On Thursday in Istanbul, the empty seat reserved for Vladimir Putin perfectly symbolized Russia’s unwillingness to end the war in Ukraine. Putin’s counterpart in the negotiations, Volodymyr Zelensky, had spent days calling on him to show up and face him. “We are ready to talk,” the Ukrainian President said. “To end this war.”
But Putin stayed away, demonstrating his disdain for the peace process and handing Zelensky a tactical victory. For the Russians, it was the latest in a string of diplomatic stumbles. President Donald Trump and his envoys have tried for months to engineer a ceasefire in Ukraine. Along the way, they have given Putin plenty of chances to steer the Americans into his corner. But the Russian leader missed every one of them.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]The most valuable opportunity landed in Putin’s lap on the last day of February, when Trump and Zelensky engaged in a bitter shouting match in the Oval Office. Relations between the U.S. and Ukraine faced a crisis after that, and Trump briefly cut off U.S. aid to Ukraine. His overtures to Moscow grew friendlier than ever. In the middle of March, Trump held what he described as a “very good and productive” phone call with Putin. His lead envoy in the peace talks, Steve Witkoff, visited Putin in Moscow and, upon his return, publicly echoed many of the Kremlin’s arguments about the war.
Watching from Kyiv, Zelensky grew worried that Putin had won over the Americans. “I think Russia managed to influence some members of the White House team through information,” Zelensky told TIME in an interview in Kyiv on March 21. “Their signal to the Americans was that the Ukrainians do not want to end the war, and something should be done to force them. Of course, that was disinformation. It’s not true.”
But Trump appeared to be buying it. In early April, his administration welcomed Putin’s envoy, Kirill Dmitriev, who became the first senior Russian official to visit the White House in more than three years. Dmitriev, a former investment banker, offered the U.S. a series of lucrative mining deals and access to Russian natural resources in exchange for the lifting of U.S. sanctions. Trump seemed impressed. “Europe has not been successful in dealing with President Putin,” he told reporters after the visit from Dmitriev. “I think I will be successful.”
To all appearances, Putin was outwitting Zelensky in their competition for Trump’s good graces. But on April 13, just a few days after Dmitriev’s visit to Washington, the tide abruptly turned. Two Russian ballistic missiles struck the Ukrainian city of Sumy that morning, killing at least 34 people and wounding another 117, including 15 children. Television broadcasts around the world showed the bloodied bodies of the victims strewn across one of the city’s central squares, near the university. Less than two weeks later, as Trump and his team continued pushing for a peace deal and promising results, the Russians launched one of the deadliest bombing raids against the Ukrainian capital since the start of the war. Around 70 missiles and 150 drones struck Kyiv on the night of April 24, killing at least a dozen people and wounding scores of others.
That wave of attacks made Trump look naive, even foolish, for claiming that Russia was serious about the peace process, and his tone toward the Kremlin sharply changed. “Not necessary, and very bad timing,” Trump wrote on social media the day of the Kyiv bombings, adding a direct appeal to Putin: “Vladimir, STOP!”
The attacks against Kyiv and Sumy seemed wholly unnecessary, even for the advancement of Putin’s war aims. Striking civilians in northern Ukraine, far behind the frontlines, did nothing to help Russian forces advance in the east and south of the country, where they have been desperately fighting for years to seize more Ukrainian territory. It would have cost Putin nothing to halt the attacks against civilians and focus on military targets along the front lines, at least until he could cement his rapprochement with the Trump administration.
But the Russians couldn’t help themselves. Even as Trump and Zelensky called for a ceasefire of 30 days to clear the way for peace negotiations, Putin blew apart any semblance of good faith by continuing to massacre civilians. On the diplomatic front, the decision has cost him dearly. It created an opportunity for Zelensky to win Trump back to his side, and the Ukrainian leader seized it on April 26.
During an impromptu meeting that day at the funeral of Pope Francis in the Vatican, Zelensky told Trump that Putin would only understand the language of force. The only way to make him negotiate, he said, was through diplomatic pressure, including a new raft of sanctions against Russia. Zelensky specifically referred to the bombing raids against Kyiv to make his argument, according to one Ukrainian official briefed on the Vatican meeting. The message seemed to hit home.
As he flew back to Washington on Air Force One, Trump issued one of his harshest condemnations against Putin. “It makes me think that maybe he doesn’t want to stop the war,” Trump wrote on social media, “he’s just tapping me along, and has to be dealt with differently, through Banking or Secondary Sanctions?”
The shift in Trump’s position became even clearer the following week, when he backed away from his offers to ease Moscow’s diplomatic isolation. In mid-February, Trump had said he would “love” to invite the Russians back into the G7, the club of the world’s wealthiest democracies. That wish disappeared by early May, when Trump was asked about it again: “I think it’s not good timing now,” he told reporters. “We missed that gate.”
Putin’s next chance at diplomacy came the following week, as Trump and many European leaders pushed him to come to Istanbul for a round of peace talks. They would have been the first direct talks between Putin and Zelensky since the start of the full-scale invasion. “I hope that this time, Putin won’t be looking for excuses as to why he ‘can’t’ make it,” Zelensky said. His chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, twisted the knife in a post on social media: “What about Putin? Is he afraid? We’ll see.”
The Kremlin stalled until the last minute, saying in a statement that Putin would make a decision when he “deems it necessary.” In the end he chose to send a delegation of Russian aides and diplomats in his place.
The consequences of the Russian snub could be stark. The price of oil, Russia’s most lucrative export and the lifeblood of its war economy, have fallen to their lowest point since the start of the invasion of Ukraine, and Putin needs the West to ease its sanctions against Russia now more than ever. European leaders plan to intensify the sanctions after Putin’s refusal to engage in the peace process.
Trump may do the same. Instead of pledging to end the war, he now tends to blame it on his predecessor, Joe Biden. But the war is now playing out on Trump’s watch, and Putin has gone out of his way to block the peace that Trump has promised. For Zelensky and his European allies, it has become much easier to argue that Putin’s behavior will only change through Western pressure, including greater military support for Ukraine and harsher sanctions against Russia.
Thanks largely to Putin’s recalcitrance, it has become far harder for Trump to disagree.
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