Donald Trump will let Vladimir Putin off the hook on Ukraine despite being “humiliated” as he seeks a trade deal with Russia, says former Defence Secretary Sir Ben Wallace.
The ex-Cabinet minister, who played a key role in arming Ukraine against Putin’s invasion, was dismissive of the likelihood of peace moves after a marathon two-hour phone call between Trump and the Russian president.
“I’m not very hopeful, I’m afraid. Throughout this Donald Trump has consistently let Putin off the hook,” he said, stressing that the US president had repeatedly threatened tougher sanctions against Russia if the war continues.
He believes that for Trump the Ukraine war is a “deal that he will move on from” having failed to achieve peace.
“He’s preparing the ground to say ‘I tried, these guys,’ and then let’s have a trade deal with Russia.,” he added on Times Radio.
Blaming Putin for the hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians who have been killed in the war, he emphasised: “Donald Trump seems to think spending a lots of time on the telephone to him and being constantly humiliated by him when he just refuses to do anything that Trump requests is someway the way to proceed.”
But the Kremlin said the process would take time and the US president indicated he was not ready to join Europe with fresh sanctions to pressure Moscow.
In a social media post, Trump said he relayed the plan to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky as well as the leaders of the European Union, France, Italy, Germany and Finland in a group call following his session with the Russian leader.
“Russia and Ukraine will immediately start negotiations toward a Ceasefire and, more importantly, an END to the War,” Trump said, adding later at the White House that he thought “some progress is being made.”
Russia launched on Sunday its largest drone attack on Ukraine since the start of the war, with more than 270 drones, destroying homes and killing at least one woman a day before the phone call between the two leaders.
Following the call, Putin thanked Trump for supporting the resumption of direct talks between Moscow and Kyiv after the two sides met in Turkey last week for their first face-to-face negotiations since March 2022.
The Russian president stayed away from the Istanbul talks and after the Monday call he said only that efforts to end the conflict were “generally on the right track”.
“We have agreed with the president of the United States that Russia will propose and is ready to work with the Ukrainian side on a memorandum on a possible future peace accord,” Putin said.
While the indications that Ukraine and Russia will continue direct contacts speak of progress after more than three years of the war, the Monday flurry of talks again failed to deliver on expectations for a major breakthrough.
European leaders decided to increase pressure on Russia through sanctions after Trump briefed them on his call with Putin, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said in an X post late on Monday.
Trump did not appear ready to follow that move. Asked why he had not imposed fresh sanctions to push Moscow into a peace deal as he had threatened, the US president said: “Well because I think there’s a chance of getting something done, and if you do that, you can also make it much worse. But there could be a time where that’s going to happen.”
