Pavel K. Baev
U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to meet in Budapest to discuss Russia’s war against Ukraine during an October 16 phone call that preempted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s visit to Washington.
Putin’s phone call yielded a short-term advantage by prompting Trump to delay a decision on supplying Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine, but intensified U.S. diplomatic pressure on Russia for a ceasefire.
Despite Russia’s worsening economic situation and public fatigue with the war, Putin remains resistant to a ceasefire, prioritizing his political ambitions over domestic and international pressure.
On October 16, U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to meet in Budapest, Hungary, to discuss Russia’s war against Ukraine. Putin timed his phone call to occur while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was in the air on the way to Washington, D.C., for a meeting with Trump on October 17. Anticipation of a new round of talks with Russia likely affected U.S.–Ukraine talks. Russian mainstream media has eagerly announced that Zelenskyy “yet again” failed to establish common ground with Trump on expanding support for the Ukrainian war effort (Izvestiya, October 18). This self-congratulation is based on Trump postponing a decision about whether to supply Ukraine with long-range offensive weapons, namely Tomahawk missiles, but conveniently plays down re-energized U.S. pressure to stop the Kremlin’s war against Ukraine (RBC, October 18). Putin may have scored a tactical win, but renewed diplomatic pressure to stop Russia’s war against Ukraine means he will have to contemplate a wider scope of compromises.
Zelenskyy has persistently requested U.S. BGM-109 Tomahawk cruise missiles, which Trump highlighted ahead of October 17 talks but never committed to supplying (Meduza, October 14). Some Russian experts argued that Trump’s public consideration of supplying Tomahawks to Ukraine was merely a “bluff” because there are very few ground launchers for this primarily sea-based weapon (Business Online, October 12). The Tomahawks have nevertheless become a major political discussion in Russia’s war against Ukraine, so Putin had to take a stance on the issue, including at an October 2 Valdai Club meeting (Kommersant, October 3). Putin has downplayed the threat of Tomahawks and refrained from drawing any “red lines,” while warning that the damage to the Russia–U.S. relations would be heavy should Washington supply the missiles to Kyiv (Vedomosti, October 10; TopWar.ru, October 14). Putin argued, publicly and directly to Trump, that Tomahawks would minimally impact the battlefield, which is technically correct as Ukraine would primarily use Tomahawks on strategic long-range targets inside Russia rather than on the front lines of battle. Putin prefers to omit that Kyiv could use these weapons to significantly increase the Kremlin’s fuel supply crisis caused by Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian refineries (The Moscow Times, October 17).
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