President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia is brushing aside President Trump’s professed disappointment in him and is pushing ahead in Ukraine with renewed intensity, having already priced in the possibility of new U.S. pressure, analysts and people close to the Kremlin said.
The Russian leader is convinced that Russia’s battlefield superiority is growing, and that Ukraine’s defenses may collapse in the coming months, according to two people close to the Kremlin, who insisted on anonymity to speak candidly about sensitive diplomacy. Given Russia’s ongoing offensive, they say, Mr. Putin views it as out of the question to halt the fighting now without extensive concessions by Ukraine.
“He will not sacrifice his goals in Ukraine for the sake of improving relations with Trump,” Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, said.
Mr. Putin’s recalcitrance highlights a stark reversal from some expectations earlier this year, when Mr. Trump came into office and aggressively pursued a rapprochement with Moscow, having pledged on the campaign trail to end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours. Mr. Trump’s friendly approach to the Kremlin and an Oval Office shouting match with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine seemed to offer a rare opening for Mr. Putin.
Mr. Trump’s clear sympathy for the Russian leader, many Russians hoped, could yield sanctions relief, Western investment, arms-control deals and a favorable geopolitical realignment in Europe. All Mr. Putin needed to do, it seemed, was accept a Ukraine cease-fire that would have allowed Russia to keep the territory it had already captured.
But Mr. Putin wanted more. As Russia has gained on the battlefield, and Ukraine has struggled with a dearth of men to defend its front lines, Mr. Putin’s military ambitions have only increased.
As Mr. Trump makes his frustration with Mr. Putin known, it has become clearer that Mr. Putin is prepared to risk his relationship with the U.S. president in service of what has emerged as his overarching goal after 40 months of full-scale war — achieving Ukraine’s capitulation to his demands.
Mr. Putin’s determination to keep up Russia’s onslaught, coupled with escalating bombardments, led up to Mr. Trump’s most recent outburst of frustration with Mr. Putin, on Tuesday. Despite six phone calls between the two leaders since February and two rounds of direct talks between Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul, Russia has only escalated.
“We get a lot of bullshit thrown at us by Putin, if you want to know the truth,” Mr. Trump told reporters. “He’s very nice to us all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless.”
Mr. Putin has tried hard to be “nice.” He has pitched the White House on business deals like mining rare earths or taking a stake in Russian gas supplies to Europe. He offered Russia as a neutral Middle East mediator even as Mr. Trump was preparing to bomb Iran, Russia’s closest ally in the region. He has continued to shower Mr. Trump with public compliments.
“He’s a courageous man, that’s clear,” Mr. Putin said of Mr. Trump at a news conference in Belarus late last month.
But the one thing Mr. Putin has not done, as Mr. Trump acknowledged on Tuesday, is offer meaningful concessions on Ukraine. At the Belarus news conference on June 27, Mr. Putin said he recognized Mr. Trump’s frustration, referring to the president’s recent acknowledgment that the war in Ukraine was harder to end than he had thought.
“That’s how it is,” Mr. Putin went on. “Real life is always more complicated than the idea of it.”
The Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, reiterated that sentiment in comments on Wednesday and played down Mr. Trump’s harsh remarks about Mr. Putin.
“We are taking this calmly,” Mr. Peskov said. “We expect to continue our dialogue with Washington and our effort to repair our seriously broken bilateral relations.”
Mr. Trump, the Kremlin spokesman added, has a “fairly tough style in the phrases he uses.”
Mr. Putin has been prepared for Mr. Trump’s patience to snap, according to the two people close to the Kremlin. He has understood, they said, that Mr. Trump could eventually implement new sanctions, after six months in which the administration has issued no new sanctions against Russia related to its invasion of Ukraine.
“Putin really values and is investing in a personal relationship with Trump,” Ms. Stanovaya said. “But at the same time, he never had any illusions about how American policy toward Russia might develop. And the Russian leadership has always prepared for the worst.”
So far, the U.S. president’s sanctions threats against Russia have proved empty. Neither has he signaled a willingness to ramp up military support in a way that would change the battlefield balance, and European countries don’t appear to have the capacity to do so on their own. One of the people close to the Kremlin said that Mr. Putin expected to still be able to make a deal on sanctions relief with Mr. Trump when, at some point in the future, the Russian leader finally is ready to end the war.
“Putin is very rational to some extent,” said Stefan Meister, a Russia expert at the German Council on Foreign Relations in Berlin. “If there are no increasing costs from the other side, why should he change his behavior?”
Mr. Putin’s goals in Ukraine go well beyond maintaining control over the swath of Ukraine that his troops have captured.
He wants the NATO alliance to commit not to expand further eastward and roll back its infrastructure. He also wants Ukraine to adopt a “neutral” status and cap the size of its military, in addition to protecting the use of the Russian language under Ukrainian law.
And he has continued to insist that Ukraine withdraw its forces from territory that he claims to be part of Russia, frustrating a Trump administration that had expected Mr. Putin to accept a cease-fire at the current battle lines.
Mr. Putin has been pleased with his interactions with Mr. Trump so far this year, the two people close to the Kremlin said. The leaders’ talks themselves have represented a breakthrough for Russia, ending three years of diplomatic isolation by the Biden administration.
But Mr. Trump has refused to play along with the Kremlin’s effort to put the improvement of U.S.-Russia ties on a separate track from ending the war in Ukraine. The American president also hasn’t offered a diplomatic path to the kind of far-reaching victory that Mr. Putin seeks, a deal that would give Russia a renewed sphere of influence in Eastern Europe in exchange for peace in Ukraine.
“If, of course, we ended up in a situation where Trump could and wanted to give Putin everything on NATO, weapon installations in Europe, infrastructure, and so on and so forth, I think Putin would be much more flexible about Ukraine,” Ms. Stanovaya said. “But that’s not an option today.”
Anton Troianovski is the Moscow bureau chief for The Times. He writes about Russia, Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia.
Paul Sonne is an international correspondent, focusing on Russia and the varied impacts of President Vladimir V. Putin’s domestic and foreign policies, with a focus on the war against Ukraine.
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