Trump’s 100 days of failure

Trump’s initial demands were straightforward: stop fighting and start negotiating. After his first conversation with Vladimir Putin, he announced that a complete cessation of fighting was imminent, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky welcomed that prospect.

Since then, however, Putin and his small team at the Kremlin have obviously succeeded in dragging Trump’s inexperienced negotiator, Steve Witkoff, down a rabbit hole of complex conditionalities and impossible demands. After many weeks of this, even the most dimwitted of negotiators should have realised that Putin has no intention of agreeing to a ceasefire or accepting Trump’s plan or timetable.

Ever since he launched his full-scale invasion in February 2022, Putin has relied on Russian military might to deliver him control over Ukraine. He went in with an army of roughly 200,000 contract soldiers, but has since expanded the invasion force to around 600,000 with selective mobilisations and huge financial incentives. Yet despite suffering 700,000 to 800,000 casualties, with more than 200,000 dead, the supposedly mighty Russian army controls less Ukrainian territory — 18.3% to be precise — than it did at this time three years ago.

Thus, in military terms, Putin’s war has been a massive failure. He probably still believes that his forces can grind their way forward and achieve some military breakthrough. But few independent observers see much chance of that happening. Russia may be able to throw more men and bombs into the battle than Ukraine can, but it cannot instill in those on the front lines the will to fight. So far, defence has proven much easier than offence. That means Putin is ultimately more dependent on Trump than on the Russian military to deliver something that could be called a victory.

Thus, Putin has deployed all the resources at his disposal to play Trump. Everyone knows that the US president is highly susceptible to flattery, and Putin has gone overboard in arguing that the 2020 US presidential election was “stolen”, and that the war never would have happened with Trump in office. He wants us to believe that he went to his private chapel to pray for Trump after the assassination attempt in 2024, and he has even had the Kremlin court artist paint a portrait of Trump as a gift.

In addition to flattery, the Russians have also dangled lucrative business prospects before Trump and Witkoff. In the first encounter between US and Russian negotiators in Riyadh, Putin’s team brought a list of multi-billion-dollar investment opportunities that would supposedly become available if only Trump ditched Ukraine and lifted the sanctions against Russia. According to Witkoff, a good portion of his latest meeting with Putin was devoted to this topic.

Both tactics have clearly worked. Putin knows his business, and he knows his mark. There has been no ceasefire, nor are there any signs that Putin is ready to agree to one. He has continued to launch attacks on civilian targets in Ukrainian cities with impunity.

The Kremlin’s demands in its pseudo-negotiations seem to have been twofold. The first is for Ukraine to hand over the four regions of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. Witkoff seems already to have conceded this: the US is ready to recognise all four illegally seized territories as part of Russia.

But Russia does not fully control these regions. The regional capitals of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson — cities with a combined prewar population of one million — still fly the Ukrainian flag, and no government in Kyiv could survive if it simply surrendered them. Ukraine might be able to accept a frozen conflict along the present front line, but hardly more than that.

The second demand is for security dominance and control over the rest of Ukraine. Putin wants to block any future Western security or military presence in, or assistance for, Ukraine. Trump has already caved on the question of future NATO membership for Ukraine, and he is obviously prepared to promise Putin a full stop to US assistance.

But this is where the Europeans enter the picture. Neither Putin nor Trump wanted them at the table, and that is just as well. As long as the Europeans stand firm in their determination to continue assisting Ukraine financially and militarily, Putin and Trump can agree to whatever they want. It will have no material impact on the ground.

Europe thus holds a trump card. If it can muster the political will, it is fully capable of preventing a shameful Munich-style betrayal of Ukraine. European leaders must make clear that they will proceed with their plans to support Ukraine’s defence and sovereignty no matter what.

In theory, Trump himself could change course by applying serious pressure on Putin and stepping up support for Ukraine. If that were to happen, he might then achieve the ceasefire that he seeks. Otherwise, he will continue to fail, as Putin and his cronies laugh at him behind his back.