Donald Trump offered his old pal Russian President Vladimir Putin an economic lifeline out of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine Monday, while Moscow once again refused to agree to a ceasefire.
The U.S. president wrote on Truth Social that a two-hour phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin had gone “very well” and signaled an emerging economic alliance between Russia and the United States.
“Russia and Ukraine will immediately start negotiations toward a Ceasefire and, more importantly, an END to the War. The conditions for that 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,” Trump wrote. “The tone and spirit of the conversation were excellent. If it wasn’t, I would say so now, rather than later.”
“Russia wants to do largescale TRADE with the United States when this catastrophic ‘bloodbath’ is over, and I agree. There is a tremendous opportunity for Russia to create massive amounts of jobs and wealth. Its potential is UNLIMITED,” Trump wrote.
The U.S. president added that Ukraine could also get in on the action “in the process of rebuilding its Country.”
Notably, Russia is not subject to Trump’s sweeping reciprocal tariff policy. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt suggested that Moscow had been spared from Trump’s tariffs because U.S. sanctions already “preclude any meaningful trade,” but the two countries conduct billions in trade every year.
After the conversation, Putin signaled that his government was prepared to work with Ukrainian officials on a “memorandum regarding a potential future peace treaty,” but he still hadn’t budged on requests for a ceasefire and still demanded that Ukraine address the “root causes” that led to Russia’s invasion, according the Kyiv Independent.
Putin and Trump’s nonstatements don’t indicate any seismic shift in negotiations, as Russia has attempted to prolong peace talks for months.
Just last week, Russian officials seemed far from ready to make nice, after Putin bailed on talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Istanbul, as did Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who called the jilted wartime president “pathetic.”
During a meeting in Istanbul, both sides agreed to a prisoner swap, but one Ukrainian official said it was “unacceptable” that Russian officials continued to demand that Ukraine withdraw its troops from large swaths of its own territory to secure a ceasefire.
The post Trump Just Gave Putin a Way to Get Off Scot-Free on Ukraine War appeared first on New Republic.
