WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump is becoming increasingly pessimistic as he watches the two war nations meet in person, either at any time, or as leaders of the two war nations meet in person, according to two senior administrators.
Trump has not abandoned his hopes of resolving the conflict. He took part in a conference call with Ukrainian President Voldimi Zelensky and European leaders on Thursday. There, “Europe must stop purchasing Russian oil, which is funding the war,” White House officials said. Trump also argued that European leaders must expose economic pressure on China to take on Russia’s war efforts, officials added.
But Trump’s more view of reaching a peace deal highlights the distance he has traveled since the 2024 campaign. (He later said he said he was “figuratively.”) Since then, Trump has admitted that the war has proven more stubborn issues than he had expected.
It appears that last month’s whirlwind school efforts have been stagnating. Amidst anticipation of an elusive breakthrough, Trump flew to Anchorage, Alaska on August 15th for a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin. He landed in Alaska in hoping for a ceasefire and left without a ceasefire a few hours later.
Three days later, Trump held a meeting at the White House with Zelensky and European leaders. He then announced in February 2022 that Putin and Zelensky would meet for the first time since the war began, raising hopes that a reconciliation might be visible.
The meeting has not yet occurred and there are no signs. During this week’s visit to China, Putin said that if Ukraine does not agree to his demands, he will end the war with force. And he said he would meet Zelenskyy only in Moscow, the Russian capital.
Zelenskyy is willing to meet with Putin from certain Persian Gulf countries, Switzerland, Austria and Turkey, but it is not Putin’s lawn, a Ukrainian adviser said.
“The obstacles to peace from Russia are seeing false debates about the obstacles to peace from Russia and why there is no meeting between President Putin and Zelensky in the same room,” Sergie Leshchenko, adviser to Andry Yelmak, Zelensky’s staff chief, said in an interview.
He asked if he had a message to Putin, Trump told White House reporters this week: “I have no message to President Putin. He knows where I stand. He will make a decision in some way. Whatever his decision, we will be happy or unhappy about it.
As peace stagnates, the number of casualties continues to increase. Last week, Russia launched a massive attack on Kiev, the capital of Ukrainians, killing at least 15 people, including four children. Since Russia sent the tanks to Ukraine in February 2022, the number of casualties on both sides has reached around 1.5 million.
A European source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said on Thursday he was unhappy with the Trump administration not imposing meaningful new sanctions on Russia as a product to end the war.
“The pressure on Putin must be really tough so that he cannot continue his war machine,” Leshchenko said.
The complications may be the relationship between Trump and Putin. He told his advisor he was determined not to destroy it, the two who explained in his comments. Back in his first term, Trump said it was America’s concern that he was on civil terms with his Russian counterpart, who hosts nuclear weapons.
A potential advantage in maintaining leader-to-leader trust with Putin is that both parties can position themselves as trustworthy mediators, Western officials said in an interview. He enjoys leverage with both Putin and Zelensky.
In that vein, last month, Trump was asked by French President Emmanuel Macron on a hot microphone saying that President Putin wanted to make a deal “for me… like crazy, crazy.”
Sanctions are a tool that could rob Putin of concessions, but there is a downside in that each escalator twist puts Trump’s role as a fair broker at risk, officials said. The challenge is to cleverly spend time on sanctions and “dial back” when progress is made.
Another consideration is that sanctions can echo in unexpected ways. Management officials pointed to India as an example of the warning. When the US doubled India’s tariff rate as a punishment for purchasing Russian oil, its relationship with the US became sour. This week, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi appeared in China for an event hosted by Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
The US has long seen India as an important democratic partner in combating China and Russia’s influence around the world.
However, in China, Modi was seen holding hands with Putin and talking warmly with Xi. Administrative officials said the image of Modi, which is comfortable in Russia and China, is “not that big.”
In an interview, Brett Brune, who was the White House director of global engagement in the Obama administration, said:
