The Russian leader rolls out his classic strategy to handle tempestuous U.S. president.
Jamie Dettmer is opinion editor at POLITICO Europe.
After Ukrainian negotiators agreed to a U.S.-brokered ceasefire proposal earlier this week, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the ball was in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s court.
But it was an easier ball for the Russian leader to play than many thought. He wasn’t aggressive with a risky power shot, taking a high-risk bid to win a quick point. Rather, he nimbly floated a lob high and deep, piling conditions and delays onto ceasefire talks.
It was classic Putin.
The Russian leader has seen U.S. presidents come and go and, all too often, he’s deftly drained their stamina and exhausted their attention to get much of what he wants. The big question now is what U.S. President Donald Trump’s return shot will be. He’s the one in a hurry to end the war on Ukraine, burnishing his cherished reputation as a skillful deal-maker.
Putin, meanwhile, has had the measure of his Washington opponents — and on Thursday, he demonstrated he understands Trump’s psychology. Praise the man while deflecting him; pat him on the head — something Ukraine’s passionate President Volodymyr Zelenskyy almost fatally forgot to do in his Oval Office meeting last month, prompting a hasty ejection from the White House.
There was no firm Russian nyet to stoke the U.S. leader’s anger, rather a teacher’s applause for Trump’s idea and effort.
The temporary truce was “correct” and “we support it,” the Russian leader said, but, alas, there were many sticking points. Ukrainian units had nearly been encircled in a salient in Russia’s Kursk region and could be forced to “surrender or die,” he explained. Why should they just be let go? “If we stop hostilities for 30 days, what does that mean? That everyone who is there will go out without a fight?”
During the pause in hostilities, will Ukraine be able to mobilize fresh troops and receive weapons from the West? “How will supervision be organized? These are all serious questions.” He then added: “I think we need to talk to our American colleagues … Maybe have a phone call with President Trump and discuss this with him.”
It was all drawn from the playbook that he and his lugubrious Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov have used time and again: Obfuscate, delay, muddle, throw in some whataboutism, be sorrowfully unctuous, but make sure to dangle a carrot.
Just the day before, Lavrov had given an hour-and-half -long master class in Putin-style diplomacy, which should have been a warning to the White House.
His interlocutors — a trio of fellow travelers led by onetime Fox News presenter Judge Andrew Napolitano — were pushovers, nodding and chortling as he complained about (horrors of horrors) being forced to use a unisex bathroom in Scandinavia. They purred their approval when he mournfully griped about all the injustices the West had doled out to his peace-loving country: The false accusations of poisoning opposition leader Alexei Navalny, trying to kill Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter, or downing Malaysia Airlines Flight 17.
It all came down to Europe and NATO’s broken promises and malign behavior, he said.
But as Lavrov piled deflection and digression upon deflection and digression, his plaintive lecture demonstrated that — just as Putin reinforced yesterday — Russia plans to play Trump, much like it did former U.S. President Barack Obama when it came to Syria, using delaying tactics to prevent America from hitting their client for unleashing chemical weapons.
Of course, unlike Obama, during his first term Trump did order an airstrike on a Syrian government airbase in response to a chemical weapons attack. So Putin has no doubt taken into consideration that a vexed Trump might lash out. Hence, the careful calibration of his response to the ceasefire proposal.
And so far, the play seems to be going as planned. For Trump, Putin’s response was “very promising.”
“I’d love to meet with him or talk to him. But we have to get it [a ceasefire deal] over with fast,” Trump told reporters Thursday.
That will be music to Putin’s ears. The carrot is working, and he can slow Trump’s eagerness for a deal.
According to former Russian diplomat Boris Bondarev, the Kremlin chief will also estimate Trump’s bark will be worse than his bite. “He will have seen how Trump threatens Canada, but when Ottawa responds with counter-tariffs, he starts backing off and negotiates,” Bondarev told POLITICO.
Ukrainian lawmaker Yehor Cherniev said he wasn’t surprised by Putin’s response either. Speaking to POLITICO, he said: “It was predictable because we understand that Putin didn’t want to say yes, but cannot say no because Trump’s possible reaction. I think he’s just trying to take his time, and that’s why he proposed some additional conditions for the 30-day ceasefire.”
However, he remains hopeful that Trump will push Putin to make a decision: “We’ll see what happens in the next days because I saw yesterday that Trump already has talked about additional sanctions on Russia’s oil and gas sector. It’s Putin’s usual practice to give you some hope that he’ll say yes, but then delays to use the time to reach his goals. I hope that Trump’s reaction will be quite fast.”
If it isn’t, then we’re in for a long process.
And Trump’s options for forcing Putin into doing anything aren’t great. Earlier this week, he threatened to apply economic pressure on Russia if Putin didn’t agree to a ceasefire: “I can do things financially that would be very bad for Russia. I don’t want to do that because I want to get peace. In a financial sense … we could do things very bad for Russia. It would be devastating.”
But Russia’s already been sanctioned every which way since it launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine three years ago.
One possible target could be the shadow fleet, which has helped Moscow evade existing sanctions on oil exports. But that would also compound the hurt for American consumers already struggling with high retail prices by prompting a global oil price spike.
Washington could also try and expand the ban on Russian financial institutions using the SWIFT financial transaction processing system, which so far only includes a handful of Russian banks. But that would be an inconvenience, not a knock-out blow.
“Trump is much more concerned about this deal than about Ukraine,” Bondarev said. “That gives Putin leverage.”
