Putin heads into Trump call confident Russia has upper hand against Ukraine

Vladimir Putin believes he has a strong hand ahead of a phone call Monday with Donald Trump and European leaders are trying to prevent the US president from rushing through a deal.  

Putin is confident that his forces can break through Ukraine’s defenses by the end of the year to take full control of four regions that he has claimed for Russia, according to a person familiar with the Russian president’s thinking who asked not to named discussing private conversations. 

 

That means the Russian president is unlikely to offer any meaningful concessions to Trump when the two leaders speak and European officials are worried that Trump may try to force through a settlement regardless.  

 

The US president has been pushing for a quick end to a war that is now deep into its fourth year and has backed himself to unlock a deal in a direct conversation with Putin. The Russian leader, for his part, has given no indication that he’s ready to stop fighting as his troops slowly grind forward on the battlefield and that’s fueled concern in Kyiv and other European capitals that Ukraine could be pushed into giving up more ground. 

 

“Unfortunately where we are in the war, you don’t see strong incentives for Russia to agree to a ceasefire,” Michael Kofman, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment, said at a conference in Tallinn, Estonia, Sunday.  

 

There’s a growing sense that US efforts to impose a ceasefire are culminating and officials in Europe are unsure whether Trump will ramp up pressure on Russia or simply move on to the next challenge if they fail. Trump has promised to brief Zelenskiy and some of his NATO allies once he’s finished speaking with his Russian counterpart.

 

Despite all the talk about ending the fighting, Putin is ready for a protracted war if that is what is required to achieve his goals and he is sanguine about the prospect of further US sanctions, according to two other people close to the Kremlin. 

 

“Trump wants Putin to agree to a truce but he absolutely doesn’t want to,” said Sergei Markov, a political consultant with close ties to the Kremlin. “But Putin isn’t interested in a collapse of the talks. He’s trying to maneuver so that these negotiations continue alongside the military offensive.”