Before his phone call with the US President Donald Trump, Putin believes that he has a strong position, and his troops will be able to completely occupy the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia regions by the end of 2025.
Bloomberg writes about this, citing a source familiar with the Kremlin leaderʼs opinion.
With such a sentiment, Putin is unlikely to offer significant concessions to Trump during their conversation. European officials are concerned that even so, the American president will try to force a deal, as he still insists on a quick end to the war.
There is also growing anxiety in Europe that US efforts to achieve a ceasefire are reaching a climax, and if they are in vain, then Trump may not want to increase pressure on Russia and will simply move on to the next problem.
"Trump wants Putin to agree to a ceasefire, but he categorically does not want it. However, Putin is not interested in the failure of the negotiations. He is trying to maneuver so that these negotiations continue in parallel with the offensive of the Russian military," commented Sergei Markov, a political consultant associated with the Kremlin.
According to one senior European official, in a May 16 phone call with Trump, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer tried to make it clear to Trump that Putin was deceiving him. They hope Trump will realize that he could be a loser if he forces a bad deal on Ukraine.
“Putin has been emboldened by his ability to make maximalist demands on Ukraine without facing any serious resistance from the Trump administration. Putin does not trust Trump. But he will insist that Trump agree to the Russian vision for a ceasefire,” explained Bota Ilias, a senior analyst at London-based strategic intelligence firm Prism.
However, Putinʼs confidence contradicts Western assessments of the situation on the front. After heavy losses in more than three years of full-scale war, Russia has no chance of achieving maximalist goals.
Ben Barry, a senior fellow for land warfare at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, believes that the chances of Russia occupying four Ukrainian regions by the end of the year are very low. He believes that this could only happen if Ukraine’s defenses collapse, but such a scenario now looks unlikely.
According to Bloomberg, this skepticism is shared by many Russian military personnel fighting against Ukraine. According to an unnamed source close to the Russian Defense Ministry, Ukrainian drones have made Russiaʼs large-scale offensive operations expensive and ineffective.
Putin risks overestimating the strength of the Russian occupiers and pushing Trump to carry out his threat of new sanctions, which he called a response to the “bloodbath” in Ukraine. Trump may support Republican Senator Lindsey Graham’s bill on tough sanctions if Moscow does not make concessions.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed that Washington has been warning Moscow for two months about possible sanctions if it does not show progress in the negotiations.
- Graham is expected to amend the bill to focus on foreign companies that import Russian energy. Graham is presenting the sanctions as a complement to the president’s tariff policy, not as an alternative to it. The original bill would have imposed 500% tariffs on goods from any country that trades energy with Russia. Trump has rejected that approach.
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