Trump Is Failing to End the War in Ukraine

But is he even trying?

People gather during a rally in support of Ukraine near Philadelphia City Hall, ahead of President Donald Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress, in Philadelphia on March 4, 2025. (Photo by Matthew Hatcher / AFP via Getty Images)

DONALD TRUMP RETURNED TO THE WHITE HOUSE in January claiming he could end Europe’s bloodiest conflict since World War II. He may, in a limited way, have been right: While neither side is ready to give in, a determined American negotiating effort, effectively applying carrots and sticks, had a chance to deliver at least a temporary respite in the Russia-Ukraine war.

Sadly, Trump is squandering the opportunity to be a peacemaker.

The Trump administration began rolling out its approach to ending the Russia-Ukraine war in mid-February. Administration officials got off on the wrong foot by saying Ukraine could not hope to regain the territory occupied by Russia or to join NATO. The logic behind the decision to endorse Russian positions before the two warring parties had even agreed to negotiate remains unclear.

In succeeding weeks, Washington sought to appease Moscow. Among other things, Trump broke ranks with Western leaders by agreeing to meet with Putin. U.S. officials rejected language in the G7 and at the UN General Assembly that fingered Russia as the aggressor in the war.

Continuing to shower the Kremlin with carrots, the administration defunded Voice of America and Radio Liberty, which seek to bring real news into the Russian information space. The White House let Russia escape tariff-free when it launched its global trade war (yes, Russia is under sanctions, but so were other countries that did get hit with the tariffs). American officials met with their Russian counterparts to begin discussing normalization of the bilateral relationship.

In return for these concessions, the United States received nothing. Meanwhile, Trump’s special envoy, Steven Witkoff, has met Putin three times. Witkoff, a businessman with no diplomatic experience, seems to take what the Russians tell him at face value. Former KGB officer Putin has apparently worked him over: Witkoff reportedly advocated that Russia should get the Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson regions of Ukraine, even though Russia’s army does not occupy all those territories.

When Washington persuaded Kyiv to accept a 30-day ceasefire on March 11, it quickly conveyed the proposal to Moscow. The Russians dithered in response, demanding U.S. concessions for just a partial ceasefire and, in effect, rejecting the proposal. On March 30, Trump said he was “very angry” with Russia . . . but he took no action.

Two weeks later, after Russia launched two ballistic missiles into the heart of a Ukrainian city, killing 35 and wounding more than 100 others, Trump seemed to excuse Moscow (“I was told they made a mistake”). He then bizarrely blamed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Joe Biden for causing the war. In reality, Russia launched the conflict in 2014 by seizing Crimea and triggering fighting in Donbas—five years before Zelensky became president.

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ONE MIGHT BE TEMPTED TO INFER that the issue is that Trump knows only the carrot and not the stick. This is not so—just ask the Ukrainians. Vice President JD Vance and Trump ambushed Zelensky in a February 28 Oval Office meeting that was meant to have been the prelude to an agreement giving the United States privileged access to rare earth minerals in Ukraine. Just days after the White House ambush, the United States ceased arms shipments and intelligence-sharing for Kyiv. They only resumed after Ukraine agreed to the administration’s ceasefire proposal.

Though Zelensky subsequently took pains not to cross his American partner—and he hadn’t intended to do so in the first place—Washington nonetheless hit Kyiv with another stick. It provided a redraft of the minerals agreement that reads more like what one would hand to a defeated adversary or despised colony rather than a partner.

After attempting for two months to negotiate an end to the war, Trump has little to show for it. Kyiv seeks to placate Washington without giving away the store, but Moscow continues to resist a full ceasefire. Meanwhile, Russia’s military prepares a spring ground offensive and launches mass missile and drone strikes at Ukrainian military and civilian targets.

The approach of sticks only for Ukraine and carrots only for Moscow makes even less sense when one considers that Zelensky, in addition to accepting the U.S.-proposed ceasefire, has indicated some flexibility. Last year, he suggested the “hot phase” of the war could end with Ukraine agreeing not to use military force to recover lost territory. Russia, the more recalcitrant party, has shown no flexibility. Putin is ready for peace, but only on his draconian terms. Ukraine will not accept those terms or anything like them. (Even if Zelensky or any other president of Ukraine claimed to accept them, it wouldn’t necessarily stop the fighting: After World War II, partisan guerrilla warfare against the Soviets continued in Ukraine for a decade.)

Trump has ample sticks to use against Moscow, should he decide to. He could work with the European Union and other partners to close loopholes in economic sanctions that allow Western high-tech goods to slip into Russia, and he could broaden sanctions on Russia’s shadow fleet of oil tankers. (Interrupting illicit Russian oil shipments would also benefit American oil producers.) He could press his G7 and EU partners to seize frozen Russian Central Bank assets worth about $300 billion and convert them into a fund to support Ukraine. He could also ask Congress to fund additional military assistance for Kyiv, which has and would continue to reinvigorate American domestic defense production.

A smart, hard-nosed negotiator would make use of such leverage or at least plausibly threaten to do so. Taking such steps would increase the military, economic, and political costs to Putin and the Kremlin of continuing their barbaric war of aggression and increase the chances that the Russians would begin to negotiate seriously.

Trump, however, has done none of this. That raises a fundamental question: Is the president serious about trying to end the war? He would certainly like the Nobel Peace Prize that he would expect if he did so. But that would require him to adopt a disciplined negotiating approach, not to mention focus and patience, clearly not his strong traits.

Trump’s overt favoritism toward Moscow suggests he has no serious negotiating approach in mind. No wonder his attempts to fulfill his promise of ending the war are failing.