Why Trump Is Giving Putin Everything He Wants

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2025/04/trump-putin-ukraine-deal/682626/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=the-atlantic&utm_content=edit-promo

Posted by theatlantic

14 comments

  1. Robert Kagan: “For the past year or more, the conventional wisdom was that Vladimir Putin needed a deal on Ukraine. Russia’s economy was struggling under the weight of international sanctions, and its military had suffered staggering losses on the battlefield. Putin was supposed to be desperate for at least a pause in the fighting. That was one reason Trump claimed it would be a ‘very easy negotiation,’ and that he could get the war ‘settled very fast.’

    “All that had to be done was to get Ukraine to back off its unrealistic demands for a return of all its territory, at which point Putin would seize the chance to buy time to repair his economy and replenish his troops and materiel. This was the assumption, not just of Trump and his advisers, but of a growing chorus of observers, including New York Times reporters and foreign-policy hands: A negotiated end of the war was the ‘only real viable option.’ And in a negotiated settlement, as opposed to terms of surrender, both sides give up something. Ukraine would have to give up much, if not all, of the territory it had lost to Russian conquest, and in return, it would get some form of security guarantee against a future Russian attack. Surely Russia, desperate for a deal, would give up its opposition to such assurances. As The Washington Post’s Marc Thiessen put it just a month ago, ‘Russia is incredibly weak, both economically and militarily, which means that in these negotiations, Trump holds all the cards.’

    “How then to explain why Trump, after three months of negotiations, has failed to win a single concession from Putin and now threatens to ‘walk away’ from the whole problem? If Putin is weak and desperate, and Trump holds all the cards, why is Putin getting everything he wants and giving up nothing in return? The answer tells us something about Trump, but more important, it gives us an insight into the nature of the new era we have entered in international affairs.”

    Read more: [https://theatln.tc/DnNsOyzQ](https://theatln.tc/DnNsOyzQ)

  2. US is the one trapped in the room with Russia, not the other way around.

  3. Trump is a Russian asset.  This simple explanation explains like 80% of his foreign policy decisions.

  5. I feel like this article contains a bit of a strawman. The narrative that Putin is desperate is to get a face saving peace is predicated on the idea that Ukraine will continue to receive strong US and Western support. It’s an entirely different premise if Putin is weak but has the US neutral or even behind him. If Trump has basically already committed to giving him the minimum, why would he settle for that minimum when he can always fall back on it? Much more preferable to try another push against a diminished Ukraine and lock in additional gains before negotiating out.

  6. I just read the article, and it fails to explain any reason why. It just makes us even more confused about whether he’s more dumb or more treasonous.

  7. >For the past year or more, the conventional wisdom was that Vladimir Putin needed a deal on Ukraine. Russia’s economy was struggling under the weight of international sanctions, and its military had suffered staggering losses on the battlefield. Putin was supposed to be desperate for at least a pause in the fighting.

    I don’t agree that this had been “conventional wisdom” at all. Yes, we see that sentiment often, but imo the actual conventional wisdom is that that’s mostly wishful thinking.

    Also, I disagree that such a view explains why Trump made his ludicrous promises during the campaign. Trump promised whatever his voters wanted to hear and didn’t worry about anything beyond the election.

    That Putin would have “all the cards” in this situation was entirely predictable. I expect Trump will walk away and blame Ukraine.

  8. I think it is reasonably clear that he made a promise he does not have the power to achieve except by giving one side everything they wanted in order to make them stop.

    He can then claim, he stopped the war, in the long run, people will forget he sold out Ukraine and just remember the war finishing (and they’ll justify it somehow)

  9. Possibly because he is desperate to have Putin not be in China’s arms?
    Russia+China is way bigger trouble for the US than China alone.

    (Putin will hedge his bets anyway, but with a different weightage)

  10. Because Trump is trying to get Russian help to make a deal with Iran or China or both.

    Despite all the stories about how he is not Obama (“Obama let Russia take Crimea!!”) – he is doing exactly what Obama tried (and failed) to do – follow the same idiotic plan to “detach” Russia from China and the rest.

  11. The US held few cards to begin with and before negotiations even started they decided to throw away the ones they still had, ie the prospect of ramping up pressure on Russia by tightening sanctions and sending more equipment to Ukraine if Russia doesn’t play ball. Now there’s absolutely nothing Trump can threaten Russia with and Putin knows that sooner than later the aid Biden sent will run out. Russia seems to be holding pretty much all the initative. As it is now, it looks like Ukraine can either surrender (it won’t) or keep fighting for many more months or years until they eventually break and lose anyway, hoping for a deus ex machina that drastically changes the situation in their favour.

  12. It makes a hell of a lot more sense if you believe that Trump was indeed made a Russian asset somewhere along the line, probably the 80s. And I think it’s way more illegal than a pee tape.

  14. Call him whatever you wish. He hasn’t removed the sanctions imposed on Russia, he didn’t stop the flow of weapons to Ukraine and has been actively trashing Europe’s military might trying to get them to build it up. He tried calling out Germany from building the pipeline to Russia, giving them funds for this war. That was after they took Crimea too.

    He’s an asset because he is making a legitimate attempt at ending the war led by Marco Rubio? Ukraine’s win in this negotiation is to remain a country. People think they have so much more leverage than reality.

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