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When the US Vice President JD Vance was asked last week in a foreign policy forum in Washington after the war in Ukraine, Maga-style diplomats awaited Kyiv and veiled sympathy for Russia.
Instead, they heard something completely different. Vance said of a series of Russian suggestions to end them conflict: “We think you ask too much.”
The participants were surprised. Vance was one of the most important protagonists in the now notorious Oval Office Showdown In February, when he went to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and accused him of not showing enough gratitude for the support – a scene that seemed to be a complete break in the relationships between Kyiv and Washington.
Vances’s comments were part of a noticeable sound shift from the Trump administration. US officials seem to be more and more impatient with Vladimir Putin if the suspicion grows that the Russian leader rather than the Russian leader than Zelenskyycan be the greatest obstacle to peace.
“The Americans had this simplified idea – let us enchant Russia, put pressure on Zelenskyy, and we will get a deal,” said Wolfgang Ischinger, the former German ambassador in the USA, to which Vance made his comment in the forum last week. “It turned out that simply charming Russia is not enough.”
The international efforts to end the war have intensified in the past few days. In Putin’s proposal, Russia and Ukraine will hold Direct conversations in Turkey On Thursday – although it is unclear whether the Russian guide will personally take part.
On Tuesday, an official from the White House said that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Trump’s special representative Steve Witkoff and Keith Kellogg will take part.
But Trump’s desired goal – a ceasefire that could lead to peace negotiations and an end of the war – has so far escaped him. Putin rejected international calls to stop the fights, despite the threats of western powers – including the United States – from hard new sanctions.
Russia’s obvious inent place turns out to be irritant Trump cardLet’s say observers. “You hear the frustration in (his) communication,” said Michael McFaul, a former US ambassador to Russia. “He can understand that he gave up too much and has not received anything for it.”
In fact, Washington pressed his willingness to recognize the rule of Russia about the Crimea in the last month for the end of the war – a concession that annoyed Ukraine and the EU, but was rejected by Putin.
Trump’s social media contributions reflect his obvious impatience. At the end of April, after Russia fired rockets to civilian areas of Ukraine, he thought that the Kremlin was “only communicated with me” and threatened to impose secondary and banking against Moscow.
“Trump comes to the conclusion that Putin is not a friend of the United States,” said Bill Taylor, who acted as a US ambassador in Ukraine from 2006 to 2009. “There is recognition that (he) is not too trust … that he is not seriously negotiating.”
It is becoming increasingly difficult to blame the Ukrainians for the continued fights. In the past few weeks, Zelenskyy has tried very hard to present himself as a cooperative partner and support the US claims according to an armistice. On Sunday he agreed to the Putin proposal of direct conversations in Turkey after Trump asked him to accept him.
Relations between Kyiv and Washington have declined in part of the mineral contract in February, which opened a way to invest together in the critical resources of Ukraine through the two countries.
According to the Ukrainian officials, the agreement becomes more likely that the United States will continue to support the defense of Ukraine. “Now Trump has skin in the game,” said one.
However, it remains unclear whether Trump has really shifted his sympathy for Ukraine – or is ready to punish Russia because of his contradicting distance.
While most Western leaders and Kellogg, the US special representative in Ukraine, criticized Putin’s offer of direct discussions and said that there should first be a ceasefire, Trump praised the Russian leader’s gambit and came a “potentially big day for Russia and Ukraine”.
“Trump definitely sees that Putin doesn’t play a ball,” said Eric Green, a former assistant of President Joe Biden at the National Security Council, who is now a non-local scholar at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Think-Tank. “But I am not convinced that the consequence of it will be a meaningful pressure on Putin.”
Ischinger said that he was “pleased” that Vance had changed on Russia and that the United States and the European positions for war in Ukraine “went together”. But the former German ambassador in the USA added that the Vice President “had not taken the next logical step that would have said that we really had to turn the screws on Russia”.
However, other US politicians are interested in getting hard with Moscow. Senator Lindsey Graham, a Trump ally, said that he has non-partisan support for a legislative template that would apply “bone-covered” sanctions against Russia, including a tariff of 500 percent to imports from countries that buy its oil and gas when Putin does not start seriously negotiations to end the war.
The law was supported by 72 senators – a sign that support for Ukraine on the Capitol Hill is still strong.
“These sanctions represent the Senate’s view that we see that the main evil weight is Russia,” Graham told reporters at the end of the last month. Putin, he added, “would make a big mistake to try to play Trump”.
In the meantime, experts say Russia is on the US President who loses patience with the peace process. “Putin plays a long game and believes that he has time on his side,” said McFaul. “He calculates that Trump will lose interest and that the Americans will reduce military support, and that will make the Ukrainian army weaker,” said the former US ambassador in Russia.
Others believe that the risk of leaving Ukraine has decreased by the US President in the past few weeks.
Thomas Graham, a respected scholarship holder of the Council for Foreign Relations and Former Senior Director for Russia on the National Security Council, said that Trump would have difficulty reaching one of his main goals – to reset relationships with Russia – without solving the problem of Ukraine.
“There is too much at stake,” he said. “Yes, he could still go away from Ukraine – but if he does it, it would look too much like failure.”
Additional reporting by Christopher Miller in Kyiv
