Trump’s New Position on the War in Ukraine: Not My Problem

 

Trump’s New Position on the War in Ukraine: Not My Problem

 

In a reversal, President Trump appears to have backed off joining a European push for new sanctions on Russia, seemingly eager to move on to doing business deals with it.

 

David E. Sanger Jonathan Swan Maggie Haberman Michael Schwirtz

By David E. SangerJonathan SwanMaggie Haberman and Michael Schwirtz

David E. Sanger reported from Praiano, Italy; Jonathan Swan from Washington; Maggie Haberman from New York; and Michael Schwirtz from London.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/20/us/politics/trump-ukraine-russia.html

May 20, 2025

 

For months, President Trump has been threatening to simply walk away from the frustrating negotiations for a cease-fire between Russia and Ukraine.

 

After a phone call on Monday between Mr. Trump and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, that appears to be exactly what the American president is doing. The deeper question now is whether he is also abandoning America’s three-year-long project to support Ukraine, a nascent democracy that he has frequently blamed for being illegally invaded.

 

Mr. Trump told President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and other European leaders after his call with Mr. Putin that Russia and Ukraine would have to find a solution to the war themselves, just days after saying that only he and Mr. Putin had the power to broker a deal. And he backed away from his own threats to join a European pressure campaign that would include new sanctions on Russia, according to six officials who were familiar with the discussion. They spoke on condition of anonymity to describe a private conversation.

 

Their account sheds light on Mr. Trump’s decision to throw up his hands when it comes to a peace process that he had previously promised to resolve in just 24 hours. And, unless he again reverses course, Monday’s developments left Mr. Putin with exactly what he wanted: not only an end to American pressure, but the creation of a deep fissure inside the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, between the Americans and their traditional European allies, who say they are going ahead with sanctions anyway.

 

To many, Mr. Trump’s decision was foretold — first by his fiery, televised encounter with Mr. Zelensky in the Oval Office, then by the resignation of the American ambassador in Kyiv.

 

“The policy since the beginning of the Trump administration has been to put pressure on the victim, Ukraine, rather than the aggressor, Russia,” Bridget A. Brink, the former ambassador and a longtime Foreign Service officer, wrote after leaving Kyiv last month. “Peace at any price is not peace at all — it is appeasement.”

 

But Mr. Trump discovered that he could not get peace at any price, because Mr. Putin rejected his overtures. Even after Mr. Trump’s defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, declared that Ukraine would never join NATO and must abandon hopes of winning back all the territory that Russia had seized — two of Mr. Putin’s demands — it was not enough to get a cease-fire.

 

Mr. Trump, of course, is usually a fan of financial pressure: He routinely threatens tariffs and sanctions against allies and adversaries alike. But in a statement to The New York Times, a White House official said this was different. The official, who asked for anonymity to discuss the president’s private calls, said additional sanctions against Russia would hinder business opportunities and the president wants to maximize economic opportunities for Americans.

 

American officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, have countered critics by pointing out that existing sanctions on Russia, largely imposed after the 2022 invasion, remain in place, as does intelligence sharing with Ukraine.

 

“When Vladimir Putin woke up this morning, he had the same set of sanctions on him that he’s always had since the beginning of this conflict,” Mr. Rubio told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday, adding that Ukraine was still receiving weapons from the United States and its allies.

 

Mr. Trump, he insisted, is “trying to end a bloody, costly war that neither side can win.”

 

Yet the subtext of Mr. Trump’s call with Mr. Zelensky and the Europeans is that the era of American expenditures of diplomatic energy, new arms for Ukraine and economic sanctions against Russia is rapidly coming to an end. Several European officials said the message they took from the call was that they should not expect the United States to join them any time soon in piling additional financial pressure onto Mr. Putin.

 

For Mr. Trump, that is a reversal. In social media posts in recent months he episodically threatened tariffs and sanctions against Russia if it refused to join Ukraine in declaring a 30-day, unconditional cease-fire.

 

“If the ceasefire is not respected, the U.S. and its partners will impose further sanctions,” he wrote on Truth Social on May 8, after a call with Mr. Zelensky. He reiterated that stance in a call with Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain, President Emmanuel Macron of France and Chancellor Friedrich Merz of Germany, when they traveled to Kyiv 10 days ago and set a deadline for Mr. Putin to sign the cease-fire agreement.

 

But after Mr. Trump’s call with Mr. Putin on Monday, those commitments evaporated. The American president declined, both in public and in his call with the European leaders, to follow up on that threat.

 

Mr. Trump implied in his public comments that his call with Mr. Putin had resulted in a breakthrough of sorts. But it quickly became clear to the Ukrainians and Europeans that the Russian leader had made no concessions to Mr. Trump beyond negotiating. Russia is already doing that, albeit halfheartedly, sending a junior team to Istanbul last week for talks with the Ukrainians.

 

Mr. Trump had famously promised during the campaign that he would bring about peace between Russia and Ukraine in 24 hours — portraying it as easy work for a master negotiator. He has since discovered it is much more difficult than he imagined, and he now says he was being “a little bit sarcastic” when he floated that timeline.

 

Frustrated with the slow progress and Mr. Putin’s intransigence, Mr. Trump has publicly mused about walking away from the negotiations. And he made clear in his post on Monday that he was eager to pull the United States out of the discussions and move on to doing business deals with Russia.

 

The conditions to end the war, Mr. Trump wrote, “will be negotiated between the two parties, as it can only be, because they know details of a negotiation that nobody else would be aware of.”

 

Then he pivoted to what some European leaders believe is his real goal: a normalization of relations between Washington and Moscow.

 

“Russia wants to do largescale TRADE with the United States when this catastrophic ‘bloodbath’ is over, and I agree,” Mr. Trump added. “There is a tremendous opportunity for Russia to create massive amounts of jobs and wealth. Its potential is UNLIMITED.”

 

It is not clear what normalization would look like. In his first term, Mr. Trump exited several major arms control treaties with Russia, and the last one, New START, which limits the number of intercontinental nuclear weapons each side deploys, expires next February. So far there are no negotiations for a replacement.

 

But Mr. Trump has been eager to help U.S. companies benefit from Russia’s energy sector and rare earth minerals, among other potential areas of investment. So far, Mr. Trump and his national security team have insisted none of those deals can happen before a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine.

 

Mr. Putin seems to understand Mr. Trump’s eagerness for commerce, and has steered much of their conversations toward the potential economic relationship, according to people briefed on their phone calls on Monday and earlier this year. As a result, Europe is now moving toward new sanctions and the United States appears poised to move in the opposite direction, looking to get past Ukraine and nurture a larger relationship with Russia.

 

It’s exactly the kind of split inside NATO that Mr. Putin has been looking to create, and exploit, for two decades.

 

On Tuesday, Britain announced a new wave of sanctions against Russia’s military, energy and financial sectors, responding to Russian drone strikes against Ukrainian cities.

 

“Putin’s latest strikes once again show his true colors as a warmonger,” the British foreign secretary, David Lammy, said in a statement. He urged Mr. Putin to agree to “a full, unconditional cease-fire right away so there can be talks on a just and lasting peace.”

 

The news release from the British government announcing the new sanctions made no mention of the United States, but instead stated that the European Union was preparing to “announce its 17th package of sanctions against Russia, in a coordinated effort to secure a just and lasting peace in Ukraine.”

 

A senior European official who has been involved in the closed-door discussions said Mr. Trump never seemed invested in joining sanctions on Russia if it refused to go along with the unconditional cease-fire. His threats, the official said, appeared largely performative; the United States did not join in the design of major new sanctions.

 

The disagreement between the Americans and the Europeans over support for Ukraine will likely come to a head over two nearly back-to-back summits: the Group of 7 in Canada in mid-June and the NATO summit a week later in The Hague. The second summit, in particular, will deal with long-term backing for Ukraine and steps to contain Russian forces so that they do not challenge a weaker member of the Atlantic alliance — and test whether Mr. Trump would come to that member’s aid under the NATO treaty.

 

Michael Crowley contributed reporting from Washington.

 

David E. Sanger covers the Trump administration and a range of national security issues. He has been a Times journalist for more than four decades and has written four books on foreign policy and national security challenges.

 

Jonathan Swan is a White House reporter for The Times, covering the administration of Donald J. Trump.

 

Maggie Haberman is a White House correspondent for The Times, reporting on President Trump.

 

Michael Schwirtz is an investigative reporter with the International desk. With The Times since 2006, he previously covered the countries of the former Soviet Union from Moscow and was a lead reporter on a team that won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for articles about Russian intelligence operations.