Why Putin’s relationship and Trump has embittered

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Did the relationship between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin leave the rails? A popular Russian newspaper thinks. He turned to trains to illustrate the current state of American-Russian ties.

“A frontal collision seems inevitable,” said Tabloid Moskovsky Komsomolets recently.

“The Trump locomotive and Putin locomotive accelerate each other.

“And neither is about to go out or stop and reverse.”

For the “Putin locomotive”, it is at full speed, with the so-called “special military operation”: the war of Russia in Ukraine. The head of the Kremlin has shown no desire to end hostilities and declare a long-term ceasefire.

Meanwhile, the “ locomotive Trump ” has accelerated efforts to put pressure on Moscow to end the fights: announce the deadlines, ultimatums, threats of additional sanctions against Russia and high prices on Russia’s business partners, such as India and China.

Add to both American nuclear submarines that President Trump says he was repositioned closer to Russia.

When you spend talking about locomotives to nuclear submarines, you know that things are serious.

But does that mean that the White House is really on a “collision course” with the Kremlin on Ukraine?

Or is a visit to Moscow this week by Donald Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, a sign that for the whole posture, an agreement between Russia and America to end the fighting is still possible?

In the first weeks of the second Trump presidency, Moscow and Washington appeared on the right track to restart their bilateral relations.

No suspicion of frontal collision. Far from it. Sometimes it seemed that Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump were in the same car, moving in the same direction. In February, the United States rose to the side of Russia to the United Nations, opposing a resolution written by Europe which had condemned “the aggression” of Russia in Ukraine.

During a telephone call this month, the two presidents spoke of visiting the countries of the other. It was as if a Putin-Trump summit could happen any day.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration exerted pressure on kyiv, not on Moscow, and picked fights with traditional American allies, such as Canada and Denmark. In television speeches and interviews, US officials fiercely critical of NATO and European leaders.

All of this was music with Kremlin’s ears.

“America now has more in common with Russia than Washington with Brussels or kyiv,” said political scientist Konstantin Blokhin of the Russian Academy of Sciences Center for Security Studies in the Izvestia newspaper in March.

The following month, the same newspaper sang:

“The Trumpists are revolutionaries. They are demolisseurs of the system. They can only be supported in this. Western unity is no longer. Geopolitically, it is no longer an alliance. Trumpism has destroyed transatlantic consensus with confidence and quickly.”

Meanwhile, Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff had become a regular visitor to Russia. He made four trips here in just over two months, spending hours in talks with Vladimir Putin. After a meeting, the chief of the Kremlin presented him with a portrait of Donald Trump to bring back to the White House.

President Trump would have been “clearly touched” by the gesture.

But President Trump was looking more than a simple paint from Moscow. He wanted President Putin to register for an unconditional complete ceasefire in Ukraine.

Known that Russia now has the initiative on the battlefield, Vladimir Putin has been reluctant to stop fighting, despite his assertion that Moscow is engaged in a diplomatic solution.

This is why Donald Trump has become more and more frustrated by the Kremlin.

In recent weeks, he has condemned the incessant attacks of Russia against Ukrainian cities as “disgusting”, “shameful” and accused President Putin of speaking “a lot of bullshit” on Ukraine.

Last month, Donald Trump announced a 50 -day ultimatum to President Putin to end the war, threatening sanctions and prices. He later reduced this to ten days. The deadline must expire at the end of this week. So far, there is no sign that Vladimir Putin will give in to Washington pressure.

Again, what pressure does Vladimir Putin really feel?

“Because Donald Trump has changed so many deadlines and has twisted in one way or another, I don’t think Putin takes him seriously,” said Nina Khrushcheva, international business teacher at the new school, a New York University.

“Putin will fight as long as he can, or, unless Ukraine said:” We are tired, we are ready to accept your conditions. “”

“I think Putin is sitting there in the Kremlin and thinks that he realizes the dreams of Russian tsars, then the secretaries general such as Joseph Stalin, showing the West that Russia should not be treated with disrespect.”

According to the image that I have painted so far, it may seem that a frontal collision between Putin and Trump locomotives is inevitable.

Not necessarily.

Donald Trump considers himself a great job and, from the appearance of things, he did not give up securing one with Vladimir Putin.

Steve Witkoff has to return to Russia this week for interviews with the Kremlin leader. We don’t know what kind of offer he can bring with him. But some commentators in Moscow predict that there will be more carrot than stick. It did not go unnoticed that the president on Sunday, Trump, said that Russia “seems to be good enough to avoid sanctions.”

Monday, Ivan Loshkarev, associate professor of political theory at the University of Mgimo, Moscow, told Izvestia that to facilitate dialogue, Mr. Witkoff could present “advantageous offers of cooperation (to Russia) who would open after an agreement on Ukraine”.

Could this be enough to persuade the Kremlin to make peace after three and a half years of war?

There is no guarantee.

After all, so far, in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin has not changed his maximalist requests on the territory, the neutrality of Ukraine and the future size of the Ukrainian army.

Donald Trump wants an agreement. Vladimir Putin wants victory.

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