Russian President Vladimir Putin has put in a counteroffer on a ceasefire in Ukraine, proposing a 30-day halt on attacking Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. Putin remains open to a full ceasefire, the Kremlin suggested, as long as it’s a different agreement with all of the things he wants attached to it.
“The leaders agreed that the movement to peace will begin with an energy and infrastructure ceasefire, as well as technical negotiations on implementation of a maritime ceasefire in the Black Sea, full ceasefire and permanent peace,” the White House said in its readout from the call. These negotiations will begin immediately in the Middle East.”
“Many elements of a Contract for Peace were discussed, including the fact that thousands of soldiers are being killed, and both President Putin and President Zelenskyy would like to see it end,” Trump said after his conversation.
“That process is now in full force and effect, and we will, hopefully, for the sake of Humanity, get the job done!”
At least based on the readouts, the United States is not yet entertaining any pause on aid and or intelligence sharing, a move that European allies, who are also equipping Ukraine, would oppose. The fear is that Russia will take the pause to both rest and rearm, leaving Ukraine incredibly vulnerable. Russia, of course, made no mention of putting their own war effort on pause.
All of that leaves the Ukraine talks in a bit of a wait-and-see mode. Exactly how meaningful this partial ceasefire will be is still unclear. Russia has decimated Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, and a reprieve from strikes would be welcome. But a lot depends on how “energy infrastructure” is defined. Russia often denies that it is bombing what it is bombing, whether it’s a children’s hospital or a power plant. Especially when it comes to energy infrastructure, the Kremlin often claims it is targeting military sites.
Ukrainian drones often target Russia’s energy infrastructure, including a recent strike against one of Russia’s largest oil refineries. This is one way for Ukraine to meaningfully bring the cost of war to Russia, both militarily and politically.
If this ceasefire does go into effect, the first real test is whether Putin adheres to it, something he’s had a bit of trouble doing in the past. But Russia’s proposal on energy infrastructure dangles something called a ceasefire in front of Trump, which gives him something to sell to himself and his supporters. And even if it is a partial ceasefire, if it holds, it would represent a breakthrough in the conflict. More importantly, this deal may buy Ukraine, and its European partners, some much-needed time as they rush to bolster Ukraine and build up its capabilities while Washington inches closer towards Russia.
Or, as the White House said in its readout: “The two leaders agreed that a future with an improved bilateral relationship between the United States and Russia has huge upside. This includes enormous economic deals and geopolitical stability when peace has been achieved.”
Nobody’s Shocked Putin Didn’t Take the Ceasefire Deal
After the U.S. and Ukraine announced its ceasefire agreement last week, Putin had some tweaks.
“We’re in favor of it. But there are nuances,” the Russian president said Thursday. The “nuances” that Putin mentioned include Ukraine surrendering in the Kursk region, the slice of Russian territory that Ukrainian troops seized in August, but have largely retreated from in recent days. Putin also said he might want Ukraine to stop mobilizing new troops and also for the West to stop arms deliveries, a demand he repeated in his call with Trump on Tuesday.
Ukraine did accept this ceasefire deal in Saudi Arabia last Tuesday, which would put a 30-day pause on all fighting. Ukraine’s decision prompted the United States to restart military aid and resume intelligence sharing, which the U.S. had put on pause, apparently because Trump wanted to be sure that Ukraine was serious about peace, though it probably had more to do with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy failing to sufficiently grovel during JD Vance’s and Trump’s temper tantrum in the White House in February.
Ukraine really had no other option but to accept this deal given how Trump has decided to apply U.S. leverage to Kyiv. But on the positive side for Kyiv, it put the onus on Russia to accept or reject the deal – which, just maybe, might prove to Trump what Ukraine has been trying to convince Washington of all along: Ukraine wants the war to end, and Russia could end it immediately if it stopped its invasion. But it won’t, because Russia isn’t really interested in peace.
“As we have always said, the only one who will drag things out, the only one who will be unconstructive is Russia,” Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskyy said last week.
Russia does not appear to have any real interest or urgency in signing a full ceasefire deal. In a speech on Friday, before his call with Trump, Putin reiterated that he was into this idea of the war ending, but only if it happened on his terms. “We agree with the proposals to stop the hostilities,” Putin said.
But he added, it had to lead “to long-term peace and eliminate the root causes of this crisis.”
The root causes of the crisis, from Russia’s perspective, include the belief that Ukraine is not an independent country. Putin ultimately wants Ukraine under Russia’s control, with a pliant government in Kyiv that will make that happen. Putin will want territory, potentially beyond the areas that Russia has already seized by force. Putin also wants to stop NATO expansion, which would mean, at the very least, preventing Ukraine from ever joining the alliance, though he may seek to roll back the alliance’s presence elsewhere. Russia will almost certainly seek sanctions relief. Putin is interested in a U.S.-brokered deal if it can get him what he hasn’t been able to achieve on the battlefield in more than three years of war.
Prior to Trump and Putin’s gabfest on Tuesday, Trump hyped their call to reporters over the weekend, saying they would be “talking about land, we’ll be talking about power plants, that’s a big question.”
“But I think we have a lot of it already discussed, very much, by both sides, Ukraine and Russia. We’re already talking about that – dividing up certain assets,” Trump said.
All of that sounded particularly worrisome if you’re Ukraine, Europe, or the more than 60 percent of Americans who support Ukraine. There are no assets to divide. These are Ukraine’s assets and this is Ukraine’s land.
Russia has illegally annexed five Ukrainian oblasts in the east and south: Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia. Russian forces do not fully control all of these areas, but Russia has insisted that they belong to the Kremlin. Trump officials have signaled that Ukraine is unlikely to return to its pre-2014 borders. Though that is the most likely outcome, the details matter because Russia is claiming much more of Ukraine than it has conquered militarily. Plus, how will Russia and Ukraine manage the movement of Ukrainian citizens who do not want to live under Russian occupation?
As for the power plant, Trump is likely referring to the Zaporizhzhia facility, Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, which Russia seized in 2022. The plant is not currently generating electricity for Ukraine, but Russia has suggested in recent weeks that it would restart it as “military and political conditions allow.” Some analysts have pointed out that it would be a troubling development if a country can seize a massive piece of nuclear infrastructure as a war prize. To allow Russia to restart it would also undermine international nuclear regulation worldwide, if that is indeed what Moscow is pushing.
These demands should be untenable – and it is still extraordinarily unclear what, if anything, is being demanded of Russia in return. As Olga Lautman, a non-resident senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), said, this peace deal that Trump wants is “basically to have Ukraine capitulate, using him as a third party. Which, frankly, if Ukraine wanted to surrender – they could go to Russia. And, you know, they don’t need to be extorted from minerals in the process.”
It’s not clear how much Putin and Trump did discuss these root causes on their recent call. But if negotiations begin soon, as the readouts suggested they would, Russia is likely to keep pushing these conditions.
Ukraine’s U.S. Partnership Puts It in a Tough Spot
All of this is a reminder of the precarious situation Ukraine is in, and why it has little choice but to sign on to a ceasefire deal brokered by its most powerful ally – although, really, at this point we should stop calling the U.S. that, since it is basically extorting Ukraine over its survival. It is the same reason why Ukraine has to entertain the U.S.’s one-sided deal to secure critical mineral rights in Ukraine.
It also shows how brazen Russia’s key demand is for the complete cessation of military and intelligence support to Ukraine. The U.S.’s decision to suspend military aid and, most critically, intelligence sharing, put Ukraine in an extremely difficult position. Ukraine relies on that intelligence support to defend against Russian bombardments and to strike against Russian troops, especially to hit inside Russian territory with long-range weapons. As part of its intelligence freeze, the U.S. cut off commercial satellite imagery from its accounts, which Ukraine also relied on to assess artillery and drone targets and to keep tabs on Russian troop movements. While the U.S. has unfrozen the intel, that threat of another cut-off hangs over Ukraine. Europe and the United Kingdom can’t fully replace U.S. intelligence assistance, and it needs time to build up those capabilities.
Keith Kellogg, the U.S. special envoy to Ukraine and Russia, called the pause “sort of like hitting a mule with a two-by-four across the nose.” It “got their attention,” Kellogg said during an interview at the Council of Foreign Relations earlier this month. This, by the way, is a guy who Russia thinks is too close to Ukraine.
That wake-up call had real-world consequences. During the pause, Russia made battlefield gains, and Russia launched a massive aerial strike that damaged critical infrastructure and killed at least 20 people. Russian forces have also largely pushed Ukrainian forces from their foothold in Kursk, which has raised questions as to whether the pause in U.S. intelligence undermined Ukraine’s capacity to strike back at Russia. Last week, Trump said Ukrainian forces were surrounded by Russian troops in Kursk and that he “strongly requested to President Putin that their lives be spared.” Ukraine said that’s “untrue” as the president appears to be regurgitating Putin’s talking points. Ukrainian officials have indicated that they are pulling back from Kursk, but they and independent analysts say there is no evidence that Ukraine is encircled. What does seem clear is that Ukraine has all but lost a potential bargaining chip in negotiations with Russia.
Still, the Trump administration did put one meaningful pressure point on Russia last week. The U.S. let an exemption lapse that allowed for Russian financial institutions to access U.S. payment systems for energy transactions, which may now make it harder for other countries to buy Russian oil and gas. Those tighter sanctions do show some behind-the-scenes coercion against Moscow. What is less clear is why the administration has chosen that to be the quiet part of the president’s positioning and pressure on the Ukraine war.
After Ukraine signed the ceasefire agreement last week, an NPR reporter asked Secretary of State Marco Rubio whether U.S.-Ukraine relations were back on track after the ceasefire and resumption of aid and intelligence-sharing. “This is not Mean Girls. This is not some episode of some television show. This is very serious,” Rubio said in response. “People are going to – today, people will die in this war. They died yesterday, and sadly, unless there’s a ceasefire tonight, they’ll die tomorrow.”
This statement is so utterly gross, because it would be easy to offer some diplomatic-speak about a partnership working toward peace, or something. Rubio also reminded everyone that Trump actually has behaved a lot like a real housewife in all of this, with incredibly dire stakes. Trump backstabbed Zelenskyy because he didn’t say thank you for the support, which was mostly given to Ukraine by Congress and the previous president. Even as Trump claims to be mad about how Zelenskyy behaved at his Oval Office party, Trump is really unable to get over the whole “perfect phone call” he had with Zelenskyy from, like, four seasons ago. What Rubio is correct about is the seriousness, and that people will die – except people are dying because Russia is waging this war, and it got an assist, whether intentional or by knock-on effect, from the United States.
Meanwhile, Russia can mostly sit back, content to let the White House engage in shuttle diplomacy. Russia’s partial-ceasefire deal may still be a better outcome for Ukraine than if Trump seriously entertains Putin’s “root causes.” The Kremlin’s hardline stance against arming Ukraine is an unequivocal threat to Ukraine’s survival. It will be untenable for Ukraine, and for Europe, and it should be for the United States. That will be the big question – and test – as these negotiations unfold.
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