Trump reverses course on Putin. Or does he?
Donald Trump finally goes public with his agitation with Putin.
It has long been obvious that the Russians are the primary obstacle to any ceasefire or peace deal in the war. The Kremlin is all in on a maximalist conception of victory. The Russians continue betting on a long term victory and have refused to provide US President Donald Trump with even symbolic concessions.
On Tuesday, Trump again lashed out at the Russian side for habitually stalling the peace negotiations. This was the latest instance of Trump openly discussing his creeping agitation with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
"I'm not happy with Putin. I can tell you that much right now,” he growled during a cabinet meeting.
"We get a lot of bullshit thrown at us by Putin ... He's very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless."
During the cabinet meeting Trump spoke about providing the Ukrainian side with defensive weapons, implying that last week’s decision to cut deliveries of the arms and ammunition had not been made by him personally. The internet swiftly filled up with memes of the surprised look on Defense Secretary Hegseth’s face.
The Russian army responded to Trump’s comments about providing arms to the Ukrainians by sending an aerial armada of more than 700 drones. It was the same unmistakable response that the Kremlin has sent to the Ukrainians and the West after every single act or gesture of Western solidarity.
Earlier today, CNN published a report that seems to confirm the narrative that Trump had been left out of the loop on the order to stop the flow of arms:
“Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth did not inform the White House before he authorized a pause on weapons shipments to Ukraine last week, according to five sources familiar with the matter, setting off a scramble inside the administration to understand why the halt was implemented and explain it to Congress and the Ukrainian government.”
Which (if it is true) would make it the second time that Defense Secretary Hegseth has unilaterally held up the delivery of critically needed US weapons to Kyiv. In doing so, allegedly “catching senior national security officials off guard”.
Maybe. Whether the Trump administration is bureaucratically incompetent or is simply shuffling the deck in order to have Kyiv make concessions is a serious question. Donald Trump’s mercurial and unpredictable negotiation style is calculated to keep his opponents unbalanced. His brutal and unsentimental usage of blunt force trauma to target his opponents has had some excellent results in some cases (the bombing of the Iranian nuclear program; 5% NATO defense pledges) and rather ineffective in other instances (trade deals; sanctions and tariffs).
What has surprised me personally is Trump’s patience with the Russian side. I did not expect that Trump would wait for months to call out the Russian side for stalling the process on his path to glory as a peacemaker.
In late December of last year, I co-authored an essay predicting the flow of negotiations with my friend and colleague Mark Galeotti.
My dear editors at my beloved Tablet magazine, where I have been European Culture Critic and Ukraine specialist for more than a decade, decided to bestow on our analysis a fetching and controversial headline: “Is Trump’s Nobel Prize Waiting in Kyiv?”
It turned out to be a good decision. Sadly much of what Mark and I predicted six months ago has come to pass.
The essay bears rereading:
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/trump-nobel-prize-kyiv