The American president has lost patience with the Russian leader – so has his own people
31 March 2025
The Kremlin is nervous. On Saturday night, a limousine belonging to Vladimir Putin’s official fleet dramatically exploded north of the headquarters of the Russian security services. Last week, footage showed servicemen being frisked by special protection officers. Those same officers were later seen opening up sewer hatches in a hunt for bombs near where the Russian leader was speaking. To Western intelligence agencies, the situation is becoming clear: within Russia’s top brass, the knives are out for their leader.
Western analysts are often accused of wishful thinking. Rightly so. In March 2022, an op-ed in the New York Times described Russia as a “Potemkin superpower”, naively suggesting that just the faintest push would cause the whole regime to suddenly collapse.
Such a projection has not come to pass. But there is one thing the rising paranoia does certainly reveal: Putin does think he’s vulnerable.
You can understand why. Let’s first consider the feeling within Russian society at large. Since the war started three years ago, 250,000 soldiers have died – the pain does now appear to be cutting through. Grieving mothers are now starting to write to president Putin demanding explanations, with one telling Sky News: “it’s impossible to live like this”.
The heavy losses have led to a wider conscription crisis which has caused Putin to offer salaries – far above the average – for young men to go to the front line. Do not underestimate the anger of these families: when Moscow was at war in Afghanistan in the 1980s, it was the mothers of soldiers that formed the frontline of the anti-war movement.
Then there’s the key demand made by Putin in negotiations with the US: that Volodymyr Zelensky be removed before a ceasefire be agreed. The madness of that condition exposes the Russian premier’s desperation. Mr Zelensky’s possible successor, current ambassador to the UK Valerii Zaluzhny, is more hardline than him.
But what will worry Putin the most is the impatience of the man he once considered his most loyal friend in the West: Donald Trump. On Sunday, the American president deviated from his traditional praise for the Russian leader by saying he was “p—– off” with him after weeks of attempting to negotiate a ceasefire in Ukraine. That marks a sharp change of tone from 2015, when Trump described him as a “strong leader”.
We are now entering the time of year known as “fighting season” – the months where the weather warms up and the ground hardens to allow tank warfare.
The improved weather could favour Ukraine. Clearer skies will make drones more useful in targeting Russian forces, and their untrained troops – with no experience of combined arms, tanks, artillery and airpower – will also struggle against Ukraine’s better trained defence.
There could be no time when the Russian premier’s vulnerability could be as pivotal in altering the course of this war as now. The question is whether the West will seize the moment.
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Related :
April 1st, 2025
Trump rejects Putin’s proposal for interim government in Ukraine
Donald Trump has outright rejected Vladimir Putin’s call for a UN-led interim government in Ukraine.
“There was an idea from Russia about a temporary administration that was not appreciated by the president [Trump],” US state department spokesman Tammy Bruce said on Monday.
“Ukraine is… a constitutional democracy. Governance in Ukraine is determined by its constitution and the Ukrainian people.”
Mr Trump has previously questioned the popularity of Volodymyr Zelensky, suggesting he would “lose by a landslide” were an election held in Ukraine.
Mr Zelensky’s popularity currently sits at around 60%.
Trump threatens secondary tariffs on Russia
Donald Trump has again threatened to impose secondary tariffs on Russia if it does not make a deal to end the war with Ukraine.
“I want to see him make a deal, so that we stop Russian soldiers and Ukrainian soldiers and other people from being killed,” Trump said in the Oval Office on Monday.
“I want to make sure that he follows through, and I think he will. I don’t want to go secondary tariffs on his oil. But I think, you know, it’s something I would do if I thought he wasn’t doing the job. I did it with Venezuela.”
Mr Trump has ramped up his rhetoric towards Putin, accusing him of “dragging his feet” in negotiations and saying he was “p—-d off” with the Russian leader.
I don’t share Hamish’s optimism, but I really hope he’s right.
Tammy Bruce, a WH spox, has just said something supportive of Ukraine. Something as rare as rocking horse shit.
“There was an idea from Russia about a temporary administration that was not appreciated by the president [Trump],” US state department spokesman Tammy Bruce said on Monday.”
That is a rare trump reversal. A blip, or a sign of something better coming?
Comment from :
Robert Adeney
We have to admit that brave Zelenskyy and indeed the whole Ukrainian nation are fighting a surrogate war on our, the West’s, behalf.
It is disastrous that our American friends fail to see that the true threat to Western Democracy is imminent and continue to sit on their hands, while Putin calls up a further 160,000 conscripts into the Russian army.
Mark Slater
I think it’s becoming clear that Putin has decided he either wins or he dies. There is no dignity in peace or an armistice. So he either wins or perishes.
Peter Millar
Ukraine needs to target Russia’s energy installations if Putin continues to attack civilians in Ukraine. Maximum destruction of Russian assets. No holding back.
AM BY
If the West had given proper support in the first year of the war then I suspect Russia would have been defeated by now. We saw how the Russian lines crumbled in late 2022 and that was with just limited support.
Alice Taylor
Russia just announced a new draft and there are whispers from Russians asking where the men from last two draft went. They didn’t come home.
But that doesn’t mean the Russian people are fed up yet, not fed up enough to rebel against a regime that jails and kills dissenters, sending them to Siberian prisons or to the front. Where are the strikes, where are the passive protests? All the Russian people have to do to topple Putin is to stay home. That’s how they toppled the Tsar and that’s what they’ve done in the past. A sit down strike, a simple refusal to go to work is often enough, because the state can’t arrest everyone who calls in sick. But that’s not happening from what I can see.
The Russian consumer debt bomb is being prevented by military spending and death remittences. If Putin stops the war as abruptly as he started it, the whole Russian economy will indeed collapse, so as long as he has some sort of military equilibrium, the war will go on. He doesn’t have to win, he just can’t lose.
The West can force the issue and help the Ukrainians (who we owe a debt of gratitude to, they are taking the hits for the rest of us). We can show more consistent resolve against Russian imperialism by having true sanctions and real military support. I hope we do! Until then, this war will grind on.
Mark Minion
Reply to Alice Taylor
The slight problem is if the war does end the military in Russia will be forced to dramatically expand in other areas in order to support the economy. The war in Ukraine may end at some point but Russia will need to continue its expansionist policy to fund its arms industry. It’s the big ship analogy; it takes a long time to change course.
Alice Taylor
Reply to Mark Minion
That is very true. If the Russian War ends (I hate calling it the Ukrainian War, since they didn’t start it, it’s a tic with me) they will pause, re-arm and go off to cause havoc someplace else. It could just as easily be Georgia as Estonia. I don’t think it really matters to Putin and his cronies. Will Europe help one of the ‘Stans as much as they helped Ukraine? Maybe, but I doubt it.
Harry Dowling
I wouldn’t put any faith in Trump’s reported (by a breathless media person) change of heart towards international war criminal Putin. He he has bottomless reserves of stupidity and cynicism to draw upon.
Tony Robinson
2 HRS AGO
Ukraine took more territory today. Quite a bit according to the map below.
What’s really concerning is what happens if Russia implodes into civil war and factions, who gets the nukes.
A negotiated peace – and soon – is a far more stable outcome.
Hereward Awake
Reply to Tony Robinson
Only with cast iron security guarantees for Ukraine. Anything less is merely a pause. Centuries old Russian victimhood and expansionism is a part of the national psyche that Putin, like the Czars and Soviet Czars before him, exploits to stay in power.
A. Cretin writes :
Pongo Mitch
So, if a USA/coalition, as NYT’s covers, decides to go on a genocide fest (Ukrainian Russian speakers, in this case). No one should get in the way?
Trump is just another ‘illuminati’ owned warmonger, finishing Bidens war.
Warmongers’R’Us.
Wim Kotze
Reply to Pongo Mitch
Zelensky himself, the Azov fighters and most people in Kiev are Ukrainian Russian speakers. Putin is the one having gone on a genocide fest against them. You knew that didn’t you?