IT’S “UNFORTUNATE” THAT EUROPEAN LEADERS think Vladimir Putin isn’t interested in peace, U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff told CBS News last week. “I know what I heard,” Witkoff insisted, recalling his latest visit to Moscow, “the body language I witnessed.” It was a frightening echo of George W. Bush, who declared after meeting Putin in 2001 that he had “looked the man in the eye,” got “a sense of his soul,” and “found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy”—a hopeful take Bush later came to regret as he learned from bitter experience how duplicitous and aggressive an adversary he faced in the Kremlin.
This is a lesson Donald Trump and team have yet to learn, but it’s only the beginning of what the 47th president doesn’t understand about his Russian counterpart. Even more dangerous, Trump doesn’t grasp that his vision of peace in Ukraine—a compromise requiring concessions on both sides—is fundamentally at odds with Putin’s vision. Russia’s ambitions in Ukraine center on one goal and one goal only, and it’s not something that can be split 50–50. Putin is determined to end Ukrainian sovereignty—its very existence as a freestanding, independent nation.
This mismatch doesn’t bode well for ceasefire talks continuing this week in Saudi Arabia. As long as one man seeks a deal—even a lopsided deal—and the other wants capitulation, they will inevitably talk past each other. Worse still, only Putin sees the skew, and he wants to prolong it. It serves his interest.
The longer he can keep Washington and Kyiv tied up in talks, the more time the Kremlin has to accomplish its aims militarily—seizing more Ukrainian territory, undermining Ukrainian morale and running out the clock on European war fatigue. Meanwhile, the longer the game goes on, the more desperate Trump becomes and the more he gives away—slice after slice of American power and Western leverage over Russia.
