Trump says Russia might be ‘dragging its feet’ on ceasefire deal

The president said he had used similar tactics in real-estate negotiations.

US President Donald Trump spoke hours after the White House announced a Black Sea ceasefire deal. Picture: AFP

President Trump acknowledged that his rapid drive to end the war in Ukraine had hit a snag, observing that Russia appeared to be slow-walking the US-brokered negotiations as it angles for further concessions from the West.

Trump’s comments came hours after the White House announced a Black Sea ceasefire deal and Russia promptly demanded additional steps from the West on sanctions relief before complying with such a truce.

Asked about Moscow’s procrastination, Trump said that the Kremlin might be “dragging its feet” and compared the maneuvering to his own past tactics in real-estate negotiations.

“I’ve done it over the years. You know, I don’t want to sign a contract. I want to sort of stay in the game, but maybe I don’t want to do it quite—I’m not sure,” he said in an interview with Newsmax.

The Kremlin didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump, whose first published book was titled “The Art of the Deal,” has said his prowess in business negotiations could be extended successfully to the international arena. But in his breakneck effort to end the brutal, three-year war between Russia and Ukraine, Trump faces a wiley and seasoned opponent on the other side: Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

Putin has made it clear that he wants major concessions to end the war—conditions that are unacceptable to Ukraine and its European allies. These include keeping Ukraine out of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, handing over swaths of Ukrainian territory to Russia and ensuring that whatever remains of Ukraine after that is unable to rearm with Western help.

And as the Trump administration has pushed for a more limited ceasefire as an initial step toward peace, Russia has responded by offering baby steps toward a truce, laden with conditions that reflect longstanding Kremlin demands.

Last week, Trump spoke to Putin, hoping to win an unconditional 30-day cease-fire. The one narrow condition that Putin agreed to was an end to attacks on energy infrastructure. If such a deal can be made to stick, it would benefit Moscow by ending Ukraine’s campaign of long-range drone attacks on refineries and other oil facilities.

So far, the energy cease-fire doesn’t appear to have taken hold, with both Moscow and Kyiv accusing each other of violations.

US and Russian negotiators met for daylong talks in Saudi Arabia on Monday, with Trump’s envoys hoping to build on the energy cease-fire deal. They emerged the next day with what appeared to be a tangible accomplishment: an agreement to “eliminate the use of force” in the Black Sea. Ukraine, whose negotiators met separately with the US team, agreed to the same language.

But then Moscow threw a wrench in the works by stating that it expected certain conditions to be fulfilled in order for the Black Sea truce to take effect. These included restoring the access of some of Russia’s largest banks to the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, a global payment network for banks. The Russian banks’ exclusion from Swift is an element of Western sanctions that has proved particularly painful for Moscow.

“They’ve got five or six conditions, we’re looking at all of them,” Trump said Tuesday.

It is unclear whether the return of the Russian banks to Swift will even happen, since the payment network is based in Belgium and subject to the jurisdiction of the European Union, which hasn’t shown any willingness so far to ease sanctions. Analysts have also noted that a Black Sea cease-fire would benefit Russia, which has lost a number of its warships in the sea to Ukrainian maritime-drone and missile attacks.

Despite its halting progress to date, Trump’s push for a cease-fire is the most significant peace effort in the conflict in nearly three years.

In early 2022, Russian-Ukrainian negotiations in Istanbul broke down after Kyiv scored battlefield successes and discovered that Russian forces had massacred civilians in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha. Moscow took a tough line in the Istanbul talks, pushing a draft treaty that would have barred Ukraine from rebuilding its military with Western support or joining alliances such as NATO.

On the campaign trail last year, Trump vowed to end the Russia-Ukraine war within 24 hours. He has since backed away from that pledge, saying when asked about it earlier this month that he was “being a little sarcastic” when he made the remarks.

Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, setting off the bloodiest war in Europe since World War II. Nearly one-fifth of Ukraine’s territory is now under Moscow’s control, including the Crimea peninsula that Russia annexed more than a decade ago.

The Kremlin has justified its campaign by stating that the possibility of Ukraine joining NATO poses a grave risk to Russian security. Ukraine and its Western allies say Putin is waging a war of imperial aggression to recapture the former Soviet republic and stamp out Ukrainian culture.

Wall Street Journal