Every Now and Then, Trump Seems to Have a Flash of Insight About Putin

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Contrary to expectations, President Donald Trump didn’t screw over Ukraine this week. So what’s he going to do now to help the embattled democratic nation?

Betrayal seemed to be on the agenda during Trump’s meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the White House this past Friday. Zelensky was making the case for Washington to send him Tomahawk cruise missiles so he could attack targets deep inside Russia, just as Russia was doing to his own country.

But Russian President Vladimir Putin had preemptively phoned^[2] Trump the day before, and, as often happens when those two talk, Trump came away thinking Putin wanted to end the war and resume doing business with the United States. In this call, Putin also shrewdly tsk-tsked about the shame of Trump’s not winning the Nobel Peace Prize^[3].

So, according to leaked accounts of their meeting^[4], Trump told Zelensky 1) that he had to give up some land for peace (reports differed on whether the land included all of the Donbas region or just the patches that Russian troops occupy now), 2) that Russia would destroy Ukraine otherwise (not long ago, Zelensky convinced Trump that Ukraine could win the war^[5]), and 3) that the cruise missiles were off the table, because America needs them for our own defense. Trump and Putin, he told Zelensky, were going to settle all this at a summit in Hungary (the one European Union country that considers Putin an ally), whether or not Zelensky came along.

But when Secretary of State Marco Rubio met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to lay the summit’s groundwork, Lavrov made it clear that Putin would not agree to a ceasefire^[6], and that he would make no compromises in exchange for Ukraine’s sacrifices. Rubio reported this to Trump, who realized the summit would be a waste of time—peace wasn’t at hand, after all—so he called it off.

Not only that, Trump imposed sanctions on two of Russia’s oil industry companies^[7], the heart of its economy—the first time he’s actually penalized Putin for continuing the war instead of merely grousing about maybe doing so.

Two questions arise from this chronicle. First, how many times is Trump going to be stung by Putin, believing that they’re friends and that they can therefore make a deal, before realizing that the Kremlin chief is a lying murderer interested only in restoring his country’s empire?

Once in a while, Trump experiences a flash of insight on the topic. In April, after Putin waved away a peace overture and launched a massive drone-and-missile strike against Ukrainian cities, Trump said^[8], “It makes me think that maybe he doesn’t want to stop the war, he’s just tapping me along.” Mulling the possibility, he threatened to impose sanctions if Putin didn’t agree to a ceasefire.

But then Putin came calling again, offering compliments, the allure of trade deals, and the promise of a peacemaker’s triumph, so Trump agreed to meet him in Alaska, on a U.S. military base. Trump was giddily optimistic^[9], telling reporters that he and his Russian pal were very close to making peace, rolling out the carpet on the runway, smiling, shaking his hand.

This time, too, Putin disappointed—he had no peace plan after all, and Trump saw this all too clearly. They held a joint press conference, and Trump talked as if the summit was a success. But the telling sign was that Trump ended the summit early, even canceling the lunch^[10] that had been scheduled to wrap up the fine points of a deal.

Still, only a couple of months later, he was daydreaming about a summit with Putin in Belgrade, and he turned up the pressure on Zelensky, with whom he’d recently had a few warm, encouraging meetings—only to see his hopes dashed again. This time at least he called off the summit before posting it on his calendar.

Again, how many times will Trump be played before realizing the whole putative friendship with Putin is a ruse? How many times (in Washington Post columnist Max Boot’s analogy^[12]) will Charlie Brown flail at kicking the football before he realizes that Lucy will always jerk the ball away?

The second question to consider: What will Trump do for Ukraine now that he realizes (if he does realize for longer than a few minutes) that Putin has no interest in stopping the war? Trump is right that this war has gone on for far too long and killed far too many people on both sides. One way to end the war is for Russia and Ukraine to agree on a ceasefire, then negotiate terms. Since Putin has refused to do this several times, the only other way to end the war is to convince Putin that he can’t win—and one way to do that is to show him that the United States will remain committed, and will keep boosting aid to Ukraine.

Putin thinks he can get peace entirely on his own terms because he sees Trump, time and again, backing away from Ukraine. Last July, Trump complained that this war isn’t his war. “This is Biden’s war, it wouldn’t have happened if I were president,” he said^[13]. “I got stuck in the middle of it.”

Trump often says that the war wouldn’t have happened if he had won the 2020 election (which, of course, he claims he really won), but this is nonsense on two levels. First, the war started in 2014, when Russian special forces crossed the border to fight alongside Ukrainian secessionists in the eastern Donbas region. This was no light skirmish; at least 15,000 people were killed^[18] in that phase of the war. It persisted through Trump’s first presidency, and he did nothing to stop it. (He did send Javelin anti-tank weapons, after initially threatening to withhold them unless Zelensky dug up dirt on Joe Biden’s son, Hunter—the basis of Trump’s first impeachment^[19]—but even those missiles were kept locked up in western Ukraine,^[20] far away from the battlefield.)

Second, Trump’s premise is presumably that Putin wouldn’t have started the war if Trump had been president—wouldn’t, in any case, have mounted an invasion of all Ukraine, as he did in February 2022—because he trusted, respected, and feared Trump too much to do so. But in that case, why is Putin continuing to fight now? Why has he stepped up the bombing of schools, hospitals, and apartment buildings in Ukraine?

When will Trump realize that Putin is not his friend and that a free Ukraine is worth defending? Maybe it’s time to take another look at those Tomahawks.

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