Analysis
US
silence as Russia steps up attacks on Ukraine highlights Trump’s failure
Peter
Beaumont
in Kyiv
After
boasting he would end the war within 24 hours, the question now is whether US
president has disengaged
Sun 25 May
2025 11.03 BST
The noises
in Kyiv in the early hours of Sunday morning went like this. First was the
staccato sound of the air defences booming on the edge of the city. As those
guns stopped, the sound of drone motors approaching was audible, getting
quickly louder before the briefest moment of silence and then a sudden
detonation.
But, after
two days of heavy Russian air raids that hit civilian buildings across Ukraine,
there has been only silence from Donald Trump.
In the space
of just over a week, since the first direct talks between Russia and Ukraine
since March 2022 broke up inconclusively with no sign of a ceasefire, the
failure of his intervention has become clear.
Boasting
before his inauguration as US president that he could end the war in 24 hours,
he has instead emboldened the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, by declining
to impose pressure for an immediate ceasefire – backed by Europe – or
meaningful sanctions.
Since
Trump’s two-hour call with Putin last Monday, the Russian leader has made clear
his disdain even as Trump’s own Defense Intelligence Agency predicted that
Moscow would continue fighting through this year.
In the
aftermath of the call, Putin has ordered the creation of a “security buffer
zone” along Ukraine’s eastern border. Strikes on civilian targets only seem to
be accelerating, culminating in two straight days of air raids, including
Saturday night’s – the heaviest aerial bombardment of the war so far, with
almost 300 drones and nearly 70 missiles.
Ukrainian
and western officials anticipate that Russia will once again attempt a
large-scale offensive during the summer, even if they are highly sceptical that
it will be effective given Moscow’s punishing losses.
The reality
is that with deadlock on the ground, the escalating long-range drone war on
both sides is becoming ever more significant, even if it cannot conquer
territory.
As it has
become ever larger, with Russian and Ukrainian factories turning out thousands
of new drones, it has become more sophisticated with Moscow’s employment of big
numbers of decoys and systems designed to fool air defence systems.
While
Ukraine has targeted bases and factories, including those producing fibre optic
cable for a new generation of small combat zones, the purpose on Russia’s side
appears aimed solely at undermining morale on the home front. In recent days,
drones and missiles have hit apartment blocks, homes and a student dormitory.
On Sunday
the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, angrily denounced “the silence of
America … encouraging Putin”. His words raised a more critical question:
whether Trump, as he has long threatened, has already walked away from his
perfunctory efforts to end the war.
Phillips
O’Brien, a professor of strategic studies at the University of St Andrews, has
suggested in his newsletter on the war that, far from the recent talks
heralding any hopes of a breakthrough, they had in fact removed any pretence
that the US-mediated talks were going anywhere.
“On Monday
the great charade we have been seeing for months came to an end,” wrote O’Brien
this weekend. “The charade was that Trump was trying to negotiate a deal
between Ukraine and Russia that would work for both states. The reality was
always that Trump was trying to bludgeon Ukraine into making major concessions
to Russia and help Putin achieve many of his strategic goals.”
If Trump has
already disengaged, that raises a number of difficult questions for Kyiv: will
the US continue supplying military aid in sufficient quantities? More
crucially, can Europe step into the diplomatic and military void provoked by
that disengagement?
What is
clear to Ukrainians, despite the several weeks of headlines over the potential
for a breakthrough in peace talks, is that without pressure from Washington, or
hugely accelerated aid from Europe, the war will grind on. And there will be
more nights like Saturday’s in their future.
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