WARSAW, POLAND – One of the questions I am constantly asked by friends and colleagues here in Poland – many of them having refugees from the Russian invasion of Ukraine – is “when is [US President Donald] Trump going to figure out that Putin is a congenital liar? He is never going to agree to a ceasefire – much less make peace. Please tell the American government that Russian President Vladimir Putin is playing them along and making the White House look foolish.”
Trump Has A Change of Heart on Ukraine…
Based on that midday meeting today in the Oval Office with the NATO Security General, Mark Rutte, the US head of state seems to have finally taken that lesson on board.
More than a year ago, I was sitting at a café in Georgetown with a long-time colleague who is one of Washington’s top political consultants on foreign policy issues.
Our discussion was centred on how we thought Donald Trump would approach the Ukraine war, should he win the 2024 presidential election, which was still several months away at that point.
“Trump sees himself as the great negotiator,” he said. “Settling this war would be the challenge of the century for him – the jewel in the crown. So, what I expect him to do is to at first is to try to approach Putin with the ‘Art of the Deal’ methodology he is famous for. He will offer the Russian president something he thinks would cause him to forget his ambitions for destroying Ukraine,” he said. “That is one way the war could end.”
“However,” he continued, “if Putin starts playing games with him and tries to make him look as though he is being played for a fool, Trump is likely to get very vindictive very fast. I would not be surprised if he were to turn around and say ‘negotiating with this guy does not work. So, I am not going to double the military assistance to the Ukrainians – along with doubling the sanctions on Russia’.”
That latter scenario appears to be what is playing out today in Washington.
Today in the Oval Office, Trump’s postscript to a meeting with the NATO Secretary General, Mark Rutte, was to do just what my prescient colleague had predicted.
Ukraine is now about to receive some of the more advanced pieces of military hardware – systems that could change the situation on the battlefield – and in considerable quantities.
Russia’s War on Civilians
Throughout the past three years, Ukraine has experienced a consistent lack of certain weapon systems that the country almost never seems to have enough of.
At the top of that list are air and missile defense systems. Ukraine has needs for almost every category of missile interceptors due to the increasing numbers of drones and missiles that Putin has been firing at Ukrainian cities in combined attacks.
As a consequence, record numbers of Ukrainian civilians are being killed in these bombardments.
June was the deadliest month of the war to date for civilian casualties with 232 people killed and over 1,300 injured.
This situation is likely to become worse in the coming months as Russia is increasing drone production to the point where Putin could be capable of firing 1000 drones per day.
Many of them not hitting military targets but apartment complexes, office buildings and large public spaces like shopping malls and hospitals.
“Russian terror against the rear is an attempt to break the nation,” stated Andriy Yermak, the head of Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s Presidential Administration. “Russia can’t achieve Putin’s goals on the frontline, so it keeps targeting civilians.”
Russia Is Getting Help in Ukraine War
Russia also continues to receive increasing assistance from other nations to surge its drone production. Moscow is reported to have imported laborers from Asian and African countries to improve the workforce in these drone factories.
In addition, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has also been accused of providing vital electronic components in large quantities – components of the kind that are critical to the production of Russia’s ballistic and cruise missiles.
The New Military Assistance Posture
What may change this increasingly lopsided air defense duel is what Trump had to say in today’s press event with Rutte.
The American president told those assembled that the US will send “top-of-the-line weapons” to Ukraine by way of NATO countries.
Rutte confirmed Washington’s decision to “massively supply Ukraine with what is necessary through NATO” and that the Europeans would foot the bill.
“We want to make sure Ukraine can do what it wants to do,” Trump also said following his one-on-one meeting with the NATO chief.
Under the terms of the deal that the US has agreed to, European countries will immediately send the Patriot systems that Ukraine requires to take out Russia’s ballistic missile strikes. Replacement units will then be sent by the US, Trump said, to backfill what the Europeans have transferred to Ukraine.
Neither Rutte nor Trump provided any details on the weaponry to be sent to Kyiv.
“If I was Vladimir Putin today… I would reconsider whether I should not take negotiations about Ukraine more seriously,” Rutte said, as Trump nodded in agreement.
50 Days for Putin…
Rutte’s comment was not solely motivated by Trump’s decision to send Ukraine many of the weapons it has been asking for after months. The other half of today’s announcement is that Trump has declared that Putin now has 50 days to come to a peaceful resolution to his conflict with Ukraine.
Trump said the US will impose 100 per cent secondary sanctions targeted at Russia’s still-existing trading partners if Putin fails to meet the deadline. After that date, any country that trades with Russia faces a 100 per cent tariff if they want to sell their products to the US.
One frequently mentioned example is if India were to continue buying oil from Russia, US companies that purchase Indian goods would have to pay a 100 per cent import tax, or tariff, when the products reach the US.
Trump was asked at one point what was responsible for his change of heart. For some time, he had presented his interactions with Putin as a “good relationship” – and at times, he almost seemed to admire the former KGB Lt. Col.’s rule of Russia.
But today, in somewhat of a personal aside, he told the press that “we thought we had a deal [to end the war] three or four times.” Trump – as he described it – had some “very nice phone calls” with the Russian president. “But I would then tell Melania I had a good conversation with Putin and she would tell me “yes but just now missiles are starting to fall on Kyiv – or some other city.”
“After that happens three or four times you say: the talk doesn’t mean anything,” Trump said.
If Putin had never impressed the US president as being someone who negotiates in good faith, that impression no longer exists.
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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