Key Points and Summary – President Trump’s dramatic shift to a hardline stance against Russia is not rooted in a newfound love for Ukraine, but in a personal fury at being played for a fool by Vladimir Putin.
-According to Washington insiders, Trump became increasingly incensed by Putin’s duplicity—agreeing to peace talks while simultaneously escalating attacks on Ukrainian civilians.
-This perceived disrespect and bad faith shattered Trump’s “Art of the Deal” approach, leading him to conclude that force is the “only language Putin understands.”
-The resulting surge in weapons for Ukraine is less about strategy and more about a vindictive president’s personal response to being slighted.
The Talk Doesn’t Mean Anything’: Trump’s Fury Unleashes a Storm on Putin
LONDON, UK – Speaking to the United States-based NBC News network, William Courtney, the former US ambassador to Georgia and Kazakhstan, is one of several commentators discussing President Donald Trump’s increasing pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the war in Ukraine. He also draws some critical conclusions about the latest direction that Trump has taken in his relations with the former KGB lieutenant colonel, who has been Russia’s president for a quarter of a century.
One of Courtney’s more impactful assessments is that there are people in the ruling circles in Moscow who think Putin overplayed his hand in his dealings with the US President. Other foreign policy experts in the US then echo these sentiments, watching this latest turn of events in the US-Russia relationship.
Factors contributing to this “overplaying” of his stance in dealings with Trump are Putin’s constant prevarications, his talking nice to Trump but then, as the US president has said, turning around and acting as though the call never happened in the first place.
“I speak to him a lot about getting this thing done. And then I hang up and say, ‘That was a nice phone call,’ and the missiles are launched into Kyiv or some other city,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday, about the history of his conversations with Putin. “And then after that happens three or four times, you say the talk doesn’t mean anything.”
This behavior by Putin has created a personal animus against the Russian leader by Trump. The US President is now angered by Putin making him appear to be naïve or foolish in dealing with the Kremlin.
What Putin Did to Sink His Image with Trump
Therefore, writes Jonathan Lemire this week in The Atlantic, “Trump did not develop a new fondness for Ukraine or its president, Volodymyr Zelensky. He did not abruptly become a believer in the traditional transatlantic alliances prized by his predecessors as a counterweight to Moscow. Rather, Trump got insulted.”
“By ignoring Trump’s pleas to end the war and instead ratcheting up the fighting, Putin has made Trump look like the junior partner in the relationship. The Russian leader has ‘really overplayed his hand,’ said one of the White House officials advising Trump on relations with the Russian leader. “The president has given him chance after chance, but enough is enough.”
Aside from “saying one thing and doing another” in these phone calls with Trump, Putin also rejected repeated attempts by the US for him to stop all of his attacks and agree to negotiations with Ukraine.
Putin refused to talk directly with Zelensky, but he did agree to meet with Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, which had no positive impact either.
Trump then decided to scale back his bridge-building initiatives. Not only have his diplomatic efforts been curtailed, but in the past few weeks, Trump has become considerably angrier with Putin. As a signal to Moscow, he ended a short pause by the Pentagon in sending weapons to Ukraine.
Trump: Putin Wants to Just Keep Killing People
In the meantime, Zelensky has put considerable effort into re-setting his relations with Trump. He also, in contrast to Putin, agreed to a US ceasefire proposal.
Trump then began to change his rhetoric, saying that Putin began “tapping him along” by turning down the same cease-fire proposal Zelensky had already accepted, and at the same time also launching some of the biggest drone and missile bombardments of the war.
After a July 3 phone call between the two leaders, Trump said of Putin, when speaking to the press afterwards, “it just seems like he wants to go all the way and just keep killing people. It’s not good. I wasn’t happy with it.”
Trump and Putin have spoken by phone at least a dozen times in the past six months. During that time, Trump has become increasingly annoyed with and critical of the Russian leader, according to the same White House insiders who spoke to Lemire.
By the spring, Trump was telling his advisors that Putin did not want the war to end. This is a conclusion that the US intelligence community reached more than a year ago. Now that Trump and the senior intelligence officials are of one mind on the issue, expect more changes in administration policy towards Moscow.
Changes that Putin is not going to be happy with at all.
About the Author: Reuben F. Johnson
Reuben F. Johnson has thirty-six years of experience analyzing and reporting on foreign weapons systems, defense technologies, and international arms export policy. Johnson is the Director of Research at the Casimir Pulaski Foundation. He is also a survivor of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. He worked for years in the American defense industry as a foreign technology analyst and later as a consultant for the U.S. Department of Defense, the Departments of the Navy and Air Force, and the governments of the United Kingdom and Australia. In 2022-2023, he won two awards in a row for his defense reporting. He holds a bachelor’s degree from DePauw University and a master’s degree from Miami University in Ohio, specializing in Soviet and Russian studies. He lives in Warsaw.
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Jim
July 17, 2025 at 5:15 pm
I don’t think anything changed, simply put, the political pressure in Washington to “do something” had become too great for Trump to sit and effectively do nothing and he wasn’t prepared to take on the warhawks by going to the American People (evening T. V. address to the nation) and make the case for ending the war (or at least ending United States participation in it).
Trump is buying time.
Already, his plan to have Nato countries purchase weapons then send them on to Kiev is not going well, several countries have backed out of the idea because they don’t have the money.
The 50 days is a put off, not a deadline.
The secondary sanctions would be a mistake in terms of pursuing good relations with India and would make much worse the U. S.’s relationship with China which is already quite rocky as it is.
No other country effected will like these sanctions and it will further weaponize the Dollar, thus, driving more countries to “other mediums of exchange” and abandoning the Dollar whenever they can do so.
Senator Lindsey Graham is obsessed with Ukraine… he’s all in, as they say, but more thoughtful analysts point out how carrying through with this plan to the end would only result in blowback against United States interests.
Kiev will soon be an orphan walking down a lonely, dark street going nowhere.
Sue for peace, take neutrality, as Ukraine was from 1996 to 2014, get rid of the Banderites who’ve corrupted & wrecked the country, accept a small-sized constabulary military force like they had from 1996 to 2014.
Much like Austria was neutral by agreement via a 1955 treaty (Austria is still neutral today).
This arrangement doesn’t constitute the destruction of Ukraine, far from it, rather, it returns Ukraine to their pre-2014 status minus territorial annexation in the recent military operation.
Wars have consequences.
Kiev won’t put down its arms so it’s still fighting and has not lost the war.
But there are manpower shortages for Kiev.
There are weapons shortages for Kiev.
Soon, there will be money shortages.
And, then that’s all she wrote. Game over.
taco
July 17, 2025 at 5:32 pm
This is complete BS.
After the nazis launched their audacious operation spiderweb june 1 2025, putin told trump there would be huge big massive retaliation.
Even trump himself on 4 june 2025 said he expected putin to retaliate in that way.
But What happened.
Putin’s response was rated as just totally nothing more than a whimper. A mere cough at the doorway. Or a fart at the wash basin.
Putin merely hit the ukros with an overnight attack on 6 june with about 400 drones and missiles most of which were SHOT DOWN or jammed.
The real reason for trump’s sudden about-face is the coming or rising storm caused by the epstein list (or file) uproar.
There’s big suspicion that trump’s name is on the list or file. Even elon musk said so.
Imagine What would people do if they discovered MAGA boss’ a pedo. A man who enjoyed hush hushy services given by underaged humans.
Finito for MAGA boss. Finito.
Swamplaw Yankee
July 18, 2025 at 4:18 am
Insults? The reality is that nobody in Congress really has a method to objectively evaluate the tax funded intelligence community? There is much data from Congress to this effect.
George Friedman had a book out 25 years ago “America’s Secret Wars” where intelligence “failures” are even referred to. How did Bin Ladin have a secret muslim terrorist HQ in South Parkdale in Toronto that every local knew about? Oh, the Putin FSB and Han CCP Zi triad cell networks 100% protected the terrorists from alert Yankee tax paid alphabet intelligence agencies. Or, conversely, the US DNI, etc., are so penetrated from Canadian Putin/Zi cells, that they allowed the 7-11 attacks to proceed unhindered?
Wow: like the non-existent Jeffrey Epstein client data. The Putin sex trade is so profitable and re-started in 2014. Oh, in the same time period as the “Lolita Express” delivered prime cuts of “Lolita’ kiddies from Putin’s groomer organization to Epstein. In 2025 Putin still survives and operates the sex trade with zero USA interference. -30-