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“Nothing will happen until Putin and I gathered,” said Donald Trump last week after the president of Russia was not presented for Ukrainian peace talks in Turkey that the Kremlin had triggered. The two leaders gathered on Monday, by phone, for two hours. But nothing happened. The American president said kyiv and Moscow were taking negotiations to a ceasefire, but he left the belligerents to settle things. There was no sign of pressure that he had suggested that he could finally put his Russian counterpart. Instead, the American president gave the impression that he was walking away from peace efforts.
The indulgence by Trump of a Russian leader who has launched him for months remains confusing. He has repeatedly threatened to become hard unless Putin accepts a ceasefire and comes to the negotiating table. Whenever he selected himself. In doing so, Trump plays in Moscow’s hands. He embraces Putin to fight, when Russian forces have the advantage in the battlefield against a Ukraine who fears that US military support can be withdrawn at any time. Putin seems to believe that his objective of subjugating Ukraine can either be achieved without compromising the economic reset that Trump is always promising with the United States, or the priority about everything else.
The American president later said on Monday that Washington did not go back from the Ukrainian conflict, although he plans to do so. A master of the diplomatic agreement would now realize is not the time to withdraw, but to put pressure on the leader of Russia to reconcile. If the White House will not, the other allies of Congress and Ukraine must do so instead.
European countries will have to move quickly to implement plans aimed at pouring their arms to kyiv if the United States is moving away, including by buying American weapons and in funding from the enlarged military industry of Ukraine. They should also double on efforts to move the calculation of Putin over the duration of what he can continue to fight – by tightening the sanctions of the node flowing from the Russian economy, which, despite its apparent resilience, faces underlying pressures.
The most effective would be to fill the gaps and reduce the price ceiling on Russian oil exports, which do the most to maintain its war economy. Moscow partially escaped the ceiling using its fleet of “Shadow” oil tankers. But it is estimated that recent concerted sanctions against shadow ships have almost halved the usable capacity of the Russian fleet – forcing Russian exporters to rely more on traditional oil tankers in accordance with sanctions. This gives political decision -makers more leverage on oil export income.
After new EU sanctions have targeted nearly 200 shadow vessels, Brussels presents the G7 finance ministers in Canada a plan to use his next pack of sanctions to reduce the price ceiling – hoping that the White House will register. Russia Hawks in the American Senate, including some senior Republicans close to Trump, has prepared a bill that would impose secondary prices of 500% on imports from countries that buy Russian oil, gas or uranium, if Moscow does not seriously engage in Ukrainian talks.
The move of the Senate is intended to give the president a tool if he chooses to use it, but – as it is said that there would be a majority to the test of veto – it opens the possibility that the congress acts alone if it does not do it. But by handling Jumbo prices, the Senate plan could further destabilize the world economy. The plan must be modified instead to reach the G7 efforts to lower the price of oil prices.
These are dark days for a Ukraine, fearing that an American president would sell him on the river. It is up to his other friends – to Congress and other Western capitals – to do well on their promises of support and to avoid this disaster.
