Has Trump Finally Turned on Putin?

Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s Situation Report, where we dare anyone to start a third party to disrupt the Haltiwanger-Iyengar dichotomy. (Elon Musk is trying to do exactly that to the Democrats and Republicans, which Rishi wrote about this week.)

Alright, here’s what’s on tap for the day: Trump’s growing impatience with Putin, more uncertainty over Iran talks, and an AI Rubio prank caller.

Is Trump Over Putin’s ‘Bullshit’?

U.S. President Donald Trump appears to have lost patience with Russian President Vladimir Putin after months of failed efforts to secure a peace deal between Moscow and Kyiv—and as Russia continues to pummel Ukraine with massive missile and drone attacks.

In a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Trump offered one of his sharpest rebukes of the Russian leader to date, saying, “We get a lot of bullshit thrown at us by Putin, if you want to know the truth. He’s very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless.” Trump, who had what he characterized as an unproductive phone call with the Russian president last week, added that he’s “not happy” with Putin “because he’s killing a lot of people.”

On Monday, Trump said that he had approved sending more defensive weapons to Ukraine—just days after the Pentagon announced a pause on some arms deliveries to the country—and he signaled on Tuesday that he’s open to supporting a Russia sanctions bill pushed by GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham.

If Trump continues in this direction, it would represent a remarkable shift in course.

Previously, Trump frequently railed against U.S. assistance to Ukraine—and infamously lambasted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on the matter in a heated Oval Office meeting back in February. But Trump and Zelensky are now on better terms. After meeting with Zelensky at the NATO summit in The Hague in late June, Trump said his Ukrainian counterpart “couldn’t have been nicer.”

Trump for years has also faced accusations of being far too friendly with Putin, a ruthless authoritarian who is widely regarded as a major threat to democracy and global stability. Critics of Trump have long been troubled by his seeming admiration for Putin, particularly given that the Russian president is a former KGB operative who is skilled in the art of manipulation.

Trump has repeatedly brushed off such criticism. (In 2016, for instance, Trump explicitly said he didn’t admire Putin but that he thought Putin was a strong leader.) And until recently, Trump has operated under the notion that maintaining amicable relations with Putin was good for U.S.-Russia ties and would boost the chances of achieving peace in Ukraine.

Meanwhile, experts on Russia and Putin warned that Trump’s all-carrots, no-stick approach would be unlikely to achieve results.

Trump now seems to be waking up to the idea that Putin is not genuinely interested in ending the war.

“I think we’re actually witnessing the education of Donald Trump about Russia in particular” but also international affairs more generally, Kevin Ryan, a retired U.S. brigadier general and former U.S. defense attaché to Russia, told SitRep. Trump is a “businessman,” Ryan said, and wanted to make a “business deal” to end the war, but “he’s come up against the reality that this is not a war that’s going to be won at the negotiating table.”

Ryan, who taught a national security strategy course at the Kyiv School of Economics this year, said that people he’s spoken with in Ukraine are “encouraged by Trump’s change of rhetoric” and his decision to resume weapons shipments. Yet he said that Ukrainians have also “steeled themselves” for reduced U.S. support.

It’s an open question how long Trump’s more supportive stance toward Kyiv will last. The Trump administration’s policy on Ukraine has been all over the place, as evidenced by the recent flip-flop on weapons shipments. Trump has dodged questions over who ordered the pause, but reports suggest it was the result of a surprise decision by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Officials have said that the pause was due to concerns over dwindling U.S. stockpiles.

To move the needle toward a peace deal, Ukraine will need a lot more “consistency” from the Trump administration in terms of support, Ryan said. “This war cannot be won by Europe and Ukraine alone,” he said.

European leaders and officials remain cautiously optimistic about Trump’s security commitments, bolstered by an acknowledgment that the continent must share more of the burden. That’s what we heard from multiple foreign and defense ministers we spoke to at the NATO summit last month.

But Trump’s wild-card tendencies are always on their minds.

“This year the new president has … introduced some kind of unpredictability,” Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen, who previously served as prime minister during Trump’s first term, told an audience at the Center for Strategic and International Studies on Tuesday.

Still, Rasmussen told SitRep on the sidelines of the event that, after his engagements with the Trump administration in Washington this week, he feels Europe “can count on” U.S. engagement in Ukraine. “I was left with the clear impression that they now share our analysis that the real troublemaker is Putin.”

Let’s Get Personnel

Rodney B. “Brad” Blakestad is now director of the National Quantum Coordination Office at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

James “Jim” Caggy has been designated assistant secretary of defense for mission capabilities at the U.S. Department of Defense.

Nick Adams, a far-right commentator, Trump supporter, and self-described “alpha male” known in large part for posting frequently on social media about the restaurant chain Hooters, has been nominated as U.S. ambassador to Malaysia.

On the Button

What should be high on your radar, if it isn’t already.

Are U.S.-Iran talks happening? Trump on Monday said that Washington and Tehran would soon resume nuclear talks, just weeks after he ordered historic strikes on the country’s nuclear facilities. “We have scheduled Iran talks,” Trump said while meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “They want to talk.” But this appeared to be news to Tehran, with Iran’s Foreign Ministry denying that Iran had requested talks.

Though Iran’s top diplomat signaled this week that Tehran is open to returning to diplomacy, he also said that his country has “good reason to have doubts about further dialogue.” For now, nothing appears to be officially on the books.

This all comes amid ongoing questions about the full extent of the damage from the U.S. strikes. Trump has repeatedly said that the U.S. strikes destroyed Iran’s nuclear program—and has questioned whether pursuing talks with Iran would even serve a purpose anymore—but assessments are ongoing and experts have expressed skepticism about the administration’s claims of success.

Gaza clinic attacked. An Israeli airstrike near a medical facility in Gaza reportedly killed more than a dozen people, including several children, on Thursday. The strike targeted the town of Deir al-Balah in central Gaza as people were lining up to receive nutritional support at a health clinic run by an American aid organization called Project HOPE, the organization’s regional director told the New York Times. The Israeli military said it was targeting a Hamas fighter who participated in the Oct. 7, 2023, attack that ignited the current conflict and expressed regret over “harm to uninvolved individuals.”

U.S. and Arab mediators are continuing to negotiate a proposal for a 60-day cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, which was largely the subject of Netanyahu’s visit to Washington this week, but progress on a deal has been slow.

The United States, meanwhile, imposed sanctions on Francesca Albanese, the U.N. special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories. Albanese has called for trade and arms embargoes on Israel over what she has characterized as its “genocidal campaign” in Gaza.

Marco speaking. A person pretending to be U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio used AI voice-cloning software to call at least three foreign ministers, a sitting member of Congress, and a U.S. governor, according to a State Department cable obtained by the Washington Post.

The impostor created an account on Signal (yes, that Signal) using the display name “[email protected],” leaving voicemails for at least two targets and texting a third, the cable said. The State Department told the Post it was investigating the breach but declined to reveal the names of the individuals targeted.

Snapshot

A student plays the violin during a music class in a camp for displaced Palestinians in the northern Rimal neighborhood of Gaza City on July 10.

Put On Your Radar

Monday, July 14: China hosts a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization foreign ministers.

G-20 finance ministers and central bank governors meeting begins in South Africa.

Tuesday, July 15: Senate confirmation hearing for Mike Waltz as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

The Aspen Security Forum begins in Aspen, Colorado.

Thursday, July 17: German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is expected to visit the United Kingdom and sign a bilateral cooperation treaty.

Quote of the Week

“You need to shape up and do some homework.”

— U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth at the end of her grilling of Anjani Sinha, the orthopedic surgeon who is Trump’s nominee for U.S. ambassador to Singapore. Sinha fumbled basic questions from Duckworth on Singapore’s trade with Washington, its role in the ASEAN regional group, and even what the group itself does. Duckworth expressed “doubts” that Sinha will be able to effectively represent the U.S. mission in Singapore.