Maximum pressure on Putin is the only way to win a fair deal in Ukraine

Judging by his body language — and by the goals he had initially set for the summit — President Donald Trump could not be satisfied with the outcome of his meeting with Russia’s leader, Vladimir Putin, in Alaska.

“I won’t be happy if I walk away without some form of a cease-fire,” he told Fox News’ Bret Baier hours before arriving in Anchorage. “There will be very severe consequences,” the president warned days before the summit.

Much as he likes to be unpredictable, the US president would do well to the predictable thing and stand by his earlier threats. On Aug. 1, after a major aerial attack on Kyiv, killing 31, he called Russia’s actions “disgusting” and promised fresh sanctions. 

The summit with Putin, on American soil no less, was a major pivot. Going into the meeting, it was possible to give President Trump the benefit of the doubt. If Putin had agreed to a ceasefire, the gambit would have been worth it.

Yet the US president did not get what he asked for. Instead, he was offered flattery, vague promises of future business deals — and likely a delusional lecture on Russian and Ukrainian history, featuring a collection of old maps that Putin had brought with him.

Alas, President Trump, just like his envoy Steve Witkoff earlier, seems to have fallen for the Russian bag of tricks, damaging US credibility not unlike the former President Obama’s empty rhetoric about “red lines” in Syria did.

“We don’t have to think about [sanctions] right now,” President Trump said after the meeting, which he rated a “10 out of 10.”

Worse yet, his shift from demanding ceasefire to seeking a peace agreement echoes the Russian rhetoric about the need to address the conflict’s “root causes.”

And if the reporting about President Trump’s support for the plan to urge Kyiv to cede unoccupied Ukrainian territory in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in exchange for peace is correct, the administration is about to commit a major blunder, giving Putin for free what he could not take militarily for over a decade.

A “deal” on Russian terms will not bring lasting peace. Because Ukraine matters to the security of Eastern Europe at large, such a deal risks destroying the transatlantic alliance — and also jeopardizing President Trump’s minerals deal with Ukraine, which is predicated on Ukraine’s control of its own territory.

The “root cause” of the conflict, after all, is not Russia’s need for more land, in Donetsk, Luhansk or elsewhere. The root cause is Putin’s demented view of his own place in history as the successor to Peter the Great and Stalin: a rebuilder of the Russian empire. 

Until Putin is disabused of that notion, Ukraine will be in danger.

The “hot” war may temporarily stop but a humiliated, partitioned Ukraine, abandoned by its most important Western partner, will provide a fertile ground for a Russian offensive through other means — through propaganda, bribery of elites, and pitting different Ukrainian factions against each other — until the Kremlin is ready to come back for the rest of the country.

It is eminently possible for the United States and our allies to ensure Putin fails. If passed, the bipartisan bill introduced by Senators Graham and Blumenthal would impose a de facto trade embargo on countries buying Russian oil, adding significant pressure on Russia’s ailing public finances.

Likewise, US military assistance — from precision artillery to air defenses — has given Ukraine a substantial edge on the battlefield. Europeans are eager to finance further transfers of US equipment to Ukraine, making them cost-free to US taxpayers.

Finally, there is the lowest of all low-hanging fruit: making sure existing sanctions work.

Because Russians constantly try to get around the congressionally mandated sanctions, their effective enforcement resembles a game of whack-a-mole. During the Biden administration, the Treasury Department rolled out over a hundred updates to sanctions and export ban lists to keep the pressure on.

The constant fine-tuning has been brought to a halt following President Trump’s return to office.

Again, it might have been worth giving a more lenient approach a try. Continuing to pursue it in face of Putin’s intransigence projects American weakness.

In a telling moment during the short joint press conference in Anchorage, Putin expressed hope that “Kyiv and European capitals won’t throw a wrench in the works.”

If throwing a wrench means ensuring that the United States stands with its European allies and Ukraine, against Russia, then one very much hopes that President Trump’s meeting with Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky and key European leaders on Monday achieves exactly that — for America’s own sake.

Dalibor Rohac is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington DC. Twitter: @DaliborRohac.