Trump’s patience with Putin is running out

The one-sided bromance between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin seems to have come to an end. 

Once fascinated by the ruthless tactics of the Russian president, Trump said last month that he was “very angry” and “pissed off” at him for failing to agree to his ceasefire in Ukraine and dragging out talks without delivering concrete results.

“Russia has to get moving. Too many people are DYING, thousands a week, in a terrible and senseless war,” Trump said on social media before his envoy Steve Witkoff met Putin in St Petersburg on Friday.

Despite the Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov claiming that “everything is moving ahead very well”, the meeting — the third between Witkoff and Putin this year — failed once again to produce meaningful results.

Furthermore, Moscow launched another brutal attack on civilian infrastructure on Sunday, killing more than 30 people, including 11 children, and injuring nearly 100 others in the Sumy region.

The attack was condemned by Trump’s Ukraine envoy, Keith Kellogg, who said it had crossed “any line of decency”, and the President said it was “terrible”, although he added that he had been “told they made a mistake”, with elaborating.

Trump’s patience with Putin will not last much longer, the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has suggested, saying: “We will know soon enough, in a matter of weeks, not months, whether Russia is serious about peace or not.”

New phase of negotiations

Although Russia’s special envoy Kirill Dmitriev characterised the talks between Putin and Witkoff, which lasted over four hours, as “productive”, Trump’s frustration with the lack of progress is clear — and may soon prompt him to take more forceful action.

“I think the fact that Witkoff has gone to St Petersburg suggests that the Trump administration is entering a crucial moment now where they initially thought they could move very quickly. Now these peace negotiations are stalled,” said Neil Melvin, director for international security at the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi).

“And so we’re moving into a new phase, I would say, of the whole process around Ukraine. And that’s important because actually the settlement of the Ukraine conflict will be a real settlement of European security more broadly.”

As a former businessman, Trump prides himself as being a dealmaker, and has previously claimed that he will end the Ukraine war “in a day”, although this was subsequently clarified to be month.

As Trump seeks a swift deal — one he can claim delivers gains for the US as well — concerns are mounting that rushed negotiations could produce a flawed outcome for Kyiv, with potentially detrimental consequences not only for Ukraine but also for Europe.

“There is a risk that what Russia tries to do, is offer the United States some wins in their wider relationship,” like co-operation around energy projects in the Arctic and American companies returning to the Russian market, Melvin said.

Putin may also seek to offer assistance to the US on matters related to Iran, he pointed out.

“So if Putin tries to put a bigger package, which isn’t so much about Ukraine, on the table, on the basis that then the United States would basically agree to sort of abandon Ukraine, that is a risk that we have to, I think, be aware of in the current negotiations.

“There’s always that possibility that Russia will try and position itself as a kind of an equal with the United States in global affairs, and Ukraine will be just reduced to a side issue in that bigger conversation,” said Melvin.

At the same time, “I think the fact that Russia has not been able to achieve its maximalist goals so far suggests, in fact, that things may be starting to swing back to some degree towards support for Ukraine.”

‘Bone-breaking’ sanctions 

While a whirlwind of talks is taking place in European capitals and beyond, the US is reportedly preparing a crushing package of sanctions aimed at pressuring Putin to agree to a deal.

“I think it would be quite a useful combination at this moment to get a deadline from the President of the United States with a sanctions package coming from the Senate,” Finnish President Alexander Stubb has said.

Stubb, who met the Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky, and played golf with Trump at his West Palm Beach golf club last month, has alluded to a plan for a deadline of 20 April, by which time Putin should be required to agree to a full ceasefire.

“I think we’re probably moving into the direction where the Americans are seeing Russia for what it’s worth. In other words, the overall ceasefire has been agreed by the United States, by Ukraine and by Europe, but not by Russia,” Stubb said after spending two days with Trump in Florida, according to The Guardian.

Stubb, just like Keir Starmer, has emerged as a critical figure in the Ukraine peace negotiations, asserting that engagement with the US President is the most efficient way to secure continued backing for Ukraine.

Stubb noted that Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who joined the two leaders on the golf course, has introduced in the US Senate a “bone-breaking” sanctions bill against Russia if it fails to comply with a ceasefire.

“I think America, and my sense is also the President of the United States, is running out of patience with Russia,” he said.

Tariffs turmoil complicates plans for additional barriers

Notably, Russia was not included in the latest wave of sweeping tariffs that the US had prepared. “We’re not doing business essentially with Russia, because they are at war”, Trump said when asked about the exception.

Moscow has been hit with multiple rounds of sanctions by the United States and the European Union over its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, yet it has thus far managed to revamp its economy and sustain its military machine.

“There has to be a wall at some stage. And I think that wall is approaching,” said Stubb.

As a way to intensify pressure on Moscow, Trump has said he supports secondary sanctions on countries that buy Russian oil.

“I should say that there’s a lot of scepticism about this secondary sanctions idea,” which has been complicated further by “the mess that’s been created around Trump’s broader tariff position”, said Melvin.

“He’s fired this enormous tariff shotgun at the world,” but it’s not clear how imposing tariffs on India for example would change its behaviour towards Russia.

“By the time this had an impact on Russia, it might take many months anyway,” and Trump wants to do a deal very quickly, he said.

Russia launching new offensive, Ukraine says 

Despite discussions with US officials, Moscow has continued pounding Ukraine and has further expanded its foothold in the east.

President Zelensky said last week that Russia was preparing a new offensive, while Ukraine’s armed forces chief, Oleksandr Syrskyi, said on Wednesday that Russia had “already begun” a new offensive against the Sumy and Kharkiv regions in the north-east.

“For several days, almost a week, we have been observing almost a doubling of the number of enemy attacks in all main directions [on the front line],” Syrskyi said in an interview with Ukrainian news outlet LB.

Furthermore, a report released by the United Nations last week points out that civilian casualties nearly doubled in March compared with the previous month, with at least 164 Ukrainians killed and 910 injured.

“What it shows is that at the moment Putin, actually, he’s not terribly interested in a ceasefire or a peace agreement because the Russians, I think, calculate that they have the upper hand, that they can actually grind down Ukraine’s resistance,” especially if the United States loses interest, Melvin said.

The dynamics could shift, however, if the US “makes an offer to Russia that’s so amazingly positive that Putin will take it”, said Melvin.

Putin “is playing, I think, all these different options and time he feels is on his side”.