As Putin plays hardball and Gaza explodes, ‘peacemaker’ Trump cops reality check
Washington: So much for ending the war within 24 hours.
Donald Trump’s 2024 boast that it would only take him a day to strike a deal to stop the fighting in Ukraine has not aged well. And although you could argue Wednesday’s phone call with Vladimir Putin did advance the cause, it may also be a case of one step forward, two steps back.
The Russian president said “nyet” to Trump’s proposal for a 30-day unconditional ceasefire, agreeing instead to a mini-ceasefire that only extended to energy infrastructure. Even then, there were drone attacks across Ukraine after the call and reports that Russia had bombed power facilities in Slovyansk. So Putin’s pledge may not have even lasted the day.
Trump appears to be finding progress more difficult than a promise.Credit: AP
It also doesn’t mean particularly much. For one, with the northern winter in the rearview mirror, crippling Ukraine’s power grid isn’t the king hit it would have been during the colder months. And it’s an easier concession for the Russians to make because they’ve suffered hits on energy infrastructure, too.
As Seth Jones, president of the Defence and Security Department at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, says, the Russians “have not been willing to conduct a more significant ceasefire because, frankly, they’re on the offensive right now”.
Jones says the limited ceasefire is not a meaningful step forward at all. “The biggest takeaway [from the phone call] is that the Russians, and Putin in particular, they’re not serious about any kind of settlement or ceasefire – certainly one that any European country or the US for that matter should find acceptable.”
Trump styles himself as the “Putin whisperer” – but is he misinterpreting their dialogue? Credit: AP
The White House touted the call as progress, but the celebration was muted compared to its usual carry-on. In his own post on Truth Social, Trump felt the need to suggest there was more to come. The two leaders had “an understanding that we will be working quickly to have a Complete Ceasefire”, he said.
And the US had nothing to say on Putin’s insistence – included in the Kremlin’s summary of the call – that all foreign military aid and intelligence sharing for Ukraine be switched off as a precondition to a ceasefire.
This situation risks seriously embarrassing Trump because for the past two months, he has insisted that Putin wants to end the war and has on multiple occasions said he trusted the Russian leader to do the right thing.
Indeed, Trump has portrayed himself as the Putin whisperer: the only guy who “gets” Putin – likes him, even – and can get him to do a deal for humanity. But that faith is now going to be sorely tested.
Foreign Affairs magazine published a revealing interview last week with Fiona Hill, a Russia expert and director for European and Russian affairs on the National Security Council in Trump’s first term. She was in the room for Trump’s calls with Putin in those years.
Hill told the podcast Trump didn’t understand when he was being played or mocked by Putin, and the nuances were often lost in translation. “The interpreters don’t always capture everything,” she said.
“Many times when Putin and Trump are interacting, Putin’s actually making fun of him … or he’s goading him and urging him on to something because he’s trying to see how he [Trump] will react.”
Meanwhile, the ceasefire in Gaza has crumbled after Israel launched a series of strikes that Hamas-run health authorities said claimed more than 400 lives. The attacks followed Hamas’ refusal to release more hostages unless the second phase of the January ceasefire agreement is upheld.
Palestinians inspect damage following an Israeli airstrike east of Gaza City on Tuesday.Credit: Bloomberg
Both Israel and the United States said they conferred before the strikes. Trump previously vowed that “all hell will break loose” if Hamas refused to release the remaining hostages.
But even if Trump supports Israel’s actions, they represent the breakdown of a ceasefire that he took credit for (even though it was finalised in the dying days of the Biden administration). Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, was involved in the negotiations, and now Trump, having taken ownership of the successes, must also own the failures.
Altogether, the experiences of the past 24 hours show it is trickier to play global peacemaker than Trump might care to admit.
“There’s a huge difference between rhetorically saying that one can solve a crisis and doing it,” Jones says. “It’s easy to promise in a presidential campaign that you can solve a complicated foreign crisis, but it is a very different matter to do that.”
As for Ukraine, Jones says the only way to get a proper ceasefire is for Trump to get tough with the Russians, impose sanctions (which he briefly threatened) and start increasing military aid to Ukraine. “[But] there have been very few indications so far that the administration is willing to take that step.”
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