Kateryna Schwartz09:00, 30.04.25

Perhaps Putin did not intend to take a break from the war with Ukraine from the very beginning, but Trump did not even try to find out, the publication noted.

The answer to the question of why, after three months of negotiations, US President Donald Trump has not achieved a single concession from Russian leader Vladimir Putin and is now threatening to “get out of this whole situation” says a lot about the American leader and even more about the new era of international relations, writes The Atlantic magazine .

It is noted that in essence, Russia gets everything it wants and gives nothing in return:

“The deal that is being formed now is so one-sided in favor of Putin that the Trump administration has to “invent” concessions for Russia… Trump himself called a concession the fact that Putin (in theory) agreed not to seize all of Ukraine – which he cannot do in the current situation anyway. First of all, this shows that Trump is not as great a negotiator as he thinks he is.”

The publication recalled that within the framework of the agreement being formed, at this stage Ukraine would have to give up part or all of the occupied territory, and in return receive some security guarantees from future aggression from Russia. It seemed that Russia, which supposedly desperately needs an agreement, would agree to such conditions, however, this is not happening, the magazine added.

It is assumed that perhaps Putin did not intend to take a break from the war with Ukraine from the very beginning, but Trump did not even try to find out.

“In the long run, Putin is weak, but in the short run, Ukraine is even weaker, and Putin is betting on its collapse before his own forces collapse. He has always believed that time is on his side. To change that view, Putin would have to believe that Trump seriously intends to support Ukraine in the long run. Then he would have to ask himself: how many more years can he wage war before the army or society collapses. Even then, he could choose to continue the war, but then at least there would be a chance that he would give Trump what he needs,” the article says.

As noted, in order to achieve such an agreement, Trump had to bluff convincingly – to make it clear that in case of refusal he was ready to support Ukraine:

“That was his main trump card. But he never used it.”

As a result, when Trump lashed out at Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky for refusing to recognize occupied Crimea as Russian, Putin fired ballistic missiles at civilian targets in Kyiv. And Trump’s subsequent appeal to Putin, “Vladimir, stop!”, was hardly a sincere plea to spare civilians, the article notes:

“It was a plea – not to beat up Ukrainians, but to stop humiliating him in front of the whole world. It is not difficult to imagine with what pleasure Putin read this plaintive post… Trump probably just wants to close the Ukrainian issue in order to move on to normalizing relations with Russia… But if Putin really wanted a partnership with the US, he would at least have made a gesture in return – as everyone expected. Instead, he responded to Trump’s capitulation with a missile strike on a civilian target.”

Perhaps he believes Trump needs relationships so much that he is willing to endure any humiliation. But this is bad news for Trump and a harbinger of the instability and conflicts that will define the multipolar world in which Trump wants to play a leading role, the publication stated.

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