On July 3 U.S. President Donald Trump had a phonecall with the Vladimir Putin, President of the Russian Federation:
President Donald Trump revealed the details of his conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday.
Trump told reporters before he boarded Air Force One for an "America 250" rally at the Iowa State Fairgrounds, "We had a call, it was a pretty long call, we talked about a lot of things, including Iran. We also talked about the war with Ukraine."
Trump shook his head and said, "I'm not happy about that," as the president remarked about the ongoing war he hoped to quickly end.
"No, I didn't make any progress with him today," Trump said when asked about a potential deal with Putin to end the Russian offensive in Ukraine.
Trump wanted to pause the war In Ukraine while Putin sees an advantage for Russian troops in the field and wants to continue the war until its root cause, the NATO march towards Russia, is eliminated.
Trump could not get his will. He was also under pressure from neoconservative parts of Congress to commit the U.S. to a longer war against Russia. They asked for shipping more weapons to Ukraine and for penalties against countries which continue to buy oil and gas from Russia.
Yesterday Trump gave in and decided (archived) to give another try to his predecessors failed Ukraine policy :
President Trump said he would help Europe speed more weapons to Ukraine and warned Russia that if it did not agree to a peace deal within 50 days, he would impose a new round of punishing sanctions.
Speaking from the Oval Office, where he met with NATO’s secretary general, Mark Rutte, Mr. Trump said the weapons would be “quickly distributed to the battlefield.” He also threatened to impose secondary sanctions, which are penalties imposed on other countries or parties that trade with nations under sanctions.
“I’m disappointed in President Putin, because I thought we would have had a deal two months ago, but it doesn’t seem to get there,” Mr. Trump said.
“It’s just the way it is,” he added. “I hope we don’t have to do it.”
Several additional Patriot air defense missile systems are supposed to be given to Ukraine by NATO countries which would buy new ones when the U.S. is able to deliver them (archived):
Mr. Trump said the United States would sell those arms to European nations, which would ship them to Ukraine or use them to replace weapons they send to the country from their existing stocks.
But Pentagon officials said later that many details were still being worked out.
It is doubtful that new Patriot batteries will help against Russian swarm attacks each with several hundreds of drones and missiles. There is also a severe lack of munitions for these system with new production of Patriot missiles per year still being lower than the monthly consumption in Ukraine and elsewhere.
Trump did not specify what additional weapons and how many of them would be delivered to Ukraine (archived):
What Trump didn’t talk about is that the military assistance might also include authorization for some powerful new offensive weapons. I’m told by a source involved in the decision that this is likely to include permission to use the 18 long-range ATACMS missiles now in Ukraine at their full range of 300 kilometers (about 190 miles). That wouldn’t reach all the way to Moscow or St. Petersburg, but it would strike military bases, airfields and supply depots deep inside Russia that are now out of range. The package might also include more ATACMS.
…
Trump also considered sending Tomahawk cruise missiles, the same weapons fired against Iranian targets last month. If fired from Ukraine, these could hit Moscow and St. Petersburg, and they were included in discussion as late as Friday. But the Tomahawks are off the delivery list for now, I’m told. They could be deployed later if Trump wants even more leverage.Trump’s determination to squeeze Putin was conveyed in a conversation last week with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, a source told me. Trump asked Zelensky why he didn’t hit Moscow. “We can if you give us the weapons,” Zelensky said. Trump said Ukraine needed to put more pressure on Putin, not just Moscow but St. Petersburg, too.
ATACMS are an old story. In the overall balance these 'wonder weapons' had little effect so far.
Tomahawks are a no-no because they can be nuclear armed. Russia's strategic defense would have to consider any ongoing Tomahawk attack on Moscow or Petersburg to be a nuclear decapitation strike and act accordingly. The U.S. is unlikely to risk a Russian counterstrike with nuclear weapons.
Trump's sanction threat against buyers of Russian hydrocarbons is not taken seriously (archived):
[E]xperts doubted the credibility of Mr. Trump’s threat to impose 100 percent tariffs on Russia’s trading partners if President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia did not agree to a cease-fire within 50 days.
The scale of China’s mutual trade with Russia — nearly $250 billion per year, including huge oil imports — means that delivering on the threat would throw Mr. Trump into a showdown with Beijing. Analysts said it was unlikely that Mr. Trump would risk a renewed confrontation with the world’s second-largest economy over Ukraine, a country whose fate he has long said is not vital to the United States.
Mr. Trump is also notorious for setting deadlines that he does not enforce, raising questions about whether he will act if the 50-day timer he has set for Mr. Putin expires.
The neoconservative editors of the Washington Post are not convinced that the policy change (if this even is one) will lead to significant changes.
They ask the right questions to then pressure for more measure without regarding the consequences for the U.S. (archived):
But what if Putin refuses to make peace and sticks with his maximalist demands for a dismembered Ukraine under Russia’s thumb? Is Trump ready to ramp up the pressure? Will he sustain the arms shipments once the stockpiles run dry? Will he seize billions of dollars in frozen Russian assets? Will he try to crack down on the shadow tanker fleet that moves Russian oil? And will he follow through on his secondary sanctions threat, with its potentially vast implications for trade with countries such as China and India?
The war against Ukraine has already persisted for far too long, with horrific casualty tolls on both sides. It will only end when Putin realizes he has nothing more to gain, and much more to lose, the longer it goes on. The arms shipments to Ukraine might bring that realization closer. More pressure can bring that day closer still. Now that Trump has issued his ultimatum, he needs to make clear to Putin he means what he says.
In late 2021 Russia issued its demands in form of treaty outlines with the U.S. and NATO. They were disregarded by the U.S.. The war is a consequence of that.
Russia has the means to continue the war until those demands are met. Meanwhile Ukraine is running out of – not weapons but soldiers.
How long will it take for the editors to understand that it is Putin who has the trump cards in this game?