Timing is everything in diplomacy, and the Kremlin appears to have timed its recent lengthy phone call with the White House (its eighth in the past eight months) to perfection.
As US President Donald Trump prepares to meet with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky in Washington and publicly weighs the risks of giving Kiev long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles, Russian officials said the talks the two countries began were “positive and productive” and “held in an atmosphere of trust.”
In fact, it was a nearly two-and-a-half-hour intervention by President Vladimir Putin, a last-ditch operation to stop any potentially game-changing US talk of arms supplies to Ukraine.
The Tomahawk has the range to target major Russian cities such as Moscow and St. Petersburg, but it will not have a significant impact on the battlefield, Putin is said to have stressed in the phone call with Trump. They will only damage U.S.-Russian relations, and he knows President Trump values that very highly, he added.
Putin also praised Trump as a peacemaker in the Middle East and beyond, one Kremlin aide said.
An economic deal was once again up in the air, but crucially there was an agreement to hold a second face-to-face presidential summit, this time in Budapest, Hungary, with the possibility of another round of talks about ending the war in Ukraine if no deal was reached.
This will inevitably draw comparisons to the failed Alaska summit just a few months ago, where President Trump gave Putin a red carpet reception but failed to secure any concrete results in advancing a peace deal with Ukraine.
But now President Trump is praising his accomplishments in brokering a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip and freeing Israeli hostages, suggesting that successes in the Middle East could unexpectedly help end the war between Russia and Ukraine.
How this happens remains unclear. The Kremlin has given no indication it is ready to compromise. Despite mounting casualties on the battlefield, increased Ukrainian drone attacks on energy infrastructure, and fuel shortages across the country, Russia has consistently ruled out an end to the war in Ukraine until it achieves its maximalist objectives.
These include taking control of vast swathes of annexed Ukrainian territory that have not yet been conquered, and imposing severe military and foreign policy restrictions on post-war Ukraine that would effectively subject Kiev to Moscow’s will.
There was nothing in the recent phone call between President Trump and President Putin to suggest that this situation has changed.
But over the past nine months of this second Trump administration, the Kremlin has also learned that offering personal involvement and preserving the possibility of short-term victories can be just as effective as painful compromises.
Ukrainian officials gathered in Washington said it was the discussion about the tomahawk that convinced Putin to return to talks.
That may be true. But the calculation here in Moscow is that the prospect of progress in peace talks alone may be enough to tempt a deal-hungry President Trump to back off from military threats.
