U.S. – Russia relations 15 August 2025 –

U.S.-Russia relations April 2024 -14 August 2025

Trump’s Devastating Plan for Ukraine
The White House is giving Putin permission to try again.
By Phillips Payson O’Brien
(The Atlantic) For all the recent talk about Donald Trump growing more sympathetic toward Ukraine, and of the president being more willing to pressure Russia for concessions, nothing of the sort turned out to be true. According to multiple news outlets, Trump has blessed a 28-point plan to end the war between the two countries. The plan was negotiated by his envoys in conjunction with a top Vladimir Putin confidant. The deeply troubling details now circulating show what Trump wants: to help the Russian president—who started the war by launching an unprovoked invasion in 2022—and to weaken Ukraine, perhaps fatally.
For months now, Trump has been obscuring his own intentions in a blizzard of contradictory statements and gestures—moves that in some cases seemed to offer U.S. assistance to Ukrainians’ efforts to maintain their freedom and democracy. In October, Trump imposed modest sanctions on the Russian oil industry, ostensibly to bring Putin to the negotiating table.
In recent months, Trump has been under bipartisan pressure to support a bill, proposed by Senators Lindsey Graham and Richard Blumenthal, that would enable the White House to impose devastating sanctions on countries and companies that do business with Russia. Graham, normally a Trump ally, has described the bill as a “sledgehammer” to use against Russia. But the president did not appear to want such a tool and long danced around whether he would support a vote on the bill.
America has dumped a messy, sordid “peace plan” on Ukraine
Volodymyr Zelensky has no choice but to play along and try to improve it
(The Economist) In recent months, Trump has been under bipartisan pressure to support a bill, proposed by Senators Lindsey Graham and Richard Blumenthal, that would enable the White House to impose devastating sanctions on countries and companies that do business with Russia. Graham, normally a Trump ally, has described the bill as a “sledgehammer” to use against Russia. But the president did not appear to want such a tool and long danced around whether he would support a vote on the bill.
Then, just this week, Trump told reporters that the Graham-Blumenthal bill would be “okay with me.” The statement came as the president was poised to sign off on the 28-point plan, which threatens to transform Ukraine into a Russian vassal state. In other words, Trump was publicly offering hope to pro-Ukrainian voices while privately getting ready to reward Putin.
If Trump forces Ukraine and its allies in Western Europe to accept a peace deal that ratifies Russia’s territorial gains—giving Putin even more than he was able to conquer, and requiring no real concessions of him at all—it will amount to a complete rehabilitation of the Russian president in the international sphere.

25 September
Putin made a big mistake with Trump
Marc A. Thiessen
Putin had every chance to make peace. Instead, he escalated the war. You don’t do that to Donald Trump.
(WaPo) Trump’s decision to back Kyiv against Russia was inevitable.
Trump gave Vladimir Putin every chance to prove he was interested in peace. But instead of seizing the opportunity to end the war, the Russian dictator dragged Trump along for months. This summer, Trump noted that Putin would say he wanted peace during “wonderful” phone conversations, but then the first lady would tell him, “Wow, that’s strange because they just bombed a nursing home.” It wasn’t her imagination. A Wall Street Journal analysis shows that Putin regularly intensified military attacks after his conversations with Trump.
Putin’s big mistake was accepting Trump’s invitation to attend the summit in Alaska last month. Trump rolled out the red carpet, treating Putin as a legitimate world leader rather than the global pariah he really is. The implicit understanding was that Alaska would be followed by a bilateral meeting between Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, to be followed by a tripartite meeting of the three leaders.
Putin basked in the pomp and circumstance, pocketed the prestige Trump conferred on him and reneged on his end of the bargain.
In fact, he dramatically escalated the bombing of civilians. In Alaska, Trump personally handed Putin a moving letter from his wife urging him to make peace for the sake of children affected by the war. Putin responded by bombing a kindergarten — a slap in the face to the first lady.
Then, on Sept. 7, Putin launched his largest aerial assault of the war, striking the Cabinet of Ministers headquarters in Kyiv, which houses the offices of the prime minister and other senior officials — an attempted decapitation strike. Days later, Putin sent military drones into Polish and Romanian airspace. A week after that, three Russian fighter jets violated Estonian airspace.
You don’t do that to Donald Trump.
Trump has correctly argued that it was President Joe Biden’s weakness that invited Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, which would never have happened had he been president. Well, now Putin is testing Trump’s resolve and probing for weakness. That’s a mistake. Trump won’t back down in the face of Putin’s escalation.
… Trump has put in place a plan to sell U.S. weapons to NATO, paid for by European allies, which in turn will provide them to Ukraine. This arrangement not only protects U.S. taxpayers, it also generates revenue while strengthening the U.S. defense industrial base. It is a win-win for Ukraine and U.S. national security.

23 August
Frustrated Trump threatens Russia sanctions if there no progress on peace deal
US president warns of ‘massive’ sanctions and tariffs
Donald Trump has renewed a threat to impose sanctions on Russia if there is no progress toward a peaceful settlement in Ukraine in two weeks, showing frustration at Moscow a week after his meeting with Vladimir Putin in Alaska.
“I’m going to make a decision as to what we do and it’s going to be, it’s going to be a very important decision, and that’s whether or not it’s massive sanctions or massive tariffs or both, or we do nothing and say it’s your fight,” the US president said on Friday.

20 August
Trump’s Ukraine Reality Show Isn’t Diplomacy, but at Least They’re Talking
Jeremy Kinsman
(Policy) … US President Donald Trump, the self-appointed convenor of the meetings for peace, who has cast himself in the production’s lead role, changes his mind on every issue constantly, most vividly on his U-turn from a pre-Alaska insistence on an immediate ceasefire (or Russia would suffer “severe consequences”) to dismissing altogether the need for a ceasefire, arguing the process should go straight to long-term peace talks.
That is because Russian President Vladimir Putin told him in Alaska that a ceasefire was a waste of time. He proposed to Trump that the two of them could solve the whole thing themselves, proposing a next bilateral meeting in Moscow to agree on the peace deal. Then, in Putin’s version, he would meet with Zelensky to arrange the deal’s implementation.
In Putin’s concept, there would be no role for the Europeans in designing the peace deal or in implementing it via security guarantees. Putin’s dismissive attitude toward Europe has mobilized European unity like nothing in the post-Cold War past.
Trump remains in Putin’s thrall, revealing this week that he feels a great “warmth” between them. He repeats Putin’s lines, telling a FOX interviewer that “Ukraine should never have started a war with a country ten times its size,” despite Russia’s role as the aggressor in this war.
Putin’s aims are above all to “make Russia great again,” after its humiliating period of wreckage and sidelining that brought Putin to power. Trump gave him a big “win” in Alaska by seeming to grant the Russian leader revival of the superpower-to-superpower peer relationship of the kind that Richard Nixon had with Brezhnev in 1972-3, when the USSR and the US were co-masters of the bipolar Cold War world. Bleak as the USSR was at the time, officials and citizens were chuffed by their country’s international status
The Alaska show and evidence that Trump inclined to Putin’s views on the war were celebrated in Moscow as proof that Putin was pulling off Russia’s re-validation as a top-tier world power.

19 August
Ukraine Diplomacy Reveals How Un-American Trump Is
Thomas L. Friedman
… Trump is so deluded as to Putin’s nature that during his summit with European leaders on Monday he was overheard on an open microphone telling President Emmanuel Macron of France about Putin: “I think he wants to make a deal for me. Do you understand that? As crazy as it sounds.”
Can anyone identify a single U.S. diplomat in Moscow or C.I.A. analyst who is advising Witkoff and Trump today? My bet is there are none, because no serious analyst or expert on Russia would tell them: “We have concluded that you are right and all of us have been wrong: Putin is not a bad guy, he just wants a just peace with Ukraine — and when he tells you he went to church and prayed for President Trump, you should believe him.”
Sorry, if Putin really prayed for Trump’s life, it is because he knows that no other American president could possibly be manipulated as easily as Trump has been. Putin is not and never has been looking for “peace” with Ukraine. He is, as I have written before, looking for a piece of Ukraine — in fact the whole piece if he can get it.

Europe thinks Trump’s peace talks will fail. It wants them anyway — to call Putin’s bluff.
The plan is to play along with Trump’s peace efforts until he realizes that Putin is not serious about ending the war.
(Politico Eu) European leaders don’t believe Vladimir Putin is sincere about a peace deal — so their strategy is to humor and praise Donald Trump until he finally reaches the same conclusion and realizes he will need to get tougher on the Kremlin.
The European side thinks it’s a win-win approach. They will be delighted to be proved wrong if the U.S. president can negotiate an end to the Ukraine war with meaningful security guarantees, but the primary game plan is all about calling the Russian leader’s bluff and lobbying for tougher sanctions.

17 August
Trump’s Alaska Folly
Timothy Snyder
US President Donald Trump believes that foreign leaders can be dealt with like Americans, with fantastic promises and obnoxious bullying. But the empty offer of a “beautiful” future does not move dictators like Vladimir Putin, who has in mind his own specific, atrocity-filled future for Ukraine.
(Project Syndicate) In the ancient world, people spoke of “Ultima Thule,” a mythical land in the extreme north, at the end of the earth. By venturing north to Alaska to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin, US President Donald Trump reached his own Ultima Thule, the arctic endpoint of a foreign-policy dreamworld.
For Trump, foreign leaders can be dealt with like Americans, with fantastic promises and obnoxious bullying. But the fantasies do not function beyond America’s borders. The empty offer of a “beautiful” future does not move dictators who commit crimes to advance their own visions, or affect people who are defending their families from a criminal invasion stealing their land and wealth, abducting their children, and torturing and murdering civilians.

16 August
After Meeting Putin, Trump Reverts to Land Swaps for Peace in Ukraine
The U.S. president’s latest statements are a reversal of much of what he seemed to have agreed to with European allies this past week.
(NYT) President Trump told European leaders after his meeting with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on Friday in Alaska that he supported a plan to end the war in Ukraine by ceding unconquered territory to the Russian invaders, rather than try for a cease-fire, according to two senior European officials who were briefed on the call.
Mr. Trump will discuss that plan with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine on Monday at the White House, and there were discussions on Saturday about whether other European officials would join him, the officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss private talks.
Trump reportedly to back ceding of Ukrainian territory to Russia as part of peace deal
Details of post-summit call were leaked in which US president supports plan for Kyiv to give up Donbas region
Two sources with direct knowledge of the talks in Alaska told the Guardian that Putin demanded Ukraine withdraw from Donbas, which is made up of the Donestk and Luhansk regions, as a condition for ending the war, but offered Trump a freeze along the remaining frontline.
Summit puts Putin back on the global stage and Trump echoes a Kremlin position
(AP) In Alaska, President Vladimir Putin walked on a red carpet, shook hands and exchanged smiles with his American counterpart. Donald Trump ended the summit praising their relationship and calling Russia “a big power … No. 2 in the world,” albeit admitting they didn’t reach a deal on ending the war in Ukraine.
By Saturday morning Moscow time, Trump appeared to have abandoned the idea of a ceasefire as a step toward peace — something he and Ukraine had pushed for months -– in favor of pursuing a full-fledged “Peace Agreement” to end the war, echoing a long-held Kremlin position. The “severe consequences” he threatened against Moscow for continuing hostilities were nowhere in sight. On Ukraine’s battlefields, Russian troops slowly grinded on, with time on their side.
Trump Has No Cards
Why would Putin need to make a deal with him?
By Anne Applebaum
(The Atlantic) President Donald Trump berated President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office. He allowed the Pentagon twice to halt prearranged military shipments to Ukraine. He promised that when the current tranche of armaments runs out, there will be no more. He has cut or threatened to cut the U.S. funds that previously supported independent Russian-language media and opposition. His administration is slowly, quietly easing sanctions on Russia, ending “basic sanctions and export control actions that had maintained and increased U.S. pressure,” according to a Senate-minority report. “Every month he’s spent in office without action has strengthened Putin’s hand, weakened ours and undermined Ukraine’s own efforts to bring an end to the war,” Senators Jeanne Shaheen and Elizabeth Warren wrote in a joint statement.
Trump does say that he wants to end the war in Ukraine, and sometimes he also says that he is angry that Putin doesn’t. But if the U.S. is not willing to use any economic, military, or political tools to help Ukraine, if Trump will not put any diplomatic pressure on Putin or any new sanctions on Russian resources, then the U.S. president’s fond wish to be seen as a peacemaker can be safely ignored. No wonder all of Trump’s negotiating deadlines for Russia have passed, to no effect, and no wonder the invitation to Anchorage produced no result.

15 August
Trump and Putin Put on a Show of Friendship but Come Away Without a Deal
President Trump gave President Vladimir Putin a warm public reception, effectively ending his diplomatic isolation over the past three years for his invasion of Ukraine. But Mr. Putin did not agree to stop the war.
(NYT) While Mr. Trump had hoped to seal a deal for an immediate cease-fire, he acknowledged that the two leaders fell short, at least for now. “We haven’t quite got there, but we’ve made some headway,” he told reporters after hours of meetings on a U.S. military base in Alaska. “There’s no deal until there’s a deal.”
But if the substance remained unsettled, the atmospherics were extraordinary. The president rolled out a literal red carpet and even applauded as he welcomed Mr. Putin, who is under U.S. sanctions and faces an international arrest warrant for war crimes. The two laughed and spoke warmly with each other, and Mr. Trump even invited Mr. Putin to ride with him in the armored presidential limousine to their meeting.
The two ended their encounter in Alaska, however, in a cloud of uncertainty. Mr. Trump referred obliquely to “agreement” on some undisclosed points but not on others, while Mr. Putin said even more elliptically that they reached an “understanding.” Neither explained nor took questions from reporters. Mr. Trump said he would follow up by calling fellow NATO leaders and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine.
Serge Schmemann: What Was the Trump-Putin Meeting Even About?
…it was hard to avoid the impression that Mr. Putin had once again succeeded in gaining more time for his war, which is currently going his way. When Mr. Putin quipped — in English — that the next summit should be in Moscow, Mr. Trump seemed delighted: “Ooh, that’s an interesting one,” he said, “I don’t know. I’ll get a little heat on that one, but I could see it possibly happening.”
More likely, Mr. Trump may simply lose interest in trying to end the war. When he said he’d be calling Mr. Zelensky and the Europeans, he added, “Ultimately it’s up to them.” Again, he did not elaborate, but given Mr. Trump’s faith in his deal-making skills and his gut instincts, it sounded like he was prepared to let this one go. That would explain Mr. Putin’s cheeriness — and would be a blow to Ukraine.
‘No deal until there’s a deal’: Trump-Putin talks yield no breakthrough on Ukraine
Trump, Putin cite progress but offer no details
First summit between the two presidents since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022
Trump greets Putin on red carpet at US air base in Alaska
Zelenskiy, not invited, says Ukraine is ‘counting on America’
(Reuters) – A highly anticipated summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday yielded no agreement to resolve or pause Moscow’s war in Ukraine, though both leaders described the talks as productive.
During a brief appearance before the media following the nearly three-hour meeting in Alaska, the two leaders said they had made progress on unspecified issues. But they offered no details and took no questions, with the normally loquacious Trump ignoring shouted questions from reporters.