Alexander Gabuev, Alexandra Prokopenko, and Tatiana Stanovaya
When talking about U.S. President Donald Trump and his turn against Kyiv, Russian President Vladimir Putin has tried to avoid public displays of triumph. After his first acknowledged conversation with Trump following the U.S. president’s return to the White House, on February 12, Putin has said that the initial goal of U.S.-Russian talks is simply to increase trust between the parties. When they talked again, for two hours on March 18, the Kremlin’s official statement indicated that “the leaders confirmed their intention to continue efforts aimed at reaching a settlement in Ukraine bilaterally.”
But Moscow’s gloating is hard to miss. “The U.S. is taking a much more balanced position,” said the Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov in February, two weeks after the first call. “We certainly welcome this.” In a press release after the second call, the Kremlin “expressed gratitude to Donald Trump for his desire to help achieve the noble goal of ending hostilities.” It would be shocking if they weren’t grateful: in less than two months, Trump has presented Russia with greater symbolic and material victories than the country could have fathomed. After Trump, U.S. Vice President JD Vance, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky fought in the Oval Office on February 28, Trump temporarily suspended U.S. military assistance to Kyiv. Washington withdrew from a group dedicated to investigating war crimes by Russia’s leaders. It voted against a UN resolution that blamed Moscow for the war. And Trump and his senior officials repeatedly parroted Russian disinformation about the conflict, including by blaming it on Kyiv.
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