Just when Ukraine and his European allies thought that President Donald Trump was coming to his vision of the war, seemed to give a great victory to his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin.
For kyiv, this was Trump’s deadline for Putin: stop the struggles for Friday or face new hard economic sanctions. Instead, Trump has given Moscow a diplomatic blow by accepting to meet with Putin face to face in a matter of days, his first encounter since the invasion of Ukraine.
Initially, Trump had suggested that such a summit would only continue if Putin agreed to meet with Volodymyr Zelenskyy, something that the administration of the Ukrainian President has asked for a long time but has been resisted by Russia. On Thursday, Trump dissipated the idea that they would have to meet, raising the spectrum of a bilateral negotiation that freezes kyiv.
“The danger to Ukraine is actually quite serious,” said Jonathan Eyal, international director of the Royal United Services Institute, a group of experts based in London. “There will be an alarm sensation in European capitals.”
For Eyal and others, the Nightmare of Ukraine is now one step closer to reality: “Trump will be very happy with what he perceives as the great achievement of taking Putin to the negotiating table, which takes any type of offer made,” Eyal said. “The danger of a half commitment, which Trump can claim as his main achievement, is very high.”
That commitment could be a high temporary fire that would allow Russia to replenish its army and give its economy a rest of international sanctions, according to Hope for Ukraine, a non -profit organization based in Rosaland, New Jersey.
Even if there is no truce agreement, “a meeting with Trump, regardless of the result, would be a great diplomatic victory for Putin,” said Gabriella Ramírez, Esperanza for the executive assistant of Ukraine, in an email. “Putin wants to break his diplomatic isolation” and such a meeting “will caress his ego.”
The “meeting with Putin is a trap; President Trump should not fall in love,” Ramírez added.
Ukraine is now in a link.
“Zelenskyy can’t torpedo what a Trump initiative is,” Eyal said. After his catastrophic consequences with Trump in the White House in February, Zelenskyy has managed to repair his relationship with Trump in the last two months in a very unfortunate way, and it would be the worst as possible for him to now seem to make this peak. “
Many Ukrainians were already skeptical. Even before the summit, Artem Bidenko, a political scientist and former vice minister of the Ukraine Government, predicted that Putin “will probably offer some kind of bone” to Trump, who “will say that ‘you see, I’m fine, I’m already achieving peace and people will stop dying,'” Bidenko said.
The White House did not immediately respond to the NBC News request to comment on these criticisms.
Others in Kyiv have more faith in the American leader.
“Trump seems to be irritated by the actions of the Russians to dare to hit really strong blows in Russia,” said Danylo Vereitin, 31, a sports journalist based in kyiv, the Ukrainian capital. “People with this type of mentality really don’t like to seem weak or vulnerable.”
During the presidential campaign last year, Trump said he would take only 24 hours to resolve the conflict, then updated that to six months and then apparently forgot it. The previous warm words about Putin recently have become severe, and Trump seemed to be losing patience with the “unpleasant” and “shameful” night missile attacks of Russia against Ukrainian civilians while the White House tried to negotiate peace conversations.
This culminated in Trump’s deadline, was set for the first time at 50 days on July 14, then shortened 10 days on July 29, so that Putin agrees a high fire or faces tariffs against importers of Russian oil and gas products such as China, India, Brazil and Turkey.
When asked if this deadline was still active, Trump told journalists on Thursday: “He will depend on him,” which Putin means “and we will see what he has to say,” and added that he was “very disappointed” by the situation.
A tall White House official told NBC News Friday that the Russians have provided a list of demands of a high fire, and that the United States is now trying to obtain the acceptance of the Ukrainian and European allies.
But Trump’s ultimatum have not taken the Kremlin to move an inch in their war in Ukraine so far, apart from giving Trump a meeting.
“Nothing has changed since, frankly, December 2021, when Putin offered his ultimatum and said: ‘Give me what I want or that Ukraine understands it,” said James Nixey, a consultant based in the United Kingdom who specializes in Russia.
“Trump has done everything possible to press Russia, before doing something to press Russia,” he added. “He has made all kinds of pronouncements, threats and social publications of truth, but in reality he has not undertaken any specific act that damages Russia.”
In 2021, Russia’s eight -point Draft treaty looks very like today: a prohibition of Ukraine that binds to NATO and a withdrawal of NATO forces on the eastern flank of Russia. Today, Russia has simply added the additional demand of even more Ukrainian territory.
Ukraine has rejected the idea of a high fire that would cause Russia to maintain control over the Ukrainian territory in its control, and insisted that any agreement must include “security guarantees” of its allies so that Moscow cannot launch a future aggression.
“Putin wants Ukraine, Ukraine wants to exist, Trump wants an end of war and be able to deal with Russia,” said Nixey. “All main players have different agendas and none of them are aligned with nothing.”
