Iryna Nesterova10:45, 23.07.25

With his ultimatum, Trump is only encouraging Putin to try to seize even more Ukrainian territory, O’Brien believes.

By issuing a 50-day ultimatum to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, US President Donald Trump has effectively given him time to escalate. The White House’s approach weakens Ukraine’s defenses and plays into the Kremlin’s hands, according to Phillips Payson O’Brien, a professor of strategic studies at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, in his column for The Atlantic .

Instead of taking a strong stand against Putin, Trump has issued his 50-day ultimatum, which may not even be an ultimatum if Trump ultimately backs down on his threat to impose “very tough tariffs” on Russia, he said. 

“As nationalist commentators in Russia quickly realized, Trump was offering Putin a remarkable strategic gift. Partly because Trump refused to impose new sanctions after his inauguration in January, and because suppliers found ways to circumvent existing ones, Russia can now produce more missiles,” he writes. 

He noted that the number of over 700 drones and missiles that Russia could use to strike Ukraine in just one night would be unthinkable in 2022, and meanwhile there are predictions that even more Russian attack vehicles will be flying over Ukrainian cities.Read also:

According to O’Brien, even if Ukraine receives weapons for defense, it will not be able to shoot down all the air targets with which Russia attacks it, and losses among Ukrainians will certainly increase.

On the ground, Russia will be able to gradually seize small pieces of Ukrainian territory – even at the cost of thousands of its soldiers, the analyst emphasized, and if Trump really plans to start putting pressure on Russia in 50 days, then this will only encourage Putin to try to seize more territory during this period.

O’Brien suggests that at the end of the “50-day impunity bombing,” Russia might even agree to the “peace” deal that the Trump administration proposed a few months ago. He recalled that the deal provided that the Russians would retain almost all of the captured Ukrainian territory, the United States would recognize Russian control over Crimea, Ukraine would lose the prospect of joining NATO, and would receive no security guarantees.

“Despite the fact that Ukraine fulfilled all of Trump’s demands, negotiated conscientiously, demonstrated loyalty to the US president, and refrained from striking Russian civilian targets partly out of respect for Washington, Kyiv now sees that the White House is effectively giving the Kremlin a summer without sanctions, allowing it to commit any atrocities,” the analyst writes.

In his opinion, under these conditions, the proposal of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to share Ukrainian drone technologies with the United States is “a kind of bet, an attempt to maintain at least some support.” 

“Earlier, the Ukrainian leader even offered America access to the country’s mineral resources. The agreement is formally in effect, but Trump’s support remains highly unpredictable, as helping a free people fight against a foreign dictatorship is no longer a priority for the United States,” O’Brien concluded.

(c)UNIAN 2025