Key Points – Russian President Vladimir Putin’s strategy is to “wear Trump down” and win the war in Ukraine by exploiting President Donald Trump’s impatience with both peace talks and military aid, argues Leon Aron of the American Enterprise Institute in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed.
-Putin continues to make maximalist demands in stalled negotiations, likely believing he can drag out the war until Trump gives up on both mediation and supporting Kyiv.
-This analysis comes as Trump and Putin held another lengthy phone call on June 14th, discussing both the Ukraine and Israel-Iran wars, with Trump noting the call would not lead to “immediate peace.”
Can Putin Wait Trump Out on Ukraine?
Donald Trump, while running for president last year, promised on numerous occasions to end Russia’s war in Ukraine quickly, sometimes even on his first day back in office.
That did not happen, of course. The war has continued, and even escalated, while a couple of rounds of peace talks have not led to any progress on a ceasefire, or anything else that could bring about the end of the war.
Meanwhile, while Trump has continued to try to encourage an end to the war, the president has indicated that he has lost interest in peace talks, with the previous rounds taking place in Istanbul, without any involvement from the U.S. Those talks, meanwhile, were brief, with Russia essentially demanding total surrender, including of disputed lands.
Now, a new op-ed argues that in the current phase of the war, Russian President Vladimir Putin is hoping to “wear Trump down,” both from negotiations and from further military help for Ukraine.
Riding the Tiger
Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Leon Aron predicts that Putin will count on Trump merely losing patience with the idea of peace talks and giving up.
Aron, a senior fellow with the American Enterprise Institute, is a Russia expert, whose bio lists his areas of expertise as “Russian domestic politics, Russian foreign policy, US-Russian relations, Post-Soviet evolution: social, cultural, and economic aspects.” His most recent book, from 2023, is Riding the Tiger: Vladimir Putin’s Russia and the Uses of War.
“Vladimir Putin continues to confront Ukraine with absurd demands during so-called peace talks,” Aron predicts in the op-ed. “Mr. Putin doesn’t want peace. He wants victory, and he’s playing President Trump to achieve it. Mr. Putin will drag on the war until Mr. Trump gets so bored of mediation and frustrated with U.S. assistance to Ukraine that he gives up on both.”
Aron goes on to argue that there’s no way Ukraine would accept Russia’s current demands for ending the war, even if the White House pressured them to do so. And as we saw in President Zelenskyy’s Oval Office confrontation earlier this year with Trump and J.D. Vance, the White House has put pressure on Ukraine to make peace.
However, Aron argues that even if Russia believes it can win on the battlefield, that’s unlikely to happen easily.
“On the ground, Russia advances slowly, at the cost of tens of thousands killed and wounded, and Ukraine’s public opinion is staunchly against surrender,” he writes. “Mr. Trump’s moral indifference means he has no motivation, much less urgency, to help Ukraine.”
Another Phone Call
Meanwhile, as reported by the Associated Press, Trump and Putin had another lengthy phone call in recent days, where they discussed both the war in Ukraine and Israel and Iran’s exchange of fire over the weekend.
“President Putin called this morning to very nicely wish me a Happy Birthday, but to more importantly, talk about Iran, a country he knows very well,” Trump said on his Truth Social platform on Saturday.
“We talked at length. Much less time was spent talking about Russia/Ukraine, but that will be for next week. He is doing the planned prisoner swaps – large numbers of prisoners are being exchanged, immediately, from both sides. The call lasted approximately 1 hour. He feels, as do I, this war in Israel-Iran should end, to which I explained, his war should also end.”
Putin foreign affairs adviser Yuri Ushakov, per the AP, also shared the readout of the call from the Russian side.
“Vladimir Putin, having condemned the military operation against Iran, expressed serious concern about the possible escalation of the conflict,” Ushakov said of the call between the presidents, adding that the Israel-Iran fight could have “unpredictable consequences for the entire situation in the Middle East.”
About the Author:
Stephen Silver is an award-winning journalist, essayist and film critic, and contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. For over a decade, Stephen has authored thousands of articles that focus on politics, technology, and the economy. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) at @StephenSilver, and subscribe to his Substack newsletter.
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