This week, Russia launched one of its largest sustained attacks against Ukraine since Vladimir Putin ordered an invasion of the country in 2022. The offensive, consisting largely of missiles and drones, came as President Donald Trump threatened to wash his hands of the conflict. Recently, Trump has expressed annoyance with Putin’s unwillingness to make a deal to end the war, accusing the Russian President of “playing with fire.” But Trump continues to resist increasing sanctions on Russia, or sending new military aid to Ukraine. European leaders, who are more supportive of Ukraine, have pushed for a ceasefire, but Russia has refused to agree to even a thirty-day pause. With Putin’s military making progress on the battlefield and American aid drying up, the Russian leader may see no advantage in backing down.

If Russia and Ukraine do eventually return to negotiations, what might they look like? To talk about that question, I recently spoke by phone with Sergey Radchenko, a professor at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and the author of “To Run the World: The Kremlin’s Cold War Bid for Global Power.” Radchenko, writing with Samuel Charap, has published a couple of articles in Foreign Affairs over the past fourteen months about why peace talks have failed before, and how they might succeed in the future. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed why Trump’s desire to get a deal immediately may be pushing Putin away from a settlement, whether the earlier talks between Russia and Ukraine really had a chance to succeed, and what the past several months reveal about Putin’s willingness to ultimately compromise.

Trump has been in office now for more than four months. What has his return told us about the war in Ukraine and the actors involved?

I don’t think we have learned all that much about the war. But we have learned something about what Trump wants to accomplish, and we have perhaps learned why he’s not going to be able to accomplish it. Trump rolled into office with the expectation that he would be able to put an end to this war in no time. I think he ignored the complexity of the conflict. The people he appointed to run his Ukraine portfolio—people, in particular, like Steve Witkoff, who has been charged with negotiating with the Russians—don’t seem to have the necessary experience to understand the underlying issues, which is why I think Trump was ultimately surprised. He did not expect the negotiations to be so difficult. Also, Trump is very impatient, and Putin is playing a long game. This is the main reason why negotiations have become so protracted. What I find surprising is that Trump ever thought that it would be different.

I was maybe naïve too, because my thinking when Trump came into office was that this actually would be a good time for negotiations. Not negotiations that would be good for Ukraine, but negotiations. You had Trump make clear that American support was drying up, and you had Trump incredibly anxious for a deal with Putin. I thought, Oh, Putin’s going to get the deal that he wants. So it has surprised me that Putin has seemed so resistant. What was I missing?

Putin is interested in a better relationship with the United States, but not at any price. He wants Trump to help him get there by arm-twisting Volodymyr Zelensky to agree to conditions that Zelensky would never otherwise agree to. Trump is really in a negotiating mode. He clearly doesn’t like Zelensky for a variety of reasons, but he doesn’t want to be put in a situation where public opinion will say, “Trump is basically just doing Putin’s bidding and he’s just selling out Ukraine and he’s not getting anything in return.”

So Putin expected that he could perhaps get more from Trump. I don’t know how much he expected on that front, but the bottom line is that he has his goals that he wants to achieve in Ukraine, which relate to Ukraine’s non-aligned status and demilitarization. He also wants control of the territories that he has annexed but does not yet totally control, as well as protection for Russian speakers and for the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine. But Putin can still hold out for a considerable length of time to see if he can bargain for better conditions.

And the reason you think Putin can hold out is that the war is going better for him?

For two reasons: First, when you’re negotiating with someone who’s desperate to make a deal, you feel like you would effectively stand to get better conditions by waiting. Imagine if you’re in a situation of selling a house and you’re dealing with a buyer who’s absolutely desperate to buy and will go out of his way to give you the best conditions. You could try to extract even more by holding out. Now, there’s of course a possible downside to the strategy, which is that Trump has repeatedly said he might walk away or impose new sanctions. But Putin feels that perhaps the sanctions that could be imposed would not be particularly dangerous.

Or perhaps they won’t get imposed at all.

Or perhaps they won’t get imposed at all. There’s also no clarity about what Trump means by “walking away.” It’s been very interesting to watch the Kremlin’s reaction to Trump’s threats, saying he’s becoming too emotional or he’s not getting enough information, or he should be more patient, and so on—the way that you would perhaps talk about a child or someone deeply incompetent. And maybe they are right, frankly.

I was about to say . . .

And then the other aspect that you’ve alluded to is that Putin feels that he has the wind at his back militarily. This war has not progressed very far in three years, but the Russians have been making some progress in recent months. And so the longer you wait the better your chances, because you’ll get more territory before a ceasefire.

Let’s turn to previous negotiations in Istanbul, in 2022, because one of your pieces was called “The Talks That Could Have Ended the War in Ukraine.” But, reading it, I wasn’t sure that you really thought that, or that the reader should think it. What were the talks and how close were they to succeeding?

The title is never chosen by authors. If you read the actual article, it was more about trying to understand the talks. The two sides were trying to agree on a number of issues relating to Ukraine’s permanent neutrality. So one of the things that we did in the article was to try to understand what were the main issues of disagreement. And what was very clear was that there was a discussion about security guarantees that would be given to Ukraine, but they never agreed on the mechanism for offering guarantees, because the Russians tried to introduce an ability to veto them. That was an interesting element, because if you want to actually get a real agreement, presumably you will not want to introduce a clause—which is what the Russians did at the last moment—about trying to kill the whole process for Ukraine acquiring its security guarantees. So that was one thing, but it does not mean that this was a negotiating position that could not be changed later. We don’t know whether it was something that the Russians would insist on.

You make clear in the piece that this negotiation wasn’t all that close to succeeding. You write, “The two sides skipped over essential matters of conflict management and mitigation (the creation of humanitarian corridors, a cease-fire, troop withdrawals) and instead tried to craft something like a long-term peace treaty that would resolve security disputes that had been the source of geopolitical tensions for decades. It was an admirably ambitious effort—but it proved too ambitious.”