Putin accepts Trump’s invitation to ‘come in from the cold’

Washington: As with many elements of Donald Trump’s presidency, we knew this was coming – but it still shocks the system when it comes.

Trump kick-started Vladimir Putin’s rehabilitation tour with a phone call and a glowing review, portraying the Russian autocrat as a man who wants peace and shares in his own abundant “common sense”.

Trump and Putin walk together at the G20 summit in Osaka, Japan in 2019.Credit: AP

And now there is the likelihood that the two men will soon shake hands at a meeting in Riyadh, Washington, and even Moscow. The last US president to visit Russia was Barack Obama for a G20 summit in 2013.

As the BBC put it, Trump has handed Putin an invitation to “come in from the cold”.

The Kremlin cautiously leant into the thawing of relations, with spokesman Dmitry Peskov declaring “the time has come for our countries to work together”. But it also hinted at different timelines. Peskov observed Trump was after a quick cessation of hostilities, while “Putin, in his turn, emphasised the need to remove the root causes of the conflict”.

The diplomatic turn of events was on the cards. Trump famously claimed Putin would never have invaded Ukraine if he were at the Oval Office at the time and boasted he could end the war on his first day back – which plainly has not happened.

Given the long-standing affinity Trump has for his fellow strongman, this “deal” was always going to involve more substantial concessions from Ukraine than they were prepared to give under Joe Biden.

Trump claimed: “President Putin wants that peace now, and he didn’t want to have that peace with Biden.”

At the same time as Trump was speaking to Putin, US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth was at NATO headquarters in Brussels making the administration’s views crystal clear.

Ukraine would not be admitted to NATO and could not hope to regain all the territory it has lost to Russia since 2014. Plus, any peacekeeping mission in Ukraine after the war would not involve US troops.

A building lies in ruins after being hit by a Russian attack in Kostyantynivka, Ukraine in later January.Credit: Getty Images

Hegseth delivered the message emphatically, but within an hour or two, it seemed like it counted for naught. Because Trump had just finished speaking with Putin and was dispatching a negotiating team of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, CIA director John Ratcliffe, national security adviser Michael Waltz and special envoy Steve Witkoff. And Trump himself would be involved.

Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Trump was asked whether the administration had snookered itself by making those emphatic statements in Brussels before talks had started. The president was characteristically dismissive: he seemed to sign up to what Hegseth had laid out, but left the door open to anything.

NATO membership for Ukraine was impractical, Trump said, though he cast it as something he was not really fussed about. Ukraine might get some of its land back, he said, but President Volodymyr Zelensky had to be flexible because “his poll numbers aren’t particularly great” and his country was ravaged.

“I don’t care so much about anything other than I want to stop having millions of people killed,” Trump said. “That war is ridiculous; it should have never happened.”

This equivalence of Russia and Ukraine, the characterisation of the war as something unfortunate that happened rather than an act of aggression by a particular aggressor, and the gifts to Putin before negotiations have begun – these are not things you do if you want the best outcome for Zelensky.

But that’s not what Trump is all about. For him, this is a skirmish on the other side of the world – an entire ocean away, as he keeps saying - that has cost the US too much money.

These events cement a reality Zelensky would have recognised long ago: that he’ll have to make a deal. Many Ukrainians cast it as a dark day for their country and democracy globally.

On the other hand, Trump is sensitive to criticism he is abandoning Ukraine. “Don’t say that,” he chided one reporter. “I’m backing Ukraine … but I do want security for our money.”

That’s how it is with the businessman back in the Oval Office. There are no higher principles or alliances to defend. There is only money to be saved and deals to be made – like the one Trump has put to Zelensky for Ukraine’s rare earth minerals.

But if such pure pragmatism ends the war, Trump will claim it as a huge win, and there will be no shortage of admirers lining up to agree.

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