Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 19 April 2025. © Richard Kemp
Did Putin just blink first on Ukraine? Since taking office in January, Donald Trump has been demanding an end to hostilities. The US president proposed a full ceasefire which Ukraine accepted but Russia rejected, conditioning it on a halt in Ukraine’s mobilisation efforts and Western arms supplies.
Following complex negotiations between Washington and Moscow, on Friday the Americans indicated their frustrations, with both Trump and Marco Rubio, his secretary of state, threatening to walk away from brokering peace unless there were signs of progress in the coming days.
That must have rattled Putin because the next day, today, he announced a unilateral Easter truce.
This is a clear ploy to keep Trump’s attention and allow him to characteristically declare some kind of negotiating victory. Although Putin will not submit to any of Ukraine’s demands, in particular that of giving up the territory he has seized, he does want this war to end – for the time being at least.
The Russian economy is in dire straits and Moscow needs a lengthy pause in hostilities to begin to rebuild it. What is more, Russia can ill-afford the stronger sanctions that are currently under discussion between the US and European countries, with further talks expected on that in London next week.
Putin is also fearful of Trump. He knows well that Trump’s cajoling of Ukraine and what has appeared to some to be cosying up to Russia, are in fact merely negotiating tactics.
He also knows that the unpredictable figure in the White House is more than capable of turning on a dime – in any direction, and in a way that could be extremely damaging for Russia. From a wider perspective, Putin has recently lost significant influence in the Middle East with the fall of Assad’s regime in Syria. Putin can ill afford to lose any more clout. Worse, he doesn’t know what Trump is going to do about Iran, with which Russia has a strategic partnership resulting, among other things, in a ready supply of drones and other weapons for the war in Ukraine.
Putin’s concerns over Trump’s Iran policy were recently highlighted when Moscow was forced to declare that it had no obligation to come to Iran’s defence if it were to be attacked. All this indicates that Putin desires some form of rehabilitation by the Trump administration, rather than to incite its ire.
Despite this medium-term perspective, we can be certain that Putin is not sincere in declaring a truce and is certainly not driven by either humanitarian or religious considerations. As well as appeasing Trump and keeping his attention on negotiations, it is also a crude attempt to turn the narrative back against the Ukrainian side. In his announcement of the ceasefire, Putin gave himself a get-out clause by saying he assumed Kyiv would go along with it. He also pointedly emphasised to General Valery Gerasimov, his chief of staff, that Russian forces would have to be braced for Ukrainian ‘provocations’. That is a clear indication of his intent to seize on or manufacture any such incidents to proclaim that Volodymyr Zelensky is not serious about peace and parry the ball back into Kyiv’s court, inciting further demands on Ukraine from the White House.
While not outright rejecting Putin’s truce, the Ukrainian president has quite rightly accused him of using it to ‘play with human lives’. We shall see whether this ceasefire holds even for a short time. But the White House would be well advised to view it as the propaganda play that it really is, and as a strong indication of Putin’s need to keep Trump engaged. Right now the Trump-Rubio stick seems to be working better than the carrot.
Image: Wikimedia Commons
