself is not to be irrevocably weakened on the world stage, he must show that he, and his boss in the White House, finally mean business.