“Vladimir, STOP!” was Donald Trump’s plaintive message after a recent Russian bombing of Kyiv.
But Vladimir Putin is unlikely to stop. The Russian president thinks that time is on his side in his war on Ukraine — both on the battlefield and on the international stage. Trump is trying to press ahead with a peace plan — with calls to both Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy scheduled for Monday. The Ukrainian and Russian leaders are in oddly similar positions in the face of Trump’s diplomatic offensive.
Neither Putin nor Zelenskyy likes the look of Trump’s peace plan — despite the insistence of Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, that it is the “best way forward”. But both Putin and Zelenskyy understand the dangers of antagonising Trump.