Stephen Blank
May 26, 2025
Euromaidan Press
Donald Trump is selling Ukraine and European security out to Moscow. However, he has not gotten his thirty pieces of silver for doing so.
The proof came in stark detail during three days of failed negotiations in Istanbul from May 14-16, where Russian demands revealed the true price of Trump’s “peace” plan. This Trump-Putin- Ukraine call debacle exposed how Putin manipulates American foreign policy through Trump’s personal weaknesses.
Russian negotiators opened with an ultimatum: Ukraine must completely evacuate all military forces from four regions Moscow claims to have annexed—Zaporizhzhia, Luhansk, Donetsk, and Kherson—before any ceasefire discussion could begin. No negotiations, no gradual withdrawal, no international monitoring—total capitulation as the entry fee.
When Ukrainian negotiators flatly refused this demand, Russia immediately escalated: they would seize two additional provinces, Sumy and Kharkiv, containing millions more Ukrainian citizens. The threat wasn’t hypothetical—Russian forces physically threatened the families of Ukrainian negotiators attending the talks.
By the final day, Russia’s delegation leader Vladimir Medinsky delivered Moscow’s ultimate position: Russia was “prepared to fight forever.”
In other words, Russia still wants to eliminate Ukraine as a state—and will use any negotiation as cover to make more territorial demands.
What all this shows is that despite everything, Trump has learned nothing about why this war began, who started it, and why. Moreover, he apparently does not want to know.
Instead, he now threatens to walk away from the war entirely, leaving Ukraine and Europe in the lurch.
The “art of the deal” meets Putin’s playbook
This self-proclaimed master of “The Art of the Deal,” a book that he did not even write, showed that when negotiating with Putin he is, to use his own words, a sucker and a loser.
By surrendering to Putin and foregoing a joint US-European threat of crushing sanctions, Trump sold out Ukraine and America’s European allies and widened the split within NATO that his own administration has created. All these manifestations of Trump’s self-proclaimed genius have accrued solely to Vladimir Putin’s benefit since he has paid no price for these gains.
Trump’s concessions to Russia represent “preemptive surrender” and what Nigel Gould-Davies called “strategic surrender”, i.e., surrender from a point of superiority.
Negotiating with Russia about Ukraine over Kyiv’s head, making preemptive concessions about excluding Ukraine from NATO, and having it concede territories in advance of formal negotiations all reflect Trump’s delusions about Russia.
Putin’s unchanged war aims vs. Trump’s Ukraine blame game
Trump has said that it is easier to negotiate with Russia than Ukraine, even though Moscow has made no concessions and has held fast to its ambitions to destroy Ukraine as an independent entity. This position contradicts those who ask “did Trump say Ukraine started the war” – he has repeatedly blamed Ukraine for the conflict’s origins.
Trump’s repeated statements that he can trust Putin and that he and Putin went through the same ordeal during his earlier impeachment hearings likewise display a man governed by his fantasies and delusions.
Similarly, his policy team’s remarks reflect a surpassing ignorance of Russian policy and the war in Ukraine. Secretary of State Rubio, Ambassador Witkoff, and ex-National Security Advisor Waltz either believe or must agree with ridiculous false statements that weaken both the US and Ukraine’s position vis-à-vis Russia.
Similarly, Director of National Intelligence Gabbard justified closing Radio Free Europe and the Voice of America among other organizations by reposting right-wing effusions by the Malaysian podcaster and journalist Ian Miles Cheong who writes for the Russian propaganda outlet Russia Today (RT) that these organizations “produced and disseminated far-left propaganda” and “perpetuated pro-war narratives against Russia.”
Thus, Trump’s foreign policy is not anchored in reality and is already failing.
Moreover, Trump’s statements about trusting Putin do not conform to other actors’ realities. French Foreign Minister Stephane Sejourne observed in 2024 that, “It is not in our interest currently to hold discussions with Russian officials because the statements and the summaries issued about them are lies.”
Neither is France a unique case. Trump has obviously learned nothing from the failure of his ham-handed efforts to impose a solution on Ukraine that have only led Moscow to increase its demands on Kyiv.
Since the beginning of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, Trump has claimed that Ukraine started this war and that Ukraine does not hold the cards.
Therefore, Trump proposed a peace plan imposing neutrality and the ceding of Ukrainian territory to Russia. Yet as the fiasco in Istanbul demonstrated, there is no basis for negotiations.
Why Putin skipped Istanbul: Trump-Putin meeting manipulation
Although Trump claimed that Putin did not come to Istanbul because he wasn’t coming, and that nothing will happen until he and Putin meet, this is another typically self-centered and willful misreading of Russian policy.
Putin’s absence from the May 14-16 talks was deliberate. By sending negotiators with impossible demands rather than attending himself, Putin could blame Ukraine for “refusing to negotiate” while positioning himself for direct talks with Trump that would bypass Ukrainian sovereignty entirely.
This tactical move succeeded perfectly. Trump refused to blame Putin, claiming that Putin did not attend simply because Trump himself was absent, rather than criticizing Russia’s maximalist demands.
Putin sees no reason to negotiate with Zelensky for three fundamental reasons.
First, Putin clearly will not accept Zelensky or probably anyone else as head of an independent, sovereign Ukrainian state, for doing so undermines the entire rationale and purpose of this war. That opens Putin up to severe domestic backlash as he presides over an increasingly troubled economy and an army that will be further demoralized if it cannot conquer Ukraine.
Second, Putin sent negotiators to Istanbul with extreme demands that would torpedo the proceedings in order to continue his campaign to make a deal with Trump over the head of Ukraine and split NATO—an alliance that Trump and his administration foolishly disdain.
Third, as Trump recently said, Russia has sufficient conventional military power to bring the war to “a logical conclusion,” i.e., victory. He also claimed that Russia is recruiting twice as many recruits as Ukraine on a monthly basis—a questionable advantage since, according to estimates, Russia is losing twice as many men as Ukraine.
Trump’s willful ignorance problem
Trump’s phone call with Vladimir Putin on 19 May—just three days after this diplomatic catastrophe—highlighted his betrayal of Ukraine and Europe along with his utter strategic incapacity. In this conversation, as in so many previous exchanges with Putin, he renounced his own idea of a thirty-day cease-fire in Ukraine as a prelude to bilateral negotiations.
Moreover, he stated that negotiations will begin immediately. In fact, he let Putin, once again, bewitch him with the mirage of billions or trillions in trade with Russia.
Trump still thinks, not surprisingly, that he alone can solve this war by meeting face to face with Putin.
Unfortunately, this outcome was all too predictable. Secretary of State Rubio may assert that America’s ties to NATO and Europe continue undiminished, that the USA is waiting for Russian peace proposals, and that anti-Russian sanctions are still on the table. But he is not calling the shots and instead has fallen into line with Trump at every opportunity.
He may claim that he is doing a good job. But instead, he is merely reflecting his master’s voice of strategic incoherence, fantasy, and delusion. These fantasies were visibly displayed at the predictable fiasco of negotiations in Istanbul on 16 May.
Although some commentators think that these talks, despite their failure, presage new negotiations for a ceasefire, it is more likely that new negotiations will not be resumed anytime soon.
The most obvious reason for asserting this conclusion is the incompatibility of the parties’ positions. But equally, if not more importantly, Trump’s behavior is a major reason for this prediction.
The briefing books Trump won’t read
This willful ignorance is to be expected. Since taking office, he has sat for only 12 briefings of the President’s Daily Brief and rarely reads the accompanying briefing book. This pattern raises questions about whether Trump supports Putin through deliberate ignorance or genuine incompetence.
Likewise, the delusional quality of administration policymaking is evident in the following quote by Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff, who, before the call to Putin, told ABC News that, “the president has a force of personality that is unmatched.” Witkoff added, “He’s got to get on the phone with President Putin, and that is going to clear up some of the logjam and get us to the place that we need to get to. And I think it’s going to be a very successful call.”
Neither did Witkoff familiarize himself with the issues here before negotiating with Putin without an embassy official as translator. Not surprisingly, other members of the administration regard him as, in their own words, “an idiot.”
The military reality Trump ignores
Trump’s self-centered and deluded remarks betray not only an ongoing failure to grasp the stakes here but also a desire not to know or care about Ukraine or European security that has infected his entire administration. Trump still believes that Ukraine cannot win even though Russia has shown that it cannot win this war by its own efforts.
Without Chinese economic support, Iranian drones, and millions of North Korean shells and several thousand troops, Russia could not sustain or finance it.
While the support given to Ukraine remains too little, too late, its army is still in the field, its defense industry has made gigantic strides, the Russian Black Sea Fleet has been confined to Russian ports, and the Russian Air Force has not achieved air superiority.
Neither is it likely that Russia can exploit any gains it makes due to its manpower shortage—an appalling testimony to the sacrifice of a million men on the altar of Putin’s dreams.
Nevertheless, Putin still dreams of victory because Trump indulges in fantasies of personal diplomacy unmoored from any concept of national interest or sound strategy and refuses to commit the necessary support to Ukraine that can equalize Russia’s foreign support.
Indeed, as long as Trump continues policymaking by impulse and ego, nobody can consider him a reliable negotiator.
The impossible “reverse Nixon” strategy
Numerous reports explain Trump’s incompetence here by referring to the delusion that Trump can or intends to effect “a reverse Nixon”—i.e., split the Russo-Chinese axis and bring Russia over to America’s side, much like Nixon and Kissinger enlisted China against the USSR in the 1970s to create a new world order.
Trump and Secretary of State Rubio have stated their intention to break this axis which, as almost every commentary has attested, has grown tighter in the recent past. Therefore, the idea that Trump can bring about this reverse Nixon remains unfounded and delusional.
Worse yet, this intention apparently is linked to Trump’s visible ambition to win the Nobel Peace Prize (which, given the disposition of the peace prize committee in Stockholm, remains possibly the biggest delusion of all) by ending the war on Ukraine. This, along with his previous well-documented adulation of Vladimir Putin, can explain why his administration continues to impose concessions on Ukraine while fawning over Russia.
Russia-China alliance: Why Putin won’t abandon China for Trump
The delusion that by appeasing Russia regarding Ukraine and detaching it from China also founders on Russia’s undeviating maximalist demands to destroy Ukrainian statehood. Equally delusional and utterly unfounded is the idea that Moscow will willingly follow in Trump’s wake. Neither will China remain supine throughout this process and let Russia slip away.
There also are other obstacles to Trump’s fantasy. Neither he nor his team remotely approach Nixon and Kissinger’s skill, intelligence, vision, and ability in effecting a reversal of their program. That program, meticulously planned and secretly executed, took three years to mature. Trump and his team have neither the patience, skill, nor capacity to carry this out.
Neither do Russo-Chinese relations resemble what Nixon confronted.
Whereas the USSR and China were literally on the brink of war in 1969–72, today they are close to being, if not actually are, allies.
Moreover, Russian economic dependence on China has grown enormously due to the war in Ukraine, to the point where Russia cannot afford to break with China. The Russia China alliance represents a fundamental shift from the 1970s geopolitical landscape that Trump seems unable to comprehend.
Sino-Russian trade is at record levels. China is massively involved in the war, as well in illicitly providing dual-use goods to Russia. 78% of Russian imports of semiconductors and 96% of Russian imports of smart cards have come from China.
China is also the main customer for Russian energy exports, and the Yuan has become steadily more important as Russia’s foreign currency.
The global cost of Trump’s delusions
Finally, neither Russia nor China is inclining to America, much to Trump’s dismay. While Ukraine, Canada, Europe, and the US are already paying for Trump’s delusions, Trump’s public disappointment at Russia makes clear that his education to reality, if it ever occurs, will be expensive and on a global scale. For those asking “does Putin like Trump,” the answer seems increasingly clear: Putin views Trump as a useful tool, not a respected partner.
Nevertheless, facts are stubborn things. The defense of Ukraine and of European security remain vital American interests, European security is incompatible with the Russian empire, and Russia can and must be beaten for the international order to prevail and for China to be restrained.
Therefore, until Ukraine prevails due to unstinting Western support, the war will continue, but neither Trump nor America will gain anything from it.
Trump may think he is “running the world.” However, he cannot even control himself, let alone Russia. And as long as Trump prefers to build and live in his own castles in the air, Vladimir Putin will collect the rent on those castles.
Dr. Stephen J. Blank, a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, is an expert on Russian foreign policy, Eurasian security, and international relations.