Russia-Ukraine War
Russia-Ukraine War
Russia-Ukraine War
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News analysis
President Trump reaches out to the Russian leader with threats; Vladimir Putin responds with flattery. But there are notable signs in their game, adding a revival discussion of nuclear weapons.
By David E. Sanger and Anton Troianovski
David E. Sanger, who has covered US presidents, Washington reported. Anton Troianovsky, who covers Russia, reported from Berlin.
They have been circling each other carefully for seven days now — sending out invitations to talk, mixing a few jabs with ego-stroking, suggesting that the only way to end the Ukraine war is for the two of them to meet, presumably without the Ukrainians.
President Trump and Vladimir V. Putin, whose appointment has been the issue of mystery and psychedrama in the first Trump, are there again. But it is not an undeniable reissue. Trump was unusually hard in his rhetoric last week, saying that Putin “destroyed Russia” and sanctions and risk costs in the country if he did not reach the negotiating table, a fairly empty risk given a small amount of industry between states between states United and Russia those days.
Calculating and understated as ever, Mr. Putin has responded with flattery, agreeing with Mr. Trump that Russia would not have invaded Ukraine had Mr. Trump been president three years ago. He repeated that he was ready to sit down and negotiate over the fate of Europe, superpower to superpower, leader to leader.
So far, they haven’t spoken, Mr. Trump told reporters on Air Force One on Saturday night that “he needs to communicate, and we’ll be in touch soon. “As they set the bar for this first conversation, they’re sending signals that they’re okay with that they’re sending to the signals that they’re sending to the signals that they’re sending to the signals that they’re sending to I need to negotiate more than just Ukraine, a war that, in Mr. Putin, it is just one of the arenas in which the West is waging its own fight.
The two men appear to take full dating between Moscow and Washington, perhaps adding discussions about restarted nuclear weapons, a verbal exchange that has an imminent deadline: the main treaty restricting the two nations’ arsenals expires in almost exactly a year. After that, they would be on the loose to continue the kind of arms race that the Global has not noticed from the inside most days of the Cold War.
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