Why An Overreaching Putin Refusing To Take Trump's "Yes" Is A Strategic Failure

The Trump administration was eager to give Putin much of what he wanted, driven by their affinity for his authoritarian ways and the value they perceived in potential business deals with Russia. So they ignored multiple actions and statements taken globally as disrespect, behavior they would not tolerate from anyone else anywhere. 

But instead of grasping the offer, Putin overreached, continuing to believe Trump will cave and he will win. The problem is that his military is losing. They gain occasional bits of land its own command terms 'immaterial,' their casualties have increased even as reliable reports reveal Russian recruitment is decreasing. And having blown through the world's largest inventory of stored weaponry, they now stoop to attack on electric scooters or aging civilian Ladas. Putin cannot win on the battlefield even as his dream "Manchurian Candidate" US president offers him the deal of a lifetime. His response has been contemptuous, evidently believing Trump so craves his approval that he will give in. But Trump has pride. He wants a peace deal and the Nobel Prize he thinks will come with it. Refusing him will force him to hit back, which Putin's economically and militarily weakened Russia can no longer afford. JL 

David Ignatius reports in the Washington Post:

Kremlin officials gloated when Trump took office. Administration officials then offered a deal to meet Putin’s minimum goals. But an arrogant Putin rejected Trump’s deal. His version of peace would give him control over Ukraine he hasn’t been able to win on the battlefield. In three years, Putin has not even managed to gain Donetsk, let alone the country. In the first year of the war, his army suffered more casualties than in all its wars since 1945 combined. "Putin got greedy and has created his own nightmare. Ukraine was weak militarily. Now it’s stronger and closer to Europe. Putin’s mistake, now as in 2022, is he underestimates Ukraine’s will. Russia produced exactly what it wanted to prevent.”

Russians have an expression that translates in colloquial English as “we blew it.” That’s an accurate summary of President Vladimir Putin’s failure so far to seize the diplomatic opportunity presented by the election of President Donald Trump.

Kremlin officials gloated when Trump took office in January. After Trump called Putin on Feb. 12, spokesman Dmitry Peskov purred that “the U.S. is taking a much more balanced position” on the Ukraine war. In early March, as Trump began squeezing Ukraine for concessions, Peskov said: “The new administration is rapidly changing all foreign policy configurations. … This largely coincides with our vision.”

Administration officials offered a deal that seemed to meet Putin’s minimum goals: If Russia agreed to a ceasefire, it could keep the territory it occupied in Crimea and four other regions. Moreover, Ukraine wouldn’t be allowed to join NATO after the war, and sanctions against Russia would be eased. Rather than a pariah, Putin would become an economic partner for the United States.

 

But an arrogant Putin rejected Trump’s deal. He refuses to accept a ceasefire until after negotiations about the war’s “root causes,” where Russian sources say he plans to demand limits on Ukraine’s military and political independence. Putin’s version of a peace deal would give him control over Ukraine that he hasn’t been able to win on the battlefield.

“Putin got greedy. He thought he could get more than what was on the table,” explained Eric Ciaramella, a former top Russia analyst for the CIA who’s now with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Now, Putin might get nothing. Russia plans to submit its terms for settlement next month, but this diktat is likely to be rejected by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

If Trump walks away from a failed negotiation, as he has threatened to do, Putin will have a free hand. But what will that mean? The war will continue, probably more brutally than before. Ukraine’s cities will be pounded by missiles and drones, but Russia’s might be, too. And Putin will be further than ever from his goal of creating a friendly, pro-Russian Ukraine on his border.

 

“Putin has created his own nightmare,” Ciaramella argued. “Ukraine was weak militarily before the war, but now it’s getting stronger and stronger, and closer to Europe. Russia has produced exactly what it wanted to prevent.”

To appreciate the magnitude of Putin’s failure, it helps to go back to his statement when he launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, coyly labeling it a “special military operation.” He protested that “in the territories adjacent to us … an ‘anti-Russia’ hostile to us is being created … and is supplied with the most modern weapons.”

Putin vowed that Russia would regain control of a country that was “historically ours.” And he warned the West: “Whoever tries to interfere with us, and even more so to create threats for our country, for our people, should know that Russia’s response will be immediate and will lead you to such consequences that you have never experienced in your history.”

 

Three years later, Putin has not even managed to gain control of the region of Donetsk, let alone the country. In the first year of the war, his army suffered more casualties than in all its wars since 1945 combined. And though Russia now has the upper hand, Ukraine has shown that, with European backing, it can keep fighting for at least several more years.

Some Russian analysts saw signs last fall that Putin had realized his goal of reversing Ukraine’s “anti-Russia” status was impossible. Konstantin Remchukov, a well-connected Russian journalist, argued in October that “Russia recognizes that a significant number of Ukrainians choose the current government in the country, consider themselves Ukrainians, and do not want to see any future together with Russia.”

But that optimistic analysis turned out to be wrong. Putin was set in his hard-line position, and he believed Trump’s election would allow him to neuter Ukraine, at last. That was Putin’s mistake. He overreached.

 

Russia’s predicament “is an irony of Putin’s own making,” Ciaramella explained in a December 2023 paper. “Despite claiming to have invaded Ukraine to increase Russia’s security, Putin’s blunder saddled his country with a far more dangerous challenge. So long as Russian forces occupy Ukrainian territory, Ukraine will constitute, in the words of Carnegie scholar Eugene Rumer, ‘the most threatening, hostile, irreconcilable enemy on Russia’s western frontier.’”

Tatiana Stanovaya, a Carnegie scholar with close ties to Putin’s inner circle, was skeptical that Trump would provide a safe hatch in November, after his election. She explained: “The problem is that no Western leader — including Trump — has a plan for ending the war that would be remotely acceptable to Putin.”

Stanovaya, probably the best Putin-watcher outside Russia, explained his current goal in a May 19 post on X: “What he truly wants is for Ukrainians to accept that they cannot win, that there is no point in continuing to fight against Russia, and that Moscow is prepared to persevere regardless of the cost because it views the conflict as existential.”

 

Putin’s mistake, now as in 2022, is that he underestimates Ukraine’s will to fight. When I visited Kyiv this month, I found a population hardened to war, even as ballistic missiles ravaged Ukraine’s cities. Putin had tried to destroy Ukraine’s energy grid. He failed. The idea that he can bomb his way to victory by breaking Ukraine’s morale is probably mistaken. Wars don’t work that way.

Russia and Ukraine are locked in a death spiral. Tragically, this war could go on for years, leaving both sides in bloody ruin — and raising the risk of a wider European war. The only way Trump can stop the carnage is to significantly raise the cost for Putin and alter the Russian president’s decision calculus. Otherwise, the missiles will keep flying.