VLadimir Putin did not come running. He allowed his spokesman to respond Wednesday to the results of the American race, announcing that the Kremlin has no plans to congratulate Donald Trump on his victory. If the U.S. wants the peace deal that Trump promised during his campaign, the Russians have signaled that he will need to get it, and the price for Ukraine will be very high.
“The message is, if you want a deal, you're going to get down on your knees to get it,” said Nina Khrushcheva, senior Russian politics and foreign affairs major at the New School. “Putin seems to be starting with Trump instead of power.”
That puts the Russian president outside the ranks of European leaders. On Wednesday, many of them issued flattering statements and pledged to cooperate with the Trump administration. But the Kremlin has firmly noted that the US and Russia are at war, “both directly and indirectly,” while Putin's conditions for ending that war, his spokesman, “remain unchanged, and are known to Washington.” Indeed, over the past few years, Russia has issued a series of terms to end the war in Ukraine, most of which were tossed aside by the Biden administration, which tended to see them as attempts at negotiation.
In December 2021, for example, a few months before Russia attacked Ukraine, Biden reached out to Putin with a proposal to discuss a comprehensive agreement on international issues, from nuclear weapons and cybersecurity to the future of Europe and the NATO alliance. Putin's response is the size of a middle finger. If Biden wants a summit with Putin, the Kremlin said the US should calm down by withdrawing its troops from Eastern Europe, returning to the positions they held before Putin took power. As a top Russian diplomat put it at the time, “The US needs to pack up and go back to where it was in 1997.”
The US rejected that idea. Instead of a summit, the White House promised sanctions that would cripple the Russian economy. Since then, Putin's occasional appearances with Americans have varied greatly in tone and content, depending on how the war in Ukraine is progressing at the time. At a low point for the Russians in the fall of 2022, when they were facing the third in a series of humiliating losses on the battlefield, Putin's rhetoric grew steadily. He even referred to the Ukrainians as his “partners”, insisting that Russia was always open to negotiating an agreement to end the war.
Such talk faded as the war went in Russia's favor last year. In a decision issued in July, Putin demanded that Ukraine withdraw from four regions that Russia has previously seized. He also asked the West to lift all sanctions against Russia. Trump, during his campaign for the presidency, showed a willingness to consider that demand, saying that the sanctions should be used very wisely to protect the dollar's strength in the global economy. When asked if he has kept in touch with Putin in recent years, Trump declined to answer. But it would be a “smart thing,” he said, for the US president to talk to the Russians.
What Putin hoped to gain from such talks is no mystery. Based on his statements in recent years, he wants to disassociate with Ukraine militarily, decide all ways to join NATO, and gain permanent control over its southern and eastern regions. Neither Trump nor his closest advisers have announced that they are willing to grant those demands. Vice President-elect JD Vance said on the campaign trail that the peace deal would turn the front line into a “no target zone” that would be “fortified so the Russians don't invade Ukraine.”
The Ukrainians opposed that idea. President Volodymyr Zelensky called it “too big,” even though it would fall short of Putin's request. Others in Trump's circle have described tougher words on Russia. Mike Pompeo, who served as Secretary of State and CIA director under Trump, has urged the next administration to tighten sanctions, remove all restrictions on the use of American weapons in Ukraine, and create a “loan” program worth $500 billion. to help Ukrainians buy the weapons they need from American manufacturers.
“I hope we get this strategy right,” Pompeo told TIME during a visit to Kyiv in September. Although Congress has authorized more than $174 billion to help Ukraine since the attack began, “President Biden has spent it,” Pompeo said. “Too slow, too little, too late, too restricted.”
Given the breadth of views on Trump's agenda, and the lack of a plan to end the war in Ukraine, the Russians may be waiting to see where the administration comes up on this issue. They are in no rush to make a deal. Throughout, especially in the eastern Donbas region, Russian forces have made small but steady gains this year, using artillery and aerial bombs to destroy towns before they fall. The US estimates that Russia has lost more than 600,000 soldiers, dead and wounded. But Putin has shown an uncanny ability to absorb those losses and recruit more troops without causing a major backlash among the Russian people.
“There is no pressure for him to negotiate,” said a former senior US official who maintains high-level contacts in Washington and Moscow. If Trump decides he wants to make a deal with Putin, “the Russians will be interested,” he said. “I'm sure they have a lot of feelings about the menu options. But they won't respond until the US decides what it wants to give you. ” It will be up to Trump, in other words, to make the first step toward Putin.
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