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A Preemptive Putin-Trump Call And The Prospects Of A New Summit
Today the Ukrainian former president Vladimir Zelenski will be in Washington to convince U.S. President Donald Trump to further turn the screws on Russia.
A call yesterday between President Vladimir Putin of Russia and Trump was initiated by the Russians to preempt any concessions from Trump to Ukraine.
A major headache for the Russians was the potential introduction of U.S. Tomahawk cruise missiles onto the battlefield. While these weapons are old, and can easily be defended against, they are, in principle, nuclear capable. They are also complex and can not be fired without the input from U.S. satellites, U.S. intelligence analysis and specialized software.
Tomahawks are naval missiles. There are less than a handful of ground launchers which were only recently introduced to the U.S. military. Any launch of a Tomahawk from Ukrainian ground would thus have to be done by the U.S. military. Any U.S. firing of a potentially nuclear armed missile towards Moscow would have to have serious consequences.
Russia would HAVE to respond to such an attack with a direct attack on major U.S. assets. Otherwise its means of (nuclear) deterrence would lose of all of their values.
Putin wanted to avoid that situation and the decisions that would have followed from it. Thus his call to Donald Trump.
So far that part of the call of seems to have been successful:
In recent days, Mr Trump had shown an openness to selling Ukraine long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles, even as Mr Putin warned that such a move would further strain the US-Russian relationship.
But following Thursday’s call with Mr Putin, Mr Trump appeared to downplay the prospects of Ukraine getting the missiles, which have a range of about 995 miles (1,600km).
“We need Tomahawks for the United States of America too,” Mr Trump said.
“We have a lot of them, but we need them. I mean, we can’t deplete our country.”
After the call Trump announced that there would soon be a new summit between him and President Putin:
President Putin and I will then meet in an agreed upon location, Budapest, Hungary, to see if we can bring this “inglorious” War, between Russia and Ukraine, to an end.
It is notable that The Russian readout was much less committed:
In this context, it is worthy of note that the presidents discussed the possibility of holding another personal meeting. This is indeed a very significant development. It was agreed that representatives of both countries would immediately begin preparations for the summit, which could potentially be organised in Budapest, for instance.
It is doubtful that any new meeting would lead to results.
Trump wants to stop the war in Ukraine because the U.S./NATO proxy force in form the Ukrainian army gets currently beaten to pulp. A multiyear pause is needed to refresh the Ukrainian army, to make and deliver more weapons for it and to prepare for another attempt to defeat Russia.
Russia will not commit to that. It wants to resolve the root cause of the war, the steady NATO march towards Russia’s border, once and for all. Any pause or ceasefire would defeat that purpose.
The difference between those positions is the reason why the August summit in Alaska had ended badly. Despite both sides lauding the outcome it was obvious that the summit had been cut short. It had ended without a common readout or press conference. After the summit President Trump also extended his support for the Ukrainian side of the conflict by allowing U.S. intelligence to be used in attacks on Russian oil infrastructure.
A new Financial Times piece on the previous summit has some background information on this (archived):
With just a handful of advisers present, Putin rejected the US offer of sanctions relief for a ceasefire, insisting the war would end only if Ukraine capitulated and ceded more territory in the Donbas.
The Russian president then delivered a rambling historical discursion spanning medieval princes such as Rurik of Novgorod and Yaroslav the Wise, along with the 17th century Cossack chieftain Bohdan Khmelnytsky — figures he often cites to support his claim Ukraine and Russia are one nation.
Taken aback, Trump raised his voice several times and at one point threatened to walk out, the people said. He ultimately cut the meeting short and cancelled a planned lunch where broader delegations were due to discuss economic ties and co-operation.
Bohdan Khmelnytsky was the Cossack hetman who in 1654 voluntarily subordinate his people to the Russian Tsar:
After a series of negotiations, it was agreed that the Cossacks would accept overlordship by the Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. To finalize the treaty, a Russian embassy led by boyar Vasily Buturlin came to Pereiaslav, where, on 18 January 1654, the Cossack Rada was called and the treaty concluded. [..] The treaty legitimized Russian claims to the capital of Kievan Rus’ and strengthened the tsar’s influence in the region. Khmelnytsky needed the treaty to gain a legitimate monarch’s protection and support from a friendly Orthodox power.
I see no reason for hope that a new summit would change the positions of the parties or the outcome. Putin’s position towards the U.S. has only hardened:
“Whatever they want, they do. But what they are doing now in Ukraine is not thousands of miles away from our national borders; it is on our doorstep. And they must realize that we simply have nowhere else to retreat to.”
The promise of the new summit is still positive as it stretches the time to an eventual further escalation. More time is of advantage to the Russian side. It allows for the current campaign to de-energize Ukraine to have impact on the mood in the country and on the willingness of its government to agree to serious concessions.
@Johan Kaspar | Oct 19 2025 12:51 utc:
Well-done, Johan. Nice piece of work. A month ago I’d have agreed, right down the line, with your assertions. Every one of them.
What changed?
a. The realization that the EU leadership, clearly corrupt, clearly acting in interests that _aren’t_ aligned with their respective publics, aren’t being thrown out. Very little public outcry, and not nearly enough political opposition to reverse the policies
b. The deafening drumbeat of “Russia’s gonna get us!” in most EU countries. Not all, but most of them. The oligarchs et. al. control the media, they are actively using the police, the judiciary, etc. to repress all forms of objection in the public realm.
c. The dialog I’m seeing coming from the EU industrialists about how they are re-purposing industrial production towards war-making. They’re climbing on-board the war-machine-to-save-our-biz train
d. My realization of the fact that EU _could have had_ what you posit; they could have had access to Russia’s energy, materials, market, etc. They turned it down. Wasn’t enough. Johan, these people aren’t content to prosper; they want all the chips. They think like the Israelis. I’ll say it again: “They’re not like us”.
I would really like to believe that EU simply can’t muster the resources to spin up a war machine, but I can’t convince myself of it. I know how money works, I know how easy it is to move public opinion, to pay off (at all levels) the people necessary to redirect production apparatus towards war, all the while making a great deal of money. That is a well-trod path, not just in EU, but much more recently so here in the US.
Johan, you’re closer to the EU situation than I am, and I’m asking for your input. Are you seeing massive public push-back re: war with Russia? I understand that people are cranky that “austerity” has resulted in more money shoveled at Ukraine, but … it doesn’t _seem_ to be translating into a fundamental, bottom-up, massive political reaction. I’m not seeing it.
Lastly, the “Russian Victory” in Ukraine has resulted (nearly) in the reclamation of Donbass, but the rest of the putative SMO objectives (de-nazification, neutral Ukraine, new security structure for Europe) … I”m not seeing that happening, are you? I don’t see the process to get there.
Never mind rebutting me, or Doctorow, etc. Put yourself in Russia’s place, with (what appears to be) a concerted effort to bleed Russia for years to come, to encircle it, etc. and an unknown amount of time during which Russia has the military-technical advantage.
And no political push-back within EU countries to avoid that outcome.
What would you, if you were Russia, what would you do?
This scenario I’m positing isn’t a “provocation”. It is a long-term strategy that appears to be executing well.
Posted by: Tom Pfotzer | Oct 19 2025 13:31 utc | 607
In response to Tom Pfotzer@624,
Now comes the question of “how much re-direct of production is actually required” to continue to bleed Russia?
I have no answer to that question, but I don’t think it’s the correct one to ask anyway. What production can be feasibly redirected towards the military, will be, if only in order to prop up jobs and the productive economy, while maintaining the appearance of “doing something.”
What it then means to bleed Russia is another matter, or to “continue bleeding” Russia as you have said, since the Russian military potential is not currently being diminished — in fact, it continues to grow, while the “Ukrainian” fighting force is, even with ship-dipped NATO troops, is. If the goal is just to stay in the fight in some way, in terms of performative action, we end up with one number of necessary materiel and expenditure at one end of the spectrum. If the goal is to turn the situation around in some way, reversing Russian gains or weakening Russian military potential, we have another number at the other end of the spectrum. In the middle we have different degrees of “delaying action” where proxy-Ukraine and its Western sponsors continue to lose at different rates.
The current rate of bleeding Russia fluctuates between performative and delaying action, and has in total cost the Western powers and former Warsaw pact countries between 1/3-2/3’s of the total usable stockpiles of armaments accumulated over a span of 5 decades of industrial economic growth. Now, with these same countries facing significant economic decline, and most of them having switched from industrial economies to tech, service and finance, in a period of self-inflicted energy and resource scarcity, they’re planning to at least recuperate those losses within a time-frame of 5-15 years. Of course, the optimistic desire is not just to recuperate losses, but exert an influence on the balance of power in the conflict, force some kind of EU-preferential settlement on Russia — obviously not push Russia into a corner where nuclear retaliation is the sole doctrinal option available, surely? In my view, they Europeans will be lucky if they end up with a military capable of policing internal uprisings, the risk of which is only set to increase the more they focus on rearmament at the cost of everything else.
Note that now the war is about surgical strikes on power, transport, fuel, and possibly soon political centers.
Well yes, for the Western powers and their proxy it is, because that’s the limit to what they have the resources for. They can’t advance, hold or defend territory. They can’t engage with enemy forces directly. They can’t concentrate or maneuver troops and equipment within any meaningful distance of an objective. And, on the international arena, they have no effective way of organizing additional support for their cause. Russia maintains qualitative symmetry with such strikes, while quantitatively exceeding them at their leisure, while also being able to do and is continuously doing everything else.
Don’t be too quick to draw the conclusion that tanks and artillery are falling to the wayside permanently, and that we’re now conclusively in the age of drones and missiles, to where military production can reorient from steel and engines towards 3d-printing and electric motors. As the situation changes, so does the calculation — if surgical strikes could be made to have a decisive difference on the projected course of events in Ukraine, the focus on preservation of manpower and heavy equipment for the Russian forces would have to be recalculated. Stand-off weapons are great when all you’re interested in is tickling one another from afar, but close the distance and they’re useless. Ukraine tickles Russia to make headlines, Russia giggles and tickles Ukraine back until it pukes — nobody wants to share the burden of retaliation, and nobody should be under any illusion that if the current dynamic were to flip, the Russians would use conventional means to dismantle any launch-points within reach, and unconventional means to strike at launch-points placed out of reach of conventional ones.
I’ll also elaborate more on the point about “getting money”. You just witnessed a case-study in Russia of spinning up (re-directing) existing production capacity toward war-making. This shocked everyone – and it should
The Russians have always maintained an extensive mothballed military industry and a huge stockpile of military equipment in need of refurbishment — break glass in case of emergency. There’s a number of select items where the private sector got the opportunity to jump on board in supplying the military, like clothes, rations, accessories and so on, but for the most part we’re talking about already existing production chains simply activating, dusting off the cobwebs and getting to work. It does provide a lesson, but one that Europe can only apply after their defense industry is online and producing far more than they require and the time comes to make the decision, whether to cut costs and prioritize profit margins, or preserve their industrial capability for future emergencies. Europe and the US is living in the shadow of how this decision usually goes, but maybe if they live long enough, they’ll learn this lesson this time.
The Russians are not sourcing their military equipment from a hastily reconfigured civilian economy, but were first given a decade+ to get their civilian economy prepared for self-sufficiency, via drip-fed sanctions, and had an underground military industrial base to increase weapons production by 10-100x at need, and they are their own supplier of energy and critical raw resources to do it. Europe is in the exact opposite situation, and can’t use Russia as a model for going from civilian cars to drones and armored vehicles. A closer analogy would be Germany towards the end of WW2 and the kind of non-standardized weapon procurement they sourced from civilian workshops as a last ditch effort.
Posted by: Skiffer | Oct 19 2025 19:28 utc | 641
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