Is a Russia-Ukraine Cease-Fire Deal Slipping Away From Trump?

Max Boot is the Jeane J. Kirkpatrick senior fellow for national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff arrived in Paris on Wednesday to consult with French leaders about President Donald Trump’s efforts to negotiate a cease-fire in Ukraine, among other topics.

The trip could be interpreted as a welcome recalibration by the Trump administration given how little heed its officials have previously paid to European views—and how often the president has belittled these allies for supposedly not paying enough for defense and not trading fairly with the United States. Now, with the Trump administration seeing the chances of a Ukraine cease-fire slipping away, its representatives seem to be hoping the French can help salvage Trump’s hopes of ending the Russia-Ukraine war. French President Emmanuel Macron is leading Europe’s effort to provide Kyiv security guarantees if a deal is hammered out.

Regardless of what the Europeans do, the odds of a successful cease-fire seem remote because Russian President Vladimir Putin has shown scant interest in calling off his brutal war of aggression. Witkoff’s meeting with Macron follows his visit to Moscow last week where he said he had “compelling” talks with Putin about the conflict in Ukraine—though it does not appear to have compelled the Russians to do much.

The question now is what, if anything, the Trump administration will do about Russian intransigence. Until now, the president and his envoys have been focused solely on applying pressure to Ukraine. After a contentious Oval Office meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on February 28, Trump briefly cut off all U.S. supplies and intelligence sharing with Ukraine.

The president has also attempted to pressure Zelenskyy into signing an extortionate deal that would force Ukraine to hand over to a U.S. investment fund half of the revenue from its natural resources, ports, pipelines, and other infrastructure until it repays a cost estimate for U.S. assistance. Ukraine’s First Deputy Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said on Wednesday that the two sides had made “substantial progress” on the deal and would sign an agreement soon.

And yet, it was Zelenskyy who quickly accepted the U.S. demand for a thirty-day cease-fire six weeks ago. Meanwhile, rather than directly replying “da” or “nyet” to the proposal, Putin responded by laying out a series of conditions. He demanded, among other things, that Ukraine not “use those thirty days to continue forced mobilization, get weapons supplies, and prepare its mobilized units”—which he knew made a cease-fire impossible.

This led to a scaled-down U.S. proposal for a thirty-day moratorium limited only to attacks on energy infrastructure and Black Sea shipping. Putin and Zelenskyy tentatively agreed to the limits on energy attacks, although both sides have accused the other of violations. Putin would not agree to a Black Sea cease-fire without getting the West to lift sanctions on a major Russian bank. This, as Putin had to have known, would be another nonstarter.

It seems that Russia’s real reply has not come at the negotiating table but on the battlefield. On April 13, Russian ballistic missiles slammed into the Ukrainian city of Sumy, killing 34 people and wounding 117 more—many of them heading to Palm Sunday celebrations. This shocking attack on civilians made a mockery of the Trump administration’s attempts to broker a cease-fire and showed that the only peace that Putin is interested in is a large piece of Ukraine.

Trump did condemn the Sumy attack as “terrible” at first, but then he seemed to apologize for the Kremlin’s brutality by suggesting that “they made a mistake.” At the same time, Trump again blamed Zelenskyy for somehow causing Russia’s invasion, saying, “You don't start a war with someone twenty times your size and then hope people give you some missiles.” Bloomberg also reported that Trump blocked a Group of Seven (G7) statement condemning the Palm Sunday attack.

Trump did say in late March in an interview with NBC News that he was “very angry” and “pissed off” because Putin had questioned Zelenskyy’s legitimacy as president. Trump threatened secondary tariffs on Russian oil if he was unable to make a deal with Putin and thought “it was Russia’s fault—which it might not be.”

But Trump said that more than two weeks ago, and, although he did renew the existing sanctions, he has not made any move to ratchet up sanctions on Russia. Rubio and U.S. Special Envoy for Russia and Ukraine Keith Kellogg have reportedly pushed for a more hardline approach toward Russia, but Witkoff has resisted this effort. He has repeatedly (and naively) vouched for Putin’s bona fides as a partner for peace.

In any case, it would be hard for Trump to significantly ramp up secondary sanctions on Russia given that he has already imposed 145 percent tariffs on the leading importer of Russian energy: China. Far more effective would be to open the spigot of U.S. military aid to Ukraine, which will soon dry up. Only when Putin is convinced that Ukraine can fight indefinitely and successfully will he have any incentive to bargain in good faith. But, as seen in Trump’s contemptuous comment about Ukraine wanting missiles, there is no sign that the president is rethinking his opposition to that aid.

The likelihood is that, unless Trump reverses course and soon, any hope of bringing about a cease-fire in Ukraine in the near future will vanish.

This work represents the views and opinions solely of the author. The Council on Foreign Relations is an independent, nonpartisan membership organization, think tank, and publisher, and takes no institutional positions on matters of policy.