{"id":37566,"date":"2025-01-22T18:25:00","date_gmt":"2025-01-23T00:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=37566"},"modified":"2025-01-22T20:26:16","modified_gmt":"2025-01-23T02:26:16","slug":"trump-talks-tough-with-putin-on-ending-ukraine-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=37566","title":{"rendered":"Trump talks tough with Putin on ending Ukraine war"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

President Trump\u2002<\/u><\/a>is turning up the heat on Russian President Vladimir Putin\u2002<\/u><\/a>in his first days in power, seeking to pressure Russia\u2019s leader to come to the negotiating table for a deal to end the war in Ukraine. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A little more than 48 hours since returning to the White House, Trump said Putin is \u201cdestroying his country\u201d with the nearly three-year war against Kyiv and threatened increased sanctions on Russia and its enablers if a deal is not quickly reached. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He has qualified his threats with flattery, saying that he loves the Russian people and has \u201calways had a very good relationship with President Putin.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m not looking to hurt Russia,\u201d Trump posted on his social media site Truth Social on Wednesday. \u201cI\u2019m going to do Russia, whose Economy is failing, and President Putin, a very big FAVOR. Settle now, and STOP this ridiculous War! IT\u2019S ONLY GOING TO GET WORSE.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The posts are an opening salvo in Trump\u2019s efforts to show that his \u201cpeace through strength\u201d policy can end Europe\u2019s biggest land war in almost a century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The president has seen some early diplomatic successes<\/u><\/a> in the Middle East. He dispatched his special envoy for the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, to pressure Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu\u2002<\/u><\/a>to accept a ceasefire and hostage release deal with Hamas in the last week of the Biden administration. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the president has said that resolving Russia\u2019s war in Ukraine is a harder challenge compared to the Middle East. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Former President Biden\u2019s\u2002<\/u><\/a>team did a lot of heavy lifting over a year of negotiations to the final ceasefire text between Israel and Hamas. When Trump stepped in, he deployed political capital built up during his first term with Israel and regional partners. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Russia\u2019s war in Ukraine is a different beast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion against Ukraine in February 2022 marked a shocking violation of the post-World War II order, with Moscow seeking to change the borders of a sovereign country by force. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ukraine succeeded in preserving its country \u2014 repelling Russian forces surrounding Kyiv in those first few, fraught days \u2014 but has failed to expel Russia from about 20 percent of Ukrainian territory in the east of the country. This is on top of territory Russia invaded and annexed in 2014, the administrative regions of Luhansk, Donetsk and the Crimean peninsula. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three years into the war, Ukrainian forces are struggling to replenish their troops, and the population is suffering under almost daily attacks on civilian areas and energy infrastructure \u2014 an attempt to freeze the country during the winter. And Russian forces are allegedly carrying out targeted drone attacks against civilians in front-line cities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ukrainian public opinion is increasingly open<\/u><\/a> to negotiating an end to the war as soon as possible. And Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky\u2002<\/u><\/a>has said he\u2019s optimistic Trump\u2019s decisiveness could shift the dynamics of the war. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe can be decisive in this war. He is capable of stopping Putin or, to put it more fairly, help us stop Putin. He is able to do this,\u201d Zelensky said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump, in remarks from the Oval Office on Monday, said he viewed Zelensky as wanting to make a deal. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know if Putin does, he might not, I don\u2019t know. He should make a deal,\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Russia and Ukraine are not the only players. International coalitions are entrenched on either side of the fray, with a number of countries straddling the line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If Trump wants to exercise leverage on Russia, he\u2019ll need unity with Europe, said Sam Greene, director for democratic resilience at the Center for European Policy Analysis, a think tank based in Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That could prove difficult if he fulfills his promise to impose hefty tariffs on the continent. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think the reality is that Trump does not have \u2014 the U.S. in general does not have \u2014 tremendous leverage over either of the parties in this conflict,\u201d Greene said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not beyond the realm of possibility where Trump, Waltz and Rubio \u2014 and whoever is going to be important when it comes to foreign policy \u2014 sit down and map out all of the overlapping and interlocking interests and start to prioritize,\u201d he added, referring to national security adviser Mike Waltz\u2002<\/u><\/a>and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not there yet. Until we get there, I think it\u2019s foolish that the Russians are going to feel like they\u2019re under much pressure from Washington.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Zelensky chastised Europe during a speech at the World Economic Forum on Tuesday as failing to harness its power. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWill President Trump listen to Europe or will he negotiate with Russia and China without Europe?\u201d he asked in a blunt warning. \u201cEurope needs to learn how to fully take care of itself so that the world can\u2019t afford to ignore it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Putin may be bruised by the war, but he is not beaten down. The Russian leader has used domestic military production to buoy the economy and relied on a network of countries to circumvent international sanctions \u2014 from global powers like China and India to international pariahs like Iran and North Korea. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chinese President Xi Jinping\u2002<\/u><\/a>is Putin\u2019s most important ally in the war, with the two declaring a \u201cno limit partnership\u201d in February 2022, shortly before Moscow\u2019s invasion of Ukraine, and a \u201cnew era\u201d to their partnership in May. Both Putin and Xi view the U.S. and democracies as a threat to the survival of their authoritarian regimes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a call between Putin and Xi on Monday, the two discussed deepening bilateral ties, while Putin said he was ready for dialogue with the U.S. related to Ukraine.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Greene said Putin can likely sell a deal to Russia\u2019s public but would still find it hard to agree to halt the war. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPutin can find a way to raise the mission accomplished banner even if he doesn\u2019t control all of Ukraine or all of the territory that the Russian government has claimed. But what Russia will struggle to do is to pivot away from conflict and confrontation with the West,\u201d Greene said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

thehill<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

President Trump\u2002is turning up the heat on Russian President Vladimir Putin\u2002in his first days in power, seeking to pressure Russia\u2019s leader to come to the negotiating table for a deal to end the war in Ukraine.  A little more than 48 hours since returning to the White House, Trump said Putin is \u201cdestroying his country\u201d with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":37567,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[2117,32097,32096,1416,1385],"class_list":["post-37566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-end","tag-mr-putin","tag-mr-trump","tag-ukraine","tag-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37566"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37566\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37568,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37566\/revisions\/37568"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/37567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}