President Donald Trump is making a surprising pivot on the war in Ukraine, shifting positions on weapon sales and sanctions in a way that makes him look more like his predecessor Joe Biden and less like a lackey of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump’s patience with Putin’s resistance to a ceasefire proposal seems to be finally wearing thin, and he apparently wants to apply pressure to Putin to force him to the table and bring the war to an end.
But Trump’s approach still gives Putin significant wiggle room, and some experts are skeptical that it’ll induce Putin to agree to a ceasefire. Trump’s campaign promise to end the war in Ukraine in a day continues to look absurd — and much of his inability to get Putin to take peace negotiations seriously is his own fault.
Trump’s attempt to ratchet up the pressure on Putin is significant, but it’s far from putting a gun to Putin’s head.
Trump announced an arms deal on Monday under which NATO allies will purchase “billions of dollars’ worth of military equipment” from the U.S., which will be “quickly distributed to the battlefield” in Ukraine. That U.S. allies will be footing the bill allows Trump to tout this transaction as a win for “America First,” but the most important consequence is the U.S. return to a Biden-esque position on arming Ukraine against Russia.
While many of the details of that deal are not yet clear, the most striking feature of Trump’s announcement — which he made alongside NATO’s Secretary General Mark Rutte — was the sale of U.S.-made Patriot air defense systems.
“The Patriot systems … will certainly make a difference to the defense of Ukrainian cities, particularly Kyiv,” Rajan Menon, a professor emeritus of political science at the City College of New York, told me in an interview.
Patriot systems, which intercept incoming missiles, are considered among the most sophisticated in the world. Each Patriot battery costs over $1 billion. Ukraine already has some from the U.S., but more of them would help reduce Ukrainian civilian casualties, which have surged to record highs recently as Putin has expanded his air offensive and targeted cities relentlessly.
The Patriot announcement came after Trump ended a brief pause on weapons shipments to Ukraine that had been approved the Biden administration.
Trump also said on Monday that he was “very, very unhappy” with Putin, and said Putin had 50 days to make a peace deal with Ukraine, after which he said the U.S. will impose a 100% tariff rate on Russian imports. He also threatened to impose what he called “secondary tariffs” on countries that buy Russian oil. That would presumably mean slapping tariffs on goods from countries like China and India, which are major importers of Russian oil and seem unlikely to cut off ties with Russia on account of Trump’s initiative. (Russia has called the 50-day ultimatum “unacceptable.”)
Rhetorically, Trump has also shifted in significant ways. He has grown far more critical of Putin, and accused him of stringing him along. Last week he told reporters, “We get a lot of bullsh— thrown at us by Putin, if you want to know the truth. He’s very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless.” Trump has also sounded overtly sympathetic to Ukrainian loss of life, saying Putin is “not treating human beings right. He’s killing too many people.”
Experts say that Trump is showing signs of a more distrustful attitude toward Russia. “Trump has clearly always felt that he had a very good relationship, a personal relationship, with Vladimir Putin. They get on, they talk for hours on the phone,” Emma Ashford, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center, told me in an interview. “I don’t doubt that he feels slighted that Putin is not listening to him on Ukraine.”
At the start of his second term, Trump attempted to bring the war to a close by pressuring Ukraine rather than Russia. Trump and Vice President JD Vance scolded Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office, calling him “disrespectful” and Vance calling him ungrateful for U.S. support. Trump has also on multiple occasions briefly paused Biden-approved weapons shipments and once cut off intelligence sharing with Ukraine. Trump’s strategy was successful in inducing Ukraine to give up its reluctance to approach ceasefire negotiations.
By contrast, Trump apparently believed he could get Putin to agree to a deal without any serious pressure. Perhaps he naively believed that his warmth toward Putin would prevail over the Russian president’s well-established agenda to dominate Ukraine and annex as much of it as possible. Now Trump appears to be waking up from that dream. But can his pivot change the dynamic he’s developed with Russia? There are reasons to be skeptical. Take the 50-day ultimatum to Putin. That is plenty of time for Russia to make some significant gains in its summer offensive, even with U.S. support to Ukraine. Moreover, the punishment that Trump has threatened is questionable. The U.S. imports very little from Russia, so the tariffs are not a big point of leverage. And the “secondary” tariffs targeting economic behemoths are unlikely to hurt Russia directly, but they would probably send the U.S. and China into yet another escalatory trade spiral that would hurt the U.S. economy — a clear own goal. That is, of course, if Trump were to follow through on it, which Moscow would be right to question given Trump’s constant extensions of tariff deadlines and walk-backs of threats. Notably, Trump is declining to threaten Moscow with more punishing sanctions targeting Russia’s economy, such as lowering the G7 oil price cap. Trump’s attempt to ratchet up the pressure on Putin is significant, but it’s far from putting a gun to Putin’s head. And Trump may be underestimating Russia’s resolve to continue the war as a way to secure other geopolitical goals. “The Russians believe that their battlefield advantage is its own leverage for the geopolitical deal that they want,” said George Beebe, the director of grand strategy at the Quincy Institute of Responsible Statecraft and a former director of Russia analysis at the CIA. That geopolitical deal isn’t just about Ukrainian territory, but also about the nature of NATO’s security guarantee to Ukraine and its deployment of military assets across Europe that Russia views as a threat. Beebe said that Trump needs to approach talks with Russia and Ukraine centering on those matters as well. Ukraine supporters’ worst fears of a Trump presidency have not come true so far. Despite the pauses in aid and the scolding in the Oval Office, Trump has allowed the U.S. to keep supporting Ukraine. Now, he is even growing more antagonistic to Russia. But that pressure is, in the scheme of things, still moderate — and Russia undoubtedly is taking note of that, and will exploit it as long as it can.
Zeeshan Aleem is a writer for MS NOW. Sign up for his newsletter. 
