More than a year into U.S. President Donald Trump’s second term, the Russia-Ukraine war is no closer to a resolution than when he promised to end it within 24 hours of his inauguration. Russian President Vladimir Putin still believes that time is on his side and he can defeat Ukraine, making Russia’s participation in U.S.-led negotiations entirely performative. Putin understands that Trump’s foremost desire is to reset U.S.-Russian relations and negotiate rafts of profitable deals with Moscow—and that this will continue to drive Trump to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to make one-sided concessions. Performative negotiations are a way for Putin to humor Trump and prevent him from taking any more punitive actions against Russia.
Trump admires Putin and likes the idea of making deals with him—but he is wary of Zelensky, whom he likely associates with his first impeachment in 2020. Whereas the Biden administration supported Ukraine after the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022, the Trump administration’s stance has been neutral at best, with Trump often blaming Ukraine for allegedly starting the war. Financial and military assistance to Ukraine has virtually dried up, though intelligence support remains. U.S. efforts to end the war have developed on two tracks—a bilateral U.S.-Russia track aimed at improving relations and sealing business deals, as well as a trilateral U.S.-Russia-Ukraine track. Europe has largely been excluded from both, even though it now supplies most of the financial and military assistance, including purchasing U.S. weapons on Kyiv’s behalf.
More than a year into U.S. President Donald Trump’s second term, the Russia-Ukraine war is no closer to a resolution than when he promised to end it within 24 hours of his inauguration. Russian President Vladimir Putin still believes that time is on his side and he can defeat Ukraine, making Russia’s participation in U.S.-led negotiations entirely performative. Putin understands that Trump’s foremost desire is to reset U.S.-Russian relations and negotiate rafts of profitable deals with Moscow—and that this will continue to drive Trump to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to make one-sided concessions. Performative negotiations are a way for Putin to humor Trump and prevent him from taking any more punitive actions against Russia.
Trump admires Putin and likes the idea of making deals with him—but he is wary of Zelensky, whom he likely associates with his first impeachment in 2020. Whereas the Biden administration supported Ukraine after the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022, the Trump administration’s stance has been neutral at best, with Trump often blaming Ukraine for allegedly starting the war. Financial and military assistance to Ukraine has virtually dried up, though intelligence support remains. U.S. efforts to end the war have developed on two tracks—a bilateral U.S.-Russia track aimed at improving relations and sealing business deals, as well as a trilateral U.S.-Russia-Ukraine track. Europe has largely been excluded from both, even though it now supplies most of the financial and military assistance, including purchasing U.S. weapons on Kyiv’s behalf.
Instead of sending experienced U.S. diplomats who understand Russia and Putin into the negotiations, Trump has dispatched his personal friend and fellow real-estate billionaire Steve Witkoff. He has been to Russia six times in his special envoy role but has yet to visit Ukraine. As a former KGB case officer, Putin knows how to flatter and manipulate his U.S. interlocutors. He seems to have persuaded Witkoff of his own, unique view of the history of Ukraine. Witkoff also seems to believe that the core contention is over real estate—that all Ukraine has to do is to cede parts of the Donbas region that Russia has been trying to conquer since 2014. Putin, however, has made it altogether clear in his writings and speeches that his goal all along has been to subjugate Ukraine and install a Russia-aligned regime, because he does not believe that Ukraine has a right to exist as an independent country. To Putin, the Donbas territorial question is incidental to this but a good way to keep Trump and Witkoff busy.
In November, a 28-point U.S.-Russian “peace plan” was leaked to Axios. It contained Russia’s maximum demands: Ukraine cedes the part of the Donbas it controls, reduces the size of its military, and agrees never to join NATO, among other provisions. After push-back from Ukraine and its European supporters, a new, 20-point peace plan has emerged, including European security guarantees for Ukraine backed up by the United States. Three rounds of trilateral talks—with the United States represented by Witkoff, Jared Kushner, and other Trump appointees, while Russia and Ukraine are represented by intelligence, defense, and other professionals—have taken place. So far, these talks have led to a prisoner exchange, but there is no agreement on a settlement or even a ceasefire. The Russians continue to talk as if the only plan on offer is the bilateral U.S.-Russian one. They also insist that there is an “Anchorage formula,” allegedly agreed to by Trump and Putin at their summit in Alaska in August 2025, which incorporates Russia’s maximal demands to effectively extinguish Ukrainian sovereignty.
So far, we see little sign that the Trump administration is willing to apply any pressure on Putin. Since the start of negotiations, Putin has intensified the bombardment of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure and other civilian targets. This brutal war will only stop when he no longer believes he can win. And that would require the United States, along with Europe, to ratchet up direct and indirect sanctions on Russia’s energy sector and intensify the pursuit of its shadow tanker fleet, depriving the Kremlin of the needed revenues to continue the war. A sanctions bill with overwhelming bipartisan support has been languishing in the U.S. Senate for months, awaiting Trump’s permission to hold a vote. Unless we see these and other changes in Washington, the war could continue for the foreseeable future.
Read the other seven thinkers on four years of war in Europe here.
