For years, President Donald Trump has bragged that he, and only he, could bring an end to the Russia-Ukraine war. “I’ll have that done in 24 hours,” he said repeatedly during his most recent presidential campaign. Once back in the White House, he told advisers to plan for a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, in the hope of creating a made-for-TV spectacle during which he could formally announce a resolution to the war, two administration officials and an outside adviser told me.
But plans are now shifting, those officials said. (I agreed not to name them so that they could discuss internal deliberations.) Trump still wants to establish closer ties with Putin, and the White House will likely revisit the possibility of a meeting before long. But officials now expect that any such summit won’t involve negotiations to end the fighting.
After months of pushing for a cease-fire deal, the United States is preparing to take a step back from peace talks. Trump made this change in strategy clear after holding calls this week with Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and suggesting that he will no longer work to personally broker an agreement between the two leaders. Europe is on its own. And Russia has been handed a win, at least temporarily escaping consequences from the United States while it continues to pursue its aggression.
“I think something’s going to happen,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday, seemingly still hoping for an agreement. But, he added, “if it doesn’t, I just back away, and they’re going to have to keep going. This was a European situation. It should have remained a European situation.”
Perhaps this outcome was inevitable. Trump has long been deferential to Putin, skeptical of Europe, and steadfast in his belief that American foreign policy should prioritize business and trade. He has frequently affirmed Russia’s narrative about the war—that Ukraine provoked the conflict—and repeatedly demanded Ukrainian concessions for peace while asking little of Putin. His flashes of frustration with his Russian counterpart have been rare and brief. A few weeks ago, after meeting with Zelensky at Pope Francis’s funeral, Trump threatened new sanctions on Russia; as he put it then, Putin’s decision to ignore U.S. calls for a 30-day cease-fire revealed that he might not “want to stop the war” and “has to be dealt with differently.” But to this point, no new sanctions have been levied.
When Putin proposed a meeting with Zelensky in Istanbul last week, Trump hoped that cease-fire talks were on the verge of a breakthrough, one of the administration officials I spoke with said. Zelensky traveled to Turkey, and Trump, already in the region for the first foreign trip of his new term, signaled that he would be willing to join if the Russian leader went as well. Instead, Putin blew off the meeting and sent a low-level delegation. Did the fact that Ukrainian and Russian officials met for the first time since the invasion represent a degree of progress? Yes. But nothing of note came from the meeting, and Russia’s demands remain extreme. Trump privately felt stung that Putin declined the chance to meet, the outside adviser, who spoke with the president after the Istanbul meeting, told me.
Trump “has grown weary and frustrated with both sides of the conflict,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Monday, after the president had held his calls with the Russian and Ukrainian leaders. Trump spent two hours on the phone with Putin in a conversation that both the White House and the Kremlin described as warm. Later that day, Trump declared on Truth Social that Putin had agreed to “immediately” start direct negotiations with Ukraine toward a cease-fire and a broader deal to end the war. Setting aside the fact that direct talks had already started in Turkey, Trump, by not insisting that Russia accept America’s 30-day cease-fire proposal, was giving Putin just what he wanted: permission for negotiations to move ahead more slowly. The sluggish pace will allow Russia to continue to inflict damage on Ukraine and win more territory, potentially strengthening Moscow’s position for future negotiations.
“Vladimir Putin wants to keep the war going,” Jake Sullivan, who was President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, told me. “He thinks that terrorizing cities will weaken their morale, and he thinks eventually their lines will crack and he’ll make substantially more progress on the ground.” Sullivan said that by agreeing to talks with Ukraine—even in vague, toothless terms—Putin had done enough to placate Trump for now. “He wants to keep the war going but, on the other hand, keep Trump from flipping on him. And so his gambit wins.”
Kylie Newbold, Trump’s National Security Council spokesperson, told me in a statement: “This is a war we inherited—it is Biden’s war. There was no plan or strategy to bring the conflict and killing to an end, but now under President Trump the two sides are agreeing to the first direct talks in three years. This is an important step forward.”
In his Truth Social post, Trump suggested that the United States was stepping back from the talks because Ukraine and Russia “know details of a negotiation that nobody else would be aware of.” Hours earlier, Vice President J. D. Vance had similarly declared the conflict “not our war,” saying, “We’re going to try to end it, but if we can’t end it, we’re eventually going to say: ‘You know what? That was worth a try, but we’re not doing any more.’” Trump added Monday that he wanted the Vatican, rather than the U.S., to host negotiations.
Zelensky might welcome divine intervention, but the potential lack of U.S. involvement alarmed him. On X, he insisted that “the negotiation process must involve both American and European representatives at the appropriate level.”
According to the Kremlin’s readout of Putin’s call with Trump, the Russian leader touted to Trump the possibility of significant American-Russian business deals. Trump seemed enthusiastic in his Truth Social post. “Russia wants to do largescale TRADE with the United States when this catastrophic ‘bloodbath’ is over, and I agree. There is a tremendous opportunity for Russia to create massive amounts of jobs and wealth. Its potential is UNLIMITED,” he wrote. The outside adviser and a third administration official I spoke with both told me that one of Trump’s primary motivations for ending the conflict is that he wants to normalize relations with Moscow and negotiate a trade deal involving Russia’s rare-earth minerals.
The U.S. is continuing to share intelligence with Ukraine and to send some aid there. (The administration briefly paused both after Trump’s heated Oval Office meeting with Zelensky in February, leading to Russian gains in the war.) As long as the spigot remains open, many experts believe, Ukraine can hold off Moscow’s advances on the battlefield. And Washington might yet impose more penalties on Moscow. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina has broken with Trump by proposing tough sanctions against Russia—as well as secondary sanctions against other nations that do business with Moscow—if Putin does not commit to peace talks. The measure now has the support of a bipartisan group of nearly 80 senators—a veto-proof majority, as Senator Richard Blumenthal, the first co-sponsor of the bill, pointed out to me. “It’s no secret that Donald Trump is mercurial on the subject of Ukraine. He’s in again and out again in his attempts to make a deal. He’s being played by Putin,” Blumenthal said.
With Trump stepping away from the peace negotiations, Europe will bear more of the responsibility for supplying Ukraine with weapons and guaranteeing its future security. The continent has rallied around Ukraine since the war began, but European militaries cannot match the ability of the United States to fortify Kyiv. A U.S. withdrawal would likely lead to more Russian gains. It would also provide further evidence of the Trump administration’s skepticism toward Europe. Trump has repeatedly feuded with European leaders over issues of trade and defense spending.
Zelensky, who has more aggressively courted Trump after their disastrous Oval Office meeting, admitted this week that he did not know whether the United States would join with European nations in stepping up sanctions against Russia, as the bloc did on Tuesday.
“We need to know who we can count on, and who we can’t. A support package from Europe is coming, and it will be a strong one,” he told reporters the day before the European Union levied the new penalties against Moscow. “As for the package from the United States—that’s a different story.”
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