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For President Vladimir V. Putin, a telephone call marked a turning point as great as any battle for his three -year war.
In a long call Wednesday, President Trump delivered a message To Mr. Putin who has encapsulated a large part of the way in which the Russian chief sees the world today: that Russia and the United States are two large nations which should directly negotiate the fate of Ukraine and pass to the fight against even heavier global affairs.
It was the clearest sign to date that Mr. Putin, despite the disastrous failures of Russia at the start of his invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, could still emerge from the war with a redesigned map of the Europe and an expansion of the influence of Russia.
The appeal came the same day as Mr. Trump’s defense secretary Pete Hegseth said the United States would not support the desire for Ukraine NATO membership. He also came then that the Senate confirmed Tulsi Gabbard, widely considered to be sympathetic to Mr. Putin, as the next director of national intelligence.
Overall, the developments have marked a gain for Mr. Putin’s campaign for Mr. Trump – apparently in the conviction that the American president has the power to put a Russian victory in Ukraine.
“Putin is playing a very intelligent match,” Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior woman in Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, said. “He invests 100% in the effort to seduce Trump.”
In Moscow, the news of the long -awaited call inaugurated a barely contained wave of joy. The commentators said that three -year efforts led by Americans to isolate Russia had ended strongly. They celebrated that of Mr. Trump Social media message After the call concerning “the great history of our nations” and noted that the American president had spoken to Mr. Putin before calling President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine.
In a sign of the bursting of optimism, the main stock index in Russia jumped 5% Thursday morning at its highest point since last summer, and its battered currency, the ruble, won against the Dollar at its strongest level since September.
Russian businessmen hope that a peace agreement with Mr. Trump could lead to sanctions against their abandonment of their country. The Kremlin said that, beyond Ukraine, Trump and Mr. Putin had addressed “Russian-American bilateral relations in the economic sphere”.
Not all were happy. Some Russian war on the war on social networks that an agreement with the United States could sell soldiers on the battlefield. A pro-war blog with over a million followers, two majors, quoted A fighter who said that the discussion of Wednesday’s call “demoralizes and irritates me”.
Ms. Stanovaya and many other commentators have noted that Mr. Putin’s chances to obtain whatever he wanted was far from being insured. In particular, while Mr. Trump seems to be focused on the end of the fighting in Ukraine, Mr. Putin wants a broader agreement with the United States which would reject NATO and allowed Russia to recover a sphere of influence in Europe .
“Donald Trump spoke in favor of a rapid end to hostilities,” said the Kremlin in his summary of the appeal, referring to this divergence. “Vladimir Putin, for his part, said the need to eliminate the deep causes of the conflict.”
On the diplomatic front, Mr. Putin still faces a Europe which is mainly arranged against him. On Thursday, senior European defense officials gathered in Brussels have shown no signs of their insistence that Ukraine is at the center of all peace talks and that Europe is also at the table.
John Healey, British defense secretary, repeated the Mantra of the Biden administration according to which he “can not be negotiations on Ukraine without Ukraine”.
It is not clear, however, how much leverage the Europeans would have on the United States on Ukrainian diplomacy, despite their decline.
The call sets up a complex negotiation of which contours – and participants – are not yet clear. Mr. Zelensky will try to plead in favor of American support at a meeting with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice-President JD Vance in Munich on Friday.
Mr. Putin is likely to maintain military pressure on Ukraine while using Mr. Trump’s ambitions as a peacemaker. Analysts say that what cares most of Mr. Putin the most is not the quantity of territory he captures in Ukraine; Rather, he wants a more complete affair that prevents Ukraine from NATO, limits the size of the military of Ukraine and reduces the presence of the Western alliance through eastern and central Europe.
Analysts doubt that Mr. Putin will accept to stop fighting before receiving insurance that at least some of these larger requests will be satisfied. He points out that Russia has staff, equipment and economics to survive Ukraine on the battlefield – and that Ukraine will collapse quickly if Mr. Trump was to support.
“They will not last a month if the money stops,” Putin said last month, referring to Ukraine.
However, Mr. Putin faces his own pressures, which, according to some analysts, could make him feasible to an agreement in which he could descend from some of his requests. Russia soldiers have undergone around 1,000 victims per day, according to Western officials, and the economy may overheat, the central bank interest rate up to 21%.
ILYA GRASHCHENKOV, analyst of Russian politics based in Moscow, said that the call with Trump has made him get back to Ukraine war “looks like a successful bet in a casino”.
Russia has absorbed enormous losses in Ukraine, playing who, ultimately, “the world paradigm would change” and the West would tire of supporting the country, said Grashchenkov during a telephone interview. “This change has happened, and now we do not know how this bet will take place in the future.”
Ivan Nechepurenko Contributed reports.
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