Putin Gets What He Has Long Wanted: Direct Talks With U.S.

President Trump’s announcement of peace talks with Russia has handed Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin what he has long demanded: direct talks with the U.S. over Ukraine.

Moscow has long sought to cut Ukraine and its allies in Europe out of such talks, dismissing the government in Kyiv as illegitimate. It has suggested that Washington has been responsible for prolonging the war and that it alone can agree with Russia on ending it.

But if Putin’s stated positions on Ukraine are a guide, the talks promised by Trump are likely to be long and drawn-out—with Russia agreeing to a cease-fire only if the U.S. withdraws support from Ukraine and limits are imposed on Kyiv’s ability to defend its territory.

As Russia’s forces advance on the battlefield, and public support in Ukraine grows for an end to the fighting, analysts say Putin is willing to continue playing the long game and drive a hard bargain with the U.S. until he secures the terms he demands.

“It’s an interim victory for now,” said Alexander Gabuev, the director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin. “The ultimate victory for Putin is ensuring that Ukraine doesn’t fall into the Western camp and is denied the ability to make sovereign choices about its security arrangements.”

European officials on Thursday expressed concern over the notion of bilateral U.S.-Russia talks over Ukraine, which Trump said could happen soon. They demanded that the European Union and Kyiv be involved in any negotiations to end the war.

“The Trump administration has made public concessions to Putin before negotiations have even begun,” German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said on Thursday, referring in part to Trump’s suggestion that membership for Ukraine in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is off the table.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he was reassured during a call with Trump on Wednesday that the U.S. president didn’t give priority to Russia over Ukraine. But he said Kyiv, and the EU, had to be involved in any talks about ending the war.

“It’s crucial for us to maintain the support of the United States,” he told reporters.

Meanwhile, there was jubilation in Moscow on Thursday. “Putin has triumphed over everyone,” said one of Russia’s main TV anchors, Olga Skabeeva. Popular tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda said “Trump has signed Zelensky’s death sentence.” State TV attributed a rise in Moscow’s stocks to the prospect of a Trump-Putin summit.

For Putin, Trump’s promise of talks is the first step toward bringing about an end to a war on Russia’s terms, after three years of brutal fighting that has led to hundreds of thousands of casualties for either side.

It also represents a turnaround for the Russian leader, who at times during the war has suffered humiliating setbacks. Ukraine ousted Russian forces from half the territory they had captured in 2022, before forcing them to withdraw from the major city of Kherson.

Now, Putin’s decision to keep fighting and double down on his war aims appears to be bearing fruit. The day of his call with Trump, new U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the idea that Ukraine could regain most land lost to Russia was unrealistic. The Senate also confirmed Tulsi Gabbard, widely seen as a Ukraine skeptic, as director of national intelligence.

Putin has repeatedly sought to go over the heads of Ukrainians, seeking a grand bargain over Ukraine through direct negotiations with the U.S., whose financial and military assistance has been a lifeline to Ukraine since the war’s earliest days.

At a minimum, Russia wants to render Ukraine a neutered state with a Moscow-friendly government permanently vulnerable to Russian military aggression.

But Putin sees direct talks with the U.S. as a chance to secure a more sweeping geopolitical pact of the kind agreed upon after World War II, which presaged a postwar reorganization of Eastern Europe into Soviet and Western spheres of influence.

Trump cited World War II in his post to Truth Social on Wednesday and suggested that stopping the war in Ukraine would be just the first item on the agenda of fruitful Russia-U. S. cooperation.

It was a stark change from the stance of Trump’s White House predecessor, Joe Biden, who rebuffed Putin’s offers of a summit and sought to isolate the Russian leader. Biden pledged to make no agreement with Russia without Kyiv’s signoff. He said the U.S. had the funding necessary to support Ukraine “as long as it takes.”

But Putin, who has dealt with five U.S. presidents during his quarter-century at Russia’s helm, began an early charm offensive aimed at winning over Trump, who had repeatedly expressed skepticism over U.S. aid to Ukraine.

The offensive began days after Trump’s election victory in November. Stressing that Russia was ready for dialogue over Ukraine, Putin called Trump a “real man” for surviving an assassination attempt during his election campaign, and called for a summit between the two leaders.

“It’s probably best that we meet, based on the realities of today, to talk calmly about all the areas that are of interest to both the United States and to Russia,” Putin said in January. “We are ready.”

He echoed Trump’s false claim that the 2020 election won by Biden was rigged, and repeated an assertion often made by Trump that the war in Ukraine would never have happened if Trump had been in power. During his call with Trump this week, Putin flattered the U.S. president by quoting a key Trump campaign slogan, “common sense,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.

At the Oval Office on Wednesday, Trump said he expected to meet Putin soon, with Saudi Arabia a likely venue, and added that state visits by Trump to Moscow, and Putin to the White House, were likely.

Ukraine has made its own overtures to Trump. Zelensky has appealed to his transactional nature, offering preferential U.S. access to Ukraine’s mineral resources in exchange for continued aid that is crucial to Ukraine’s survival against Russia’s onslaught.

Trump has said such an agreement would be part of any peace deal, returning the U.S.’s investment in Ukraine. He hasn’t, however, committed to any security guarantees in Ukraine with U.S. involvement, a key Zelensky demand.

Ukraine’s population has grown war-weary after three years resisting Russia’s might, and there is a growing awareness that regaining the territory lost to Russia isn’t a realistic medium-term goal.

Trump said there is no plan to freeze Zelensky out of the peace talks. Asked whether Zelensky would have to give up land to Russia during his Oval Office appearance, Trump said: “He’s going to have to do what he has to do.”

Russia’s forces are slowly advancing on the battlefield, and its war economy is operating in full gear despite inflationary pressure and strains from Western sanctions. Military experts say Russia can keep fighting for at least another year to 18 months with the manpower and weapons it has.

A former European intelligence official said he expected Russia to push for a very hard bargain with Trump, precisely because Moscow still has the resources to continue fighting for concessions from Trump and Ukraine.

Moscow has dismissed peace offerings from Zelensky, including a land swap suggested this week, and has circled back to the demands it has made from the outset of the war: disarmament of Ukraine, curtailment of Western military aid, and a more friendly stance toward Russia that would be written into Ukraine’s constitution.

If a meeting happens soon, it is far from clear whether Trump will be willing to accept the terms outlined by Putin, who is familiar with the real estate tycoon’s style from his experience of Trump’s first term in office.

“Putin has no illusions about Trump,” said Tatiana Stanovaya, a Paris-based political scientist and founder of political analysis firm R. Politik. “These conversations with Trump are more about sustaining talks that will be instrumental for Russia’s efforts in Ukraine.”

Stanovaya says that in the medium term, if Russia fails to secure its maximalist demands in Ukraine, it will continue pressing forward on the battlefield at great cost while draining Ukraine’s inferior manpower reserves and ratcheting up the pressure on Zelensky to cave to Moscow’s demands.

Gabuev says Putin’s ultimate goal in talks with the U.S. side isn’t merely to secure his gains in Ukraine and prevent a resumption of hostilities after any cease-fire deal, but to ensure that Ukraine has no ability to militarily counter Russia in the future.

“The goal will be not only control over territories, but providing Kyiv with shallow to no security guarantees from the West,” he said. “Leading, in the Kremlin’s thinking, to Ukraine’s gradual implosion.”