Yuri Kobzar16:43, 18.05.25

Even Putin’s primitive move with a fake delegation was enough for Trump to declare progress.

Donald Trump seized on the meeting of Ukrainian and Russian delegations in Istanbul as a formal excuse to announce progress in approaching peace. However, it is quite clear that the Kremlin is only faking readiness for negotiations, while in reality Russia is intensifying military attacks on Ukraine. This is reported by The Wall Street Journal . 

The author of the publication emphasizes in particular that this night Russia carried out a large-scale air attack on Ukraine, using 273 drones. At least one person was killed in these strikes, and a 4-year-old child was injured. And against this background, Trump radiates optimism, announcing his conversation with Vladimir Putin as if it could really bring some progress. 

“We hope that this will be a productive day, a ceasefire will be agreed upon,” he wrote on his social network Truth Social.

The WSJ notes that during the first months of Trump’s presidency, Putin has tested the limits of how much he can torpedo peace talks. And that test has shown that Trump, while sometimes expressing irritation with the Kremlin, has still refrained from imposing new sanctions on Russia.

From the beginning, the failed talks in Istanbul gave Trump a formal reason to declare that now Russia and Ukraine have at least started talking, although this meeting did not bring any progress towards peace, and the idea of ​​a temporary ceasefire was buried altogether. 

“Putin seeks to drag out negotiations, avoiding a ceasefire, and maintain Trump’s trust without losing the opportunity to maintain good relations with the US,” says Andrei Kolesnikov, a political analyst in Moscow. 

Eric Green, a former White House Russia adviser during the Biden administration, agrees. He believes that during a personal conversation, Putin will likely try to convince Trump that the talks in Istanbul have made significant progress, and then shift the conversation to economic deals, appealing to the US president’s commercial instincts.

“It is clear that Putin wants to have complete freedom of action in Ukraine and normalize relations with the United States,” Green said. 

(C)UNIAN 2025