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“…Trump Sounds Upbeat on Ukraine Cease-Fire as Russia Unleashes Drone Barrage
Putin has delayed and slow-rolled talks as U.S. president pushes for a quick peace deal
—> https://www.wsj.com/world/trump-sou...b7?st=niXs7S&reflink=mobilewebshare_permalink
“… Putin’s handling of Trump in the first months of his presidency has turned into a study of just how far the Russian president can test the U.S. president’s patience as he frustrates Trump’s campaign promise of brokering a quick end to the war in Ukraine. While Trump has at times expressed annoyance at Putin, he so far has balked at deploying more economic sanctions against Russia.
Talks on Friday between Kyiv and Moscow representatives in Istanbul delivered little progress and showed that Putin is sticking to his maximalist demands in the war: achieving a weakened Ukraine dominated by Moscow. Russia rejected the demand by Kyiv and its allies to have a cease-fire in place before negotiating a long-term peace.
At the same time, the Trump administration can now say that Russia and Ukraine are at least engaging in negotiations. In his comments Sunday, Rubio said the talks “were not a complete waste of time” because they prompted an exchange of prisoners between Russia and Ukraine, and that proposals for a cease-fire could soon lead to broader negotiations.
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Since his election, Trump’s interactions with the Kremlin have allowed him to claim incipient progress but no peace deal. After a phone call with Putin in February, the U.S. and Russia announced the opening of talks in Saudi Arabia led on the U.S. side by Trump’s close personal friend, Steve Witkoff, whom he appointed as special envoy. Talks have been inconclusive but provoked tensions with European allies and Ukraine, who worried that Trump was cutting a peace deal with the Kremlin without their input.
After another phone call in March, Trump announced that Putin agreed to a partial cease-fire against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. But the cease-fire never stuck, and Moscow was resistant to any wider truce.
The Kremlin all the while has been appealing to Trump’s commercial instincts by touting the economic rewards of normalizing relations between the U.S. and Russia.
Witkoff has traveled to Russia and met four times with Putin, coming out of talks echoing the Kremlin’s talking points about the origins of the war in Ukraine. …”
Russia also continues to insist on eliminating the “root causes” of the conflict, Kremlin shorthand for Kyiv’s existence as a sovereign state and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s expansion in the former Eastern bloc. Putin’s envoy in Istanbul, Vladimir Medinsky, explicitly framed the talks as a continuation of the early 2022 negotiations in the same city, where Russia’s demands were effectively a call for Ukraine’s capitulation. Medinsky, a former culture minister, invoked historical parallels to indicate that Moscow is ready for a prolonged war.
Hours after the Istanbul meeting, a Russian drone struck a bus in the northeastern Ukrainian region of Sumy, killing nine people and injuring four.
In Kyiv, the air-raid alert sirens began wailing again around midnight on Saturday night. The attack continued for nine hours, until authorities gave the all-clear at 8:54 a.m. Sunday. The bombardment killed a 27-year-old woman and shattered windows and damaged buildings across the capital, authorities said.
…At the same time, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.), a close ally of Trump, is forging ahead on a plan to impose steep tariffs on countries that buy Russian oil, gas and uranium, potentially putting pressure on Moscow’s most important revenue stream.
Any new penalties would come at a difficult time for the Russian economy. After weathering Western sanctions throughout the conflict by shifting the economy to a war footing and relying on ample oil exports, Moscow is now facing an abrupt slowdown.
Economic growth slowed sharply in the first quarter of the year to 1.4% year-over-year from 4.5% in the previous quarter as high interest rates, persistent inflation and deep-seated labor shortages weigh on businesses and consumers. Low oil prices in recent months, meanwhile, have hit the Kremlin’s state coffers where oil and gas make up around a third of revenues.
“A potential economic deal with Trump is important for Russia because Putin’s old energy model is not bringing enough money into the budget and Russia is sinking into stagflation,” Kolesnikov, the political analyst, said. “