Putin, With a Weak Hand in Peace Poker, Tries Slow-Walking Trump’s Initiative

President Putin, as American military aid to Ukraine stalls, is slow-walking President Trump’s peace initiative. Russia’s president apparently believes he can win his war against Ukraine.“Now we have reason to believe that we are set to finish them off,” Mr. Putin said of the Ukrainians on a recent visit to a nuclear submarine base in the Arctic. “I think that people in Ukraine need to realize what is going on.”One month ago, Ukraine accepted Mr. Trump’s offer of a 30-day ceasefire. In contrast, Mr. Putin’s response was more talks, and then the Palm Sunday bombing of Sumy, a Ukrainian border city. In that attack, the deadliest attack by Russia this year, two missiles killed 35 people and injured 119 — apparently all civilians. Hopes for an Eastern ceasefire are long gone.The politics and the numbers do not point to a Russian breakthrough this year. While the White House goes wobbly on Russia, a hardline government comes to power next month in Germany, Russia’s historic counterweight in Europe. Mr. Trump called the rocket attack on Sumy “a mistake” and blocked a condemnation by the Group of Seven allies. In contrast, the presumptive German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, called it “clearly a war crime.” He said: “This is what Putin does to those who talk to him about a ceasefire.”The city center in the aftermath of the Russia’s missile attack that killed at least 21 civilians at Sumy, Ukraine, April 13, 2025. APOn May 9, the day after he is to take office, Mr. Merz plans to make his first foreign trip — to Kyiv, reports Welt TV. Breaking with German policy, Mr. Merz told public broadcaster ARD that he plans to give German-Swedish Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine. Noting that they have the range to hit Crimea’s Kerch bridge, a pet project of Mr. Putin, Germany’s future German chancellor said Ukraine needs to “get ahead” in the war.In contrast, “US aid has stalled since Donald Trump assumed office,” the Ukraine Support Tracker unit at Germany’s Kiel Institute reported yesterday. “No new military, financial, or humanitarian aid is observed since the United States announced its last aid package — still under the Biden administration, on January 9.”“The era of US military aid to Ukraine is approaching its end,” the Biden-era National Security Council director for Eastern Europe and Ukraine, David Shimer, wrote Monday in The Guardian. “Putin is biding his time, eager to see whether the Ukrainian army will buckle in the absence of US military aid.”With Ukrainian soldiers largely in a defensive crouch, Russia is suffering the highest personnel losses of the 3-year war — an average of 1,374 soldiers killed or severely wounded every day since January 1, according to a daily tally maintained by Ukraine’s military. If this rate holds up, Russia could lose half a million men this year. This comes after Russia lost 430,000 soldiers last year, the bloodiest year of the war.Russia’s toll is on track to hit 1 million by June 1. The Kremlin has little to show for the losses. It has not punched through Ukrainian lines. It has not taken and held any regional capitals. Desperate for soldiers, Russia has resorted to recruiting Chinese soldiers of fortune through ads on TikTok.On Monday, Russia’s state news agency TASS announced that, after eight months of fighting, Russian troops have liberated “more than 86 percent” of Russia’s Kursk region. Ukrainian troops occupied part of that region last August. Liberation only came with the help of a 14,000-man expeditionary force from North Korea. Then, some Ukrainian troops did a U-turn and re-invaded Russia, seizing a chunk of Belgorod region.Russia’s human losses are accompanied by such large matériel losses that Western observers talk of the “de-mechanization” of Russia’s army. Videos posted online show assaults carried out by Russian soldiers on motorcycles, in Chinese golf carts or in stolen Ukrainian cars.“It’s quite the beast,” a Russian soldier proudly says in one video, showing off his battered pink motorcycle, presumably stolen from a Ukrainian woman. In three years of war, Russia has lost 22,150 armored personnel carriers and 44,399 jeeps and trucks, according to Ukraine’s military. Noting that Russia now is fielding 70-year-old GAZ-69 jeeps, David Axe wrote last week in Forbes: “What was once one of the world’s great mechanized armies is de-mechanizing at a rapid pace.” Although Russian munitions factories run at full tilt, a Reuters investigation reported yesterday that North Korea supplied at least half of artillery shells fired last year by Russia.Increasingly, artillery is yesterday’s story. Drones now cause about 70 percent of battlefield deaths and injuries among Russian and Ukrainian soldiers. A world leader in military drones, Ukraine now has 200 drone factories. Almost entirely independent of American inputs, this indigenous industry is expected to produce 4 million drones this year.In a typical attack of the new style of warfare, Ukraine sent almost 200 long-range drones into Russia last Wednesday night. In a 10-hour attack, drones hit 12 Russian regions, disrupted commercial aviation, and hit three military air bases. In Ukraine, Russia has little to show for its human and material losses. “The rate of Russian advances in Ukraine has been steadily declining since November 2024, in part due to successful Ukrainian counterattacks in eastern Ukraine,” the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War reported April 6. Britain’s defense ministry reports Russia’s gains in Ukraine have fallen every month since November. In March, they totaled 55 square miles, down from 270 square miles in November.Today, Russia controls 19 percent of Ukraine, or 43,785 square miles. At the rate of 55 miles a month, it would take 287 years for Russia to conquer Ukraine, a nation slightly larger than France.Mr. Putin may believe that he can achieve a breakthrough, but his economy is not supporting him. To provide Russians with guns and butter over the last three years, Mr. Putin has burned through half of the liquid portion of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund.By the end of this year, most of this financial cushion may be used up. Tightening the squeeze, international economic turmoil has depressed the price of Russia’s Urals oil to $50 a barrel. This year’s national budget is calculated at a $70 price. Increasingly, American observers say the right move for Mr. Trump is to call Mr. Putin’s bluff — and play tough.

Putin, With a Weak Hand in Peace Poker, Tries Slow-Walking Trump’s Initiative

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