{"id":225143,"date":"2025-01-27T08:57:15","date_gmt":"2025-01-27T08:57:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/01\/27\/as-trump-and-putin-circle-each-other-an-agenda-beyond-ukraine-emerges\/"},"modified":"2025-01-27T08:57:15","modified_gmt":"2025-01-27T08:57:15","slug":"as-trump-and-putin-circle-each-other-an-agenda-beyond-ukraine-emerges","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/01\/27\/as-trump-and-putin-circle-each-other-an-agenda-beyond-ukraine-emerges\/","title":{"rendered":"As Trump and Putin Circle Each Other, an Agenda Beyond Ukraine Emerges"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align:center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2025\/01\/26\/multimedia\/26dc-trump-putin-zcvl\/26dc-trump-putin-zcvl-facebookJumbo.jpg?ssl=1\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image\" alt=\"As Trump and Putin Circle Each Other, an Agenda Beyond Ukraine Emerges\" title=\"As Trump and Putin Circle Each Other, an Agenda Beyond Ukraine Emerges\" \/><\/div><p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-0\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">They have been circling each other carefully for seven days now \u2014 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.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">President Trump and Vladimir V. Putin, whose relationship was always the subject of mystery and psychodrama in the first Trump term, are at it again. But it is not a simple re-run. Mr. Trump was unusually harsh in his rhetoric last week, saying Mr. Putin <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/01\/21\/us\/politics\/trump-putin-russia-ukraine.html?searchResultPosition=1\" title=\"\">was \u201cdestroying Russia,\u201d<\/a> and threatening sanctions and tariffs on the country if it doesn\u2019t come to the negotiating table \u2014 a fairly empty threat given the tiny amount of trade between the U.S. and Russia these days.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">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.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-1\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">So far they have not spoken, though Mr. Trump told reporters on Air Force One on Saturday night that \u201che wants to speak, and we\u2019ll be speaking soon.\u201d As they prepare the ground for that first conversation, they are sending signals that they want to negotiate about more than just Ukraine \u2014 a war that, in Mr. Putin\u2019s telling, is only one of the arenas in which the West is waging its own fight against Russia.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-2\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Both men seem to envision taking on the whole relationship between Moscow and Washington, possibly including revived nuclear arms talks, a conversation that has a looming deadline: The major treaty limiting the arsenals of both nations expires in almost exactly a year. After that, they would be free to pursue the kind of arms race the world has not seen since the deepest days of the Cold War.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Recalling conversations with Mr. Putin in 2020, before his defeat in the U.S. election that year, Mr. Trump insisted last week, \u201cWe want to see if we can denuclearize, and I think that\u2019s very possible.\u201d He appeared to be assuming that China would engage in the same conversation. (It has refused, at least so far.)<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">While he kept using the word \u201cdenuclearize,\u201d Mr. Trump almost certainly meant negotiating a new agreement to reduce \u2014 not eliminate \u2014 the stockpiles of strategic nuclear weapons, which can cross continents. For his part, Mr. Putin talked about reviving discussions on \u201cstrategic stability,\u2019\u2019 the term of art among negotiators for talks that cover not just the number of nuclear weapons deployed on each side, but where they are based, how they are inspected, and steps to deter their use.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The last, tentative arms control talks were ended shortly before Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Mr. Putin has argued since then that any talks on limiting nuclear arms should also cover the war in Ukraine. The Biden administration had refused to mix the two, fearing that Mr. Putin\u2019s real goal was to trade limits on its nuclear arsenal for the territory he had captured in Ukraine and other concessions.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-3\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">But Mr. Trump seems open to a broader negotiation, which is exactly what Mr. Putin would like, because it could enable him to make that trade-off.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">It is unclear what, if any, long-term security guarantees Mr. Trump is willing to offer to President Volodymyr Zelensky, who he has insisted in recent days should have made a deal with Mr. Putin and avoided a devastating war.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-4\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mr. Trump clearly wants to establish himself as a peacemaker: In his first term he suggested he deserved the Nobel Peace Prize, and bringing some kind of end to Europe\u2019s biggest war since World War II would bolster his argument. He seems unconcerned about giving Ukraine a substantive role in the process, in contrast to former President Joe Biden, whose mantra was \u201cNothing about Ukraine without Ukraine.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cFor all these blustering exchanges, the thing Putin most wants to hear is that this is a deal Russia and the U.S. will strike by themselves,\u201d said Stephen Sestanovich, a Russian and Eurasian studies expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, and a former State Department official.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-5\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Keith Kellogg, a retired general who, at 80, has been tasked by Mr. Trump to get the conversations going, insists that the key will be economics, not casualties. \u201cWhen you look at Putin, you can\u2019t just say, \u2018Well, stop the killing,\u2019 because candidly, that\u2019s not their mentality,\u2019\u2019 he said on Fox News last week. Mr. Trump \u201capproaches warfare differently: he looks at the economics as a piece of that warfare.\u201d And he will focus, Mr. Kellogg insists, on limiting Russia\u2019s oil revenues.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mr. Putin, confident of his position on Ukraine\u2019s battlefields despite Russia\u2019s enormous casualties, has been trying to telegraph a wait-and-see approach to Mr. Trump. Russia\u2019s war goals haven\u2019t changed, he has said, and while it is ready for talks to end the fighting, it will only do so on its own terms. <\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mr. Putin has strongly signaled that, at a minimum, he would demand to keep the roughly 20 percent of Ukraine that Russia now controls, as well as an agreement ruling out NATO membership for Ukraine and limiting the size of its military.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">At the same time, Mr. Putin has made clear his eagerness to engage with Mr. Trump \u2014 and, more broadly, with the United States, after three years of diplomatic isolation by the Biden administration.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-6\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The Kremlin\u2019s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, has been telling journalists on a near-daily basis that Mr. Putin is ready to receive Mr. Trump\u2019s call. \u201cWe\u2019re waiting for signals,\u201d he said Friday. \u201cEveryone is ready.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">And Mr. Putin himself twice went out of his way last week to lavish praise on Mr. Trump \u2014 a proven method for winning Mr. Trump\u2019s favor.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">On Monday, Mr. Trump\u2019s inauguration day, he held a televised meeting of Russia\u2019s Security Council \u2014 an event that normally happens on Fridays and largely behind closed doors. He said Mr. Trump \u201cshowed courage\u201d in surviving attempts on his life and had won \u201ca convincing victory.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">On Friday, in a stage-managed moment, Mr. Putin stopped to answer a state television reporter\u2019s question about Mr. Trump. The Kremlin promptly <a class=\"css-yywogo\" href=\"http:\/\/kremlin.ru\/events\/president\/news\/76153\" title=\"\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" target=\"_blank\">posted<\/a> the video on its website.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cIt is probably better for us to meet and, based on today\u2019s realities, talk calmly about all areas that are of interest to both the U.S. and Russia,\u201d Mr. Putin said. He brushed aside Mr. Trump\u2019s sanctions threats, calling him \u201csmart\u201d and \u201cpragmatic,\u201d and spoke Mr. Trump\u2019s language by saying the 2020 election had been \u201cstolen\u201d from him.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-7\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Like Mr. Trump, Mr. Putin has hinted at a desire to discuss a much broader set of issues with Mr. Trump than only the war in Ukraine. In his comments to state television on Friday, Mr. Putin said the Kremlin and the Trump administration could \u201cjointly look for solutions to the key issues of today, including strategic stability and the economy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">The \u201cstrategic stability\u201d reference signaled potential interest in arms control talks, which the Kremlin briefly began with the Biden administration in 2021. \u201cWe discussed the range of arms control and nonproliferation issues, from AI in weapons to renewal of New START,\u2019\u2019 Wendy Sherman, the former deputy secretary of state, who conducted the talks for the U.S. side, said in an email. (New START is the arms control treaty that has been partly suspended by Russia, and expires in February 2026.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-8\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Ms. Sherman noted that the talks were broken off ahead \u201cof Putin\u2019s horrific invasion.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mr. Putin\u2019s invitation for broad talks underscored what appears to be his continued optimism about Mr. Trump, despite Mr. Trump\u2019s tough words about Russia last week and the fact that the president imposed a raft of new sanctions on Russia during his first term as president.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Mr. Trump also went after Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, last week, essentially blaming him for not striking an agreement with Mr. Putin that could have avoided the war.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<div data-testid=\"companionColumn-9\">\n<div class=\"css-53u6y8\">\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cI could have made that deal so easily, and Zelensky decided that \u2018I want to fight,\u2019\u201d Mr. Trump told the Fox Television host Sean Hannity.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">He made clear he was not interested in Mr. Biden\u2019s approach of supporting Ukraine for as long as necessary. But with his tough rhetoric against Mr. Putin last week, Mr. Trump may be trying to show he is not a pushover for the Russian leader, while preparing for the possibility that he cannot coax Mr. Putin into a deal that works for all sides.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">\u201cTo keep Putin off balance, Trump has to show him a deal is possible only if it makes sense to Ukraine and our allies,\u201d Mr. Sestanovich said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Even as Mr. Putin welcomes talks with Mr. Trump, Russian officials aren\u2019t backing away from their overall message about the United States as a malignant force \u2014 one sign of how the Kremlin is hedging its bets in case discussions with Mr. Trump do not go well.<\/p>\n<p class=\"css-at9mc1 evys1bk0\">Ms. Sherman, who has extensive experience negotiating with Russia, warns that if talks with Russia begin, the Trump administration should be ready. \u201cPutin will want what he has always said he wanted: As much territory as possible, no Ukraine ever in NATO, no Western nuclear weapons in Europe that could target Russia.\u201d Given that, she bets that actually negotiating a follow-on to the New START treaty \u201cis likely low on his list.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<aside class=\"css-ew4tgv\" aria-label=\"companion column\"\/><\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/01\/27\/world\/americas\/trump-putin-ukraine.html\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>They have been circling each other carefully for seven days now \u2014 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 relationship was always [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":225144,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2025\/01\/26\/multimedia\/26dc-trump-putin-zcvl\/26dc-trump-putin-zcvl-facebookJumbo.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[12348,176812,45,169297,18239,137233,163575,163203,15890,167212,3096,128438,163751,3091,137131,88818,209,202,52,1130,1021,128437,163486,128440,34139,8774],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225143"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225143"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225143\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":225145,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225143\/revisions\/225145"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/225144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}