SOURCE :- THE AGE NEWS
John Herbst, a former US ambassador to Ukraine, says the summation of Donald Trump’s phone call with Vladimir Putin is simple: “Trump blinked.”
A week-and-a-half ago, when Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky hosted major European leaders in Kyiv, and they agreed to hit Russia with substantial new sanctions if Moscow did not sign up to a 30-day ceasefire, Trump backed them in.
President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke for some two hours on the phone.Credit: AP
It was a move in the direction Zelensky had been advocating for weeks: more pressure had to be put on Putin.
The Russian leader instead suggested direct talks with Ukraine in Istanbul, which he then failed to attend. As Herbst says, Trump then “provided cover” for Putin by saying publicly: “Why would he go if I’m not going?”
A week later, and having spoken for two hours on the phone, Trump is now championing Putin’s pitch for direct talks between Russia and Ukraine as some kind of breakthrough.
This is not my war. I’m just here to try and help … I think something’s gonna happen. And if it doesn’t, I just back away, and they’re going to have to keep going.”
Donald Trump
In a later call with Zelensky and other European leaders, Zelensky had to remind Trump that negotiations had already started – supposedly – in Istanbul last week, US news site Axios reported.
According to an account in The New York Times, that call left the Europeans with the distinct impression they should not expect Trump to join them in imposing new sanctions on Moscow any time soon.
In recent weeks, the US president had threatened such sanctions, and mused that Putin might be “tapping me along”. But he appears to have cooled on that option.
After his chat with Putin, Trump struck an indifferent tone while speaking with reporters in the Oval Office.
“This is not my war. I’m just here to try and help,” he said. “You got big egos involved, I tell you. But I think something’s gonna happen. And if it doesn’t, I just back away, and they’re going to have to keep going.”
Trump did not answer directly when asked what, specifically, made him believe Putin was genuine. “I like to think positively. If I thought that president Putin did not want to get this over with, I wouldn’t even be talking about it because I’d just pull out.”
There was a “red line” at which point he would walk away, Trump said, but he didn’t want to reveal it publicly.
Herbst, who is now a senior director of the Eurasia Centre at the Atlantic Council, a Washington think tank, said the president would not necessarily follow through on his repeated threats to wash his hands of Ukraine.
‘The dangers of his infatuation with Putin are still not fully clear to him’
John E. Herbst, former US ambassador to Ukraine
But: “I think the odds of them walking away are higher than the odds of them actually putting pressure on the Russians.”
Lucian Kim, a senior Ukraine analyst at the International Crisis Group, said it was noteworthy that Trump said he “informed” Zelensky negotiations would immediately start between Russia and Ukraine.
“If something goes wrong, onus will once again be on Kyiv,” Kim wrote on X. “What’s missing in Trump’s statement is a sense of urgency or a hint of his alleged ‘impatience with Putin’.”
‘Growing indifference’
The European Union and Britain have since forged ahead with additional sanctions on Russia, without waiting for Trump’s approval or concurrence.
Amid talks with European counterparts on Tuesday, Zelensky indicated in a social media post that he had clocked Trump’s growing indifference to the cause.
“It is important that America remains engaged in the process of bringing peace closer,” he said. “It is America that Russia fears, and it is American influence that can save many lives, if used as leverage to make Putin end the war.”
Still, it was only a month ago that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio was threatening to abandon Ukraine and walk away from talks “within days” if progress was not made. That has not eventuated, and Trump’s pause on military aid for Kyiv lasted barely a week.
At a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday (Wednesday AEST), Rubio pointed out Russia was still subject to the same US sanctions as under Joe Biden, and Ukraine was still receiving the same armaments. “What has Putin gained through all this?” Rubio asked. “He hasn’t gotten a single concession.”
On trade policy, too, Trump has shown a tendency to regress towards the norm. He backpedalled on his so-called reciprocal tariffs after a week, and has now wound back his 145 per cent levies on Chinese goods to 30 per cent.
Herbst agrees with the observation, but warns Trump has a better grasp of markets than he does of geopolitics.
“The threat to Trump of what was happening in the bond market [due to tariffs] was something he understood,” he says. “His career made him understand that.
“The dangers of his infatuation with Putin are still not fully clear to him. He does seem to understand that he could be described as a patsy. That’s my great hope; that the policy will not deliver Ukraine to the Kremlin.“
Get a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what’s making headlines around the world. Sign up for our weekly What in the World newsletter.
