Donald Trump's Patience With Vladimir Putin Seems To Have Run Out

Now Trump wants to send weapons to Ukraine again—but will that achieve anything?

Kyiv burns from Russian strikes. Reuters photo via NZZ

U.S. Pres. Donald Trump invited Russian Pres. Vladimir Putin to Alaska for what Trump hoped would be a productive conversation about ending Russia’s then 42-month wider war on Ukraine. But Putin, the former Soviet spy master, just smiled and committed to nothing.

“We didn’t get there,” Trump complained as the lavish summit ended early on Aug. 15.

Now Ukrainian troops are bracing for many months—possibly years—of brutal fighting with a larger Russian force along a 700-mile front line. “The war continues,” Ukrainian Pres. Volodymyr Zelensky said.

But this isn’t the Ukrainian military of 2022—to say nothing of 2014, when the Russians first attacked. With more and better drones and missiles and a new approach to ground warfare, Ukrainian forces aren’t just holding off the invaders—they’re taking the fight to Russia and its oil-fueled economy.

It won’t be an easy fight. Though increasingly self-sufficient in weapons and ammunition, the Ukrainian defense ministry struggles to mobilize enough fresh troops to comfortably sustain its million-person military. And its ground forces, long segregated into incompatible brigades, have been slow to adopt a wider command structure that can match the scale of Russia’s own command.

But the challenges belie the bigger picture. After a galloping Ukrainian counteroffensive pushed back the initial Russian invasion force in the fall of 2022, the front line effectively froze along a wide arc threading from Kherson Oblast in southern Ukraine through the industrial Donbas region in the east and then north toward the oblasts surrounding the city of Kharkiv.

Ukraine’s second counteroffensive, in the summer of 2023, bogged down in dense Russian minefields—and barely budged the line.

In late 2022, Russia occupied around 19% of Ukraine. Today, it occupies 20%. And that 1% gain cost Russia hundreds of thousands of killed, wounded and captured troops. Ukraine’s own casualties were lighter: potentially half or a third as many.

Joni Askola, an independent Finnish analyst, said he tries to see the “big picture.” The front line, he said, “actually hasn't changed that much.” Steadily attacking for two years, Russia has managed to capture a few smaller cities along the eastern front, but the main urban belt in the Donbas—stretching from Kramatorsk to Sloviansk in western Donetsk Oblast—remains firmly in Ukrainian hands.

“After that [2023] counteroffensive failed, I think that the overall dynamic has been pretty much the same the whole time, with some small changes,” Askola added. “What I see as quite a positive thing is the development of long-range strike capabilities that Ukraine is getting that will help Ukraine quite a lot.”

Askola was referring to a new class of far-flying explosive drones and cruise missiles, all made in Ukraine and ready for mass-production, that have been inflicting escalating damage on Russian logistics and industry.

Read the rest at Neue Zürcher Zeitung.