Trump frustrated after thinking he made headway on Russia-Ukraine talks
only to see Putin balk
[August 23, 2025]
By AAMER MADHANI and DASHA LITVINOVA
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. President Donald Trump started the week declaring
a diplomatic breakthrough in his bid to prod Moscow and Kyiv closer to
peace, announcing he had begun arranging for direct talks between
Russia's Vladimir Putin and Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Four days later, the Republican president's optimism has diminished.
Russia's top diplomat made it clear Friday that Putin won't meet with
Zelenskyy until the Ukrainians agree to some of Moscow's longstanding
demands to end the conflict.
It's a stinging setback for Trump, who had been touting his diplomatic
blitz as resulting in indisputable momentum for a deal to halt a
conflict he vowed as a candidate to end on Day One in office.
Trump said Friday he expected to make a decision on his next actions in
two weeks if direct talks aren’t scheduled. He raised the possibility of
imposing new sanctions or tariffs on Russia, a threat he has previously
floated but not followed through on.
“We’re going to see whether or not they have a meeting,” Trump told
reporters in an Oval Office appearance. “It’ll be interesting to see. If
they don’t, why didn’t they have a meeting, because I told them to have
a meeting. But I’ll know what I am going to do in two weeks.”
Trump has touted a breakthrough that wasn't
Trump announced Monday that he had begun making the arrangements for a
Putin-Zelenskyy meeting soon after concluding White House talks with
Zelenskyy and European leaders as well as speaking by phone with Putin.
European leaders cheered the president's tone at the White House
meeting, when he made vague promises to back European security
guarantees for postwar Ukraine.
Trump also appeared to ease European anxiety heightened by his comments
after his Alaska summit with Putin days earlier, when he appeared to
tilt toward the Russian leader's demand for Ukraine to give up land
seized by Russia. The European leaders even offered guarded optimism
that Trump was making headway after he announced his plans for direct
talks, followed potentially by three-way negotiations involving him.
But uncertainty has grown in recent days about Putin's commitment to
Trump's peace-making efforts as Russian officials raised objections
about cornerstones of the nascent proposals on the negotiating table.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Putin is ready to meet with
Zelenskyy to discuss peace terms but only after key issues first are
worked out by senior officials. That could involve a protracted
negotiating process because the two sides remain far apart.
“There is no meeting planned,” Lavrov said in a taped interview for
NBC’s Sunday show “Meet the Press with Kristen Welker.” “Putin is ready
to meet with Zelenskyy when the agenda is ready for a summit, and this
agenda is not ready at all.”
Russia injects uncertainty into any headway on security guarantees
Ukraine wants Western security guarantees to deter any postwar Russian
attack, and U.S. and European officials are scrambling to come up with
detailed proposals of how that might work. But Lavrov said earlier this
week that making security arrangements for Ukraine without Moscow’s
involvement was pointless.
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President Donald Trump holds a photo of himself with Russian
President Vladimir Putin during an announcement in the Oval Office
of the White House, Friday, Aug. 22, 2025, in Washington. (AP
Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
Putin, meanwhile, on Friday made a visit to Sarov, a closed city
about 370 kilometers (230 miles) east of Moscow that has served as a
base for Russia’s nuclear weapons program since the late 1940s. The
visit offered a not-so-subtle reminder that Russia is one of the
world's foremost nuclear powers.
“He hasn’t moderated his position in any significant way,” said
Nigel Gould-Davies, a senior fellow at the International Institute
for Strategic Studies in London and former British ambassador to
Belarus.
Even as Trump touted his plan for peace talks, Russia on Thursday
launched one of its biggest aerial assaults so far this year,
focusing on western Ukraine in the barrage of 574 drones and 40
ballistic and cruise missiles.
“The Russians are trying to do anything to avoid the (summit)
meeting. The issue is not the meeting itself, the issue is that they
do not want to end the war,” Zelenskyy said Friday alongside NATO
Secretary General Mark Rutte, who was visiting Kyiv.
Rutte said Trump wants to “break the deadlock” with Putin and engage
the United States in providing security guarantees for Ukraine.
Rutte explained that guarantees under discussion would rest on two
“layers.” The first, to take place after a peace deal or long-term
ceasefire, would focus on making the Ukrainian armed forces “as
strong as possible.” The second would involve security commitments
provided by Europe and the United States.
Europe's chief diplomat warns of Putin ‘trap’
The European Union’s foreign policy chief said Friday that the
possibility of Ukraine ceding land to Russia as part of a peace deal
to end their three-year war is “a trap” set by Putin.
The Russian leader is demanding Ukrainian concessions in return for
halting his army’s invasion, but granting him those demands would
amount to rewarding the country that started the fighting, Kaja
Kallas said.
The recent talk about handing Putin concessions is “exactly the trap
that Russia wants us to walk into,” Kallas said in an interview with
the BBC.
“I mean, the discussion all about what Ukraine should give up, what
the concessions that Ukraine is willing to (make), whereas we are
forgetting that Russia has not made one single concession and they
are the ones who are the aggressor here, they are the ones who are
brutally attacking another country and killing people,” she said.
“Russia is just dragging feet. It’s clear that Russia does not want
peace,” Kallas said. “President Trump has been repeatedly saying
that the killing has to stop and Putin is just laughing, not
stopping the killing, but increasing the killing.”
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Associated Press writer Emma Burrows in London contributed.
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