For seven days now, they have been carefully circling each other-sending invitations to talk and mixing a few punches with ego-stroking, suggesting that the only way to end the war in Ukraine.
President Trump and Vladimir V. Putin, whose relationship has always been the subject of mystery and psychodrama in Trump’s first term. But it’s not a simple reboot. Mr Trump was unusually tough in his rhetoric last week and Mr Putin said “destroyed Russia” and threatening sanctions and tariffs on the country if it doesn’t come to the negotiating table — a relatively empty threat given the small amount of trade between the US and Russia these days.
Calculating and understating as always, Mr. Putin responded with flattery, agreeing with Mr. Trump that Russia would have invaded Ukraine if he had been president three years ago. He reiterated that he was ready to sit down and negotiate the fate of Europe, superpower by superpower, leader by leader.
So far, they have not spoken, although Mr. Trump told reporters on Air Force One on Saturday night that “he wants to talk, and we’ll talk soon.” As they set the stage for the first conversation, they are sending signals that they want to negotiate about more than just Ukraine — a war that is, according to Mr. Putin’s narrative, only one of the arenas in which the West is waging its own fight against Russia.
Both men seem to envision taking over the entire relationship between Moscow and Washington, possibly including revived nuclear talks, a conversation that has a looming deadline: a major treaty limiting both nations’ arsenals expires in almost exactly a year. They would then be free to pursue the kind of race the world had not seen since the deepest days of the Cold War.
Recalling talks with Mr Putin in 2020, before his defeat in that year’s US election, Mr Trump insisted last week: “We want to see if we can denuclearize and I think it’s very possible.” It seemed that he assumes China will engage in the same conversation. (At least so far he has refused.)
While he still used the word “denuclearize,” Mr. Trump almost certainly meant negotiating a new deal to reduce — not eliminate — stockpiles of strategic nuclear weapons that can cross continents. Mr. Putin spoke of reviving discussions on “strategic stability,” a term of art among negotiators at talks that cover not just the number of nuclear weapons each side deploys, but where they are based, how they are controlled and steps to deter their use.
The last, preliminary arms control talks ended shortly before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Mr Putin has since argued that any talks on limiting nuclear arms should also cover the war in Ukraine. The Biden administration refused to mix them up, fearing that Mr. Putin’s real goal was to trade limits on his nuclear arsenal for territory he captured in Ukraine and other concessions.
But Mr. Trump appears open to broader negotiations, which is exactly what Mr. Putin would want because it could allow him to make that compromise.
It is not clear what, if any, guarantees Mr. Trump is willing to offer President Volodymyr Zlensky, who he has insisted in recent days should do with Mr. Putin and avoid a devastating war.
Mr Trump clearly wants to establish himself as a peacemaker: in his first term he suggested he would deserve a Nobel Peace Prize and put some kind of end to Europe’s biggest war, as World War II would bolster his case. He seems uninterested in giving Ukraine a substantial role in the process, unlike former President Joe Biden, whose mantra was “nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine.”
“For all these exchanges of blustering, what Putin, who most want to hear, is that this is a deal, Russia and the U.S. will strike alone,” said Stephen Sestanovich, an expert on Russian and Eurasian studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former Official of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Keith Kellogg, the retired general who Mr. Trump tapped in the 80s to facilitate the conversations, insists that the key will be the economy, not casualties. “When you look at Putin, you can’t just say, ‘Well, stop the killing,’ because that’s not their mentality,” he said on Fox News last week. Mr. Trump “approaches the war differently: he looks at the economy as a piece of that war.” And he will focus, Mr. Kellogg insists, on curbing Russia’s oil revenue.
Mr Putin, confident of his position on the Ukrainian battlefields despite Russia’s huge casualties, has been trying to telegraph an approach to Mr Trump. Russia’s goals have not changed, he said, and while it is open to talks about ending the war, it will only be on its own terms.
Mr. Putin has signaled strongly that he would demand, at a minimum, to keep the roughly 20 percent of Ukraine that Russia now controls, as well as a deal that rules out NATO membership for Ukraine and limits the size of its military.
At the same time, Mr Putin made clear his eagerness to engage with Mr Trump – and the United States more generally after three years of diplomatic isolation by the Biden administration.
The Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, told reporters almost daily that Mr. Putin was ready to accept Mr. Trump’s call. “We are waiting for signals,” he said on Friday. “Everyone is ready.
And Mr. Putin himself twice last week went out of his way to heap praise on Mr. Trump — a proven method for currying Mr. Trump’s favor.
On Monday, the day of Mr. Trump’s inauguration, he held a televised meeting of the Russian Security Council – an event usually held on Fridays and largely behind closed doors. He said Mr Trump had “shown courage” in surviving attempts on his life and won a “resounding victory”.
On Friday, in a stage managed moment, Mr. Putin paused to answer a question from a state television reporter about Mr. Trump. Kremlin immediately published video on his website.
“It is probably better for us to meet and, based on today’s reality, calmly discuss all areas that are of interest to both the US and Russia,” Putin said. He brushed aside Mr Trump’s threat of sanctions, calling him “smart” and “pragmatic”, and spoke in Mr Trump’s language by saying earlier that the 2020 election had been “stolen”.
Like Mr. Trump, Mr. Putin has indicated a desire to discuss a much broader set of issues with Mr. Trump than just the war in Ukraine. In his comments on state television on Friday, Mr Putin said the Kremlin and the Trump administration could “jointly seek solutions to today’s key issues, including strategic stability and the economy”.
The “strategic stability” reference signaled potential interest in arms control talks the Kremlin briefly began with the Biden Administration in 2021, Wendy Sherman, a former assistant secretary of state who conducted the talks for the U.S. side, said in an email. (A fresh start is the arms control treaty, which has been partially suspended by Russia and expires in February 2026.)
Ms. Sherman noted that the talks were cut short before “Putin’s terrible invasion.”
Mr. Putin’s invitation to wide-ranging talks underscores what appears to be his continued optimism about Mr. Trump, despite Mr. Trump’s tough words last week and the fact that the president has imposed a series of new sanctions on Russia during his first term as president.
Mr. Trump also went after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zlensky last week, essentially blaming him for the failure to reach a deal with Mr. Putin that could have avoided war.
“I could have done this deal so easily, and Zelensky decided, ‘I want to fight,'” Mr. Trump told Fox television host Sean Hannity.
He explained that he was not interested in Mr. Biden’s approach of supporting Ukraine as long as necessary, but with his tough rhetoric against Mr. Putin last week, he may be trying to show that he is not a pushover for the Russian leader while preparing for the possibility that he cannot to bring Mr. Putin to a deal that works for all parties.
“To keep Pitin off balance, Trump needs to show him that a deal is possible only if it makes sense to Ukraine and our allies,” Mr. Sestanovich said.
Even as Mr. Putin welcomes talks with Mr. Trump, Russian officials are not backing away from their overall message of the United States as a malign power — one sign of how the Kremlin is hedging its bets in case talks with Mr. Trump don’t go well.
Ms. Sherman, who has extensive experience negotiating with Russia, warns that the Trump administration should be prepared if it does open talks with Russia. “Putin will want what he’s always said: as much territory as possible, no Ukraine ever in NATO, no Western nuclear weapons in Europe to target Russia.” Because the bet is that actually negotiating to pursue a new contract with the startup “is probably low on his list.”
