Trump's Russia weak spot gives Putin an opportunity
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Welcome to The World in 10. In an increasingly uncertain world, this is The Times' daily podcast dedicated to global security. I'm Stuart Willey, today with Toby Gillis. We're 121 days past a one-time deadline set by Donald Trump for him ending the fighting in Ukraine.

The will-he-won't-he question around whether Vladimir Putin will sit down for peace talks continues, and there's no sign of a definitive answer. So what's his strategy? How long can he draw the situation out? And is there anything that can be done to bring the Russian president to the table? Our guest today is Edward Lucas, a specialist in European and transatlantic security, whose latest article for The Times explores whether Trump's turmoil gives Putin a chance to strike NATO.

Edward, we'll come to that in a moment. But first, do you think Putin is deluding himself here? He's making slow progress, to say the least, in Ukraine. He can't possibly think he can still achieve his original objective. This is the big chance to reverse the great geopolitical setback of 1989-91. And he sees that the West is divided.

And the European bit of the West is not really ready to stand up to him, either in Ukraine or anywhere else. So he's got a window of opportunity with Ukraine on the back foot militarily and the West in disarray, and he's going to exploit it. How does dragging out the idea he might but might not come to talks do that?

This strange kind of shuffle around the talks is pitilessly exposing the disarray of the West.

It's highlighting the way in which Donald Trump and his administration are willing to talk about Europe and about Ukraine without Europeans and Ukrainians at the table. And that's deeply demoralizing, indeed alarming. A couple of cycles of that drives the message home. He's also established that the Western negotiating position is

is minimalist. Donald Trump's already said there's no chance of Ukraine joining NATO, and he's already said that Russia can basically keep what it's conquered, and America's fine with that. So this is already two big gains, and it makes one wonder. We know Trump didn't write the art of the deal. One wonders if he's even read it, because it's an odd negotiating strategy, unless your aim is to be friends with Russia at all costs, preferably other people's costs.

Trump's also been speaking publicly about the need for an economic reset and trade, spelt in capital letters, with Russia. And of course, that is demoralizing for the Europeans as well. They would be hard put to it to maintain sanctions on

on imports from and exports to Russia if the United States was dropping its sanctions. So I'm afraid this is a very ominous constellation for anyone involved in transatlantic security. And I think it's going to get worse before it gets better. Clearly, Donald Trump's ideal, even if it's solely with a Nobel Prize in mind, is to stop the fighting in Ukraine. How does he force Putin to the table? Is there anything he can do to bring an end to the uncertainty?

Well, America is the most powerful country in the world. If they really wanted to, they could give Ukraine all the money and all the weapons it needs to win. But they don't because they're frightened of nuclear escalation. But I think the question is, what sort of deal could Trump and Putin cook up together? So supposing that they say the fighting stops, there is a truce followed by demilitarization, where the Ukrainians have to pull back from the front line.

possibly with no restrictions on the Russian return to Crimea, which would then put Russian fingers at the throat of the Ukrainian sea routes out of Odessa, and with no meaningful Western security force. I think the Ukrainians would say no to that. They'd be right to say no. But then what happens? Trump, he says to the Ukrainians, you're on your own. The Ukrainians say, fine, we'll fight regardless. The Europeans, or many Europeans, will say to the Ukrainians, we've got your back.

Because we know that a bad peace in Ukraine actually means just more war later, and that's catastrophic for Europe. And then imagine that Trump turns to the Europeans and says, make the Ukrainians sign. And the Europeans either say, we won't or we can't. And then Trump decides to punish the Europeans. And that is potentially extremely dangerous.

Edward, we will come on to that element shortly, but just to return to these talks, Trump saying, I'm going to walk away, is that realistic? I'm thinking that the minerals deal gives America an incentive not to allow Russia to steamroller Ukraine, however slowly.

On paper, you would assume that it was in the United States' interest to have a free, sovereign, independent, prosperous Ukraine. But I think Trump wants other things more. If he cooks up a ceasefire deal, the Ukrainians say no, and Putin continues grinding forward.

That's by far not the worst outcome for Trump because he can say, well, I'm dropping sanctions on Russia. I'm not going to spend any more money on the Ukrainians if they want to carry on fighting some suicidal kamikaze fight. Well, that's up to them. I'm going to get on with doing deals with Russia. And there's also this kind of neo-Kissingerian idea that somehow by befriending Russia, they can split Russia and Beijing, which I think won't happen.

but it's there. But I don't feel that Trump is remotely invested in Ukraine's future, really, despite this minerals deal. I think what he likes is a deal. He wants to say, I did a deal. It was a good deal. The Ukrainians didn't sign up for it. Tough. Well, I'm going to do some more deals. I'm going to do some deals with Russia. That, I think, is where we're headed in the next few months, unless something changes.

Edward, your piece discusses how there's an opportunity for Putin to take advantage of a weak NATO and the speed with which he could launch an attack if there was a pause in the fighting in Ukraine. If it is a choice between continuing with the slow progress there or stopping and having time to build for a relatively quick test of NATO, which would he rather?

What's important is not the absolute level of combat power, but the relative level of combat power. And what Putin sees is that the Europeans are rearming. Every day that goes by, there's a bit more money, more soldiers, more equipment, better plans, more cohesion, more resilience. And if you imagine in four or five years' time, you might have a position where Trump is no longer president. You may have someone more president.

dependable and the Europeans are really quite strong. And that's pretty worrying for Putin. In a way, he's awakened a sleeping giant, a bit like the Japanese at Pearl Harbor. So I think the imperative for him is to seize this window of opportunity.

Now, he doesn't need to launch a Ukraine-style war against the West. He needs to break NATO's resolve and NATO's unity. And he can do that with a tip-of-the-spear military operation, a small land grab or some other sort of stunt, coupled with a blizzard of nuclear and conventional threats, after which NATO resolves not to go to war again.

to reverse whatever it is that he's done his fate are complete and if he succeeds in that then nato is over and he's then facing a very different um there'll be massive recriminations disunity all sorts of chaos in europe huge amount of mistrust and that will make europe much easier for him to deal with so i i think that if he's going to act against nato he'll do it sooner rather than later isn't that though then article five

Yes, but the trick for Putin is to try and test Article 5 without actually having it in vote.

There are two ways to get around Article 5. One is to do something that the NATO allies don't think is worthy of an Article 5 response. And the other is to have threats that make NATO allies feel scared of invoking Article 5. And if you imagine you are British or French or German, and you are faced with having to go to war with Russia over two hectares of land in eastern Latvia or some small island in the Gulf of Finland,

And Russia says, we're absolutely willing to, you know, we may be even sending some missiles to land quite close to your territorial waters. And you realize your countries have no air defenses. Britain has enough air defenses for one day. Those are the calculations. Now, I don't know what Putin's going to decide. All I'm saying is that the quicker he goes, the better the chance of success. And that worries me.

Final one, then. You've written about this. Putin, therefore, must have thought about it. Are you saying it's inevitable that soon he'll test NATO? It's far from inevitable, because the key factor in this is what about the Americans? With the Americans, NATO is a very daunting target. Without the Americans, NATO is defenseless. The presence of the Americans in NATO, their combat path,

That depends on Trump's willingness to go for war. So the key thing in this is if Putin can divide the Americans and the European NATO allies, then European NATO becomes a very tempting target. And I think these ceasefire on off backwards and forwards ceasefire talks may be part of an attempt to try and get Trump really cross with his European allies. And that will create an opportunity for Putin.

OK, Edward Lucas, thank you for joining us. Now, all the messaging around these talks from Donald Trump has been that Putin must meet Volodymyr Zelensky. On Tuesday, though, we discussed whether actually the only realistic route to peace in Ukraine is for Trump himself to meet Putin face to face. It's worth scrolling back for a listen. For now, thank you for taking 10 minutes to stay on top of the world with the help of The Times. See you tomorrow.

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