ICYMI: Trump's Ultimatum To Putin

0:07You're listening to the 1A Podcast. I'm Jen White, and this is In Case You Missed It, where we bring you some of the week's most important conversations you might have missed. In this second Trump administration, it's another day, another deadline, another deal. On Monday, the president issued an ultimatum to Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the war. I'm going to make a new deadline of about 10 or 12 days from today. There's no reason they're waiting. There's no reason they're waiting. It's 50 days. I want to be generous, but we just don't see any progress being made. That was President Trump speaking to reporters while visiting Scotland on Monday.

0:50Two weeks ago, he issued a 50-day deadline to the Russian president to end the war. With this revised deadline, the president now wants peace efforts to make progress within 10 to 12 days. There's been little reaction from the Kremlin. Well, this U.S. ultimatum changed the course of the war in Ukraine. And with President Zelensky facing challenges both on the front lines and in governance, what impact could this have on his path forward? To discuss that impact, we're joined by a voice you may be familiar with from 1A's International News Roundup. James Kitfield joins us after the break. He's Senior Fellow at the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress.

1:26He's also the author of In the Company of Heroes, the inspiring stories of Medal of Honor recipients from America's longest wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Remember, for all the latest on this story, be sure to visit NPR.org or tune in to your local NPR station. We'll be right back.

1:48James, welcome back to the program. Great to be with you. So U.S.-led peace efforts to end the war in Ukraine have failed to gain momentum since Trump took office in January. Earlier this month, as we said, he threatened severe tariffs on Russia unless a peace deal was reached by early September. Remember, that line was just outright rejected by the Kremlin. But is there any evidence that Putin and the Kremlin have modified their maximalist demands? Does this ultimatum matter? Well, the ultimatum, I mean, there's no evidence at all that Putin is vulnerable to sanctions threats. I mean, he's proven that.

2:26And so I don't believe that's going to change the dynamic. But what has changed the dynamic is President Trump has basically done a number of steps that have made it clear that he is getting frustrated with Putin. He says Putin has been tapping him along. He's exactly right. Putin has been tapping him along. I mean, Putin, you know, it's kind of interesting to watch because Trump is the ultimate transactionist dealmaker. And with Putin, he's dealing with a true believer. I mean, Putin believes that he is the sort of reincarnation of Tsar Nicholas. He's determined to build conquest through conquest to get a sphere of vassal states around Russia.

3:05And he has sacrificed a million Russian soldiers killed and wounded to achieve that. So a sanctions threat is not going to change his dynamic. But if you look at the transactions that President Trump has achieved, he's gotten this mineral deal with Ukraine. He had a very successful NATO summit where he got NATO countries to commit 5 % of their GDP to military spending. And he got this lopsided trade deal this week where we have increased our tariffs on our EU friends fivefold to 15%. Well, they basically have left most of our products at zero tariffs. So he's gotten a lot more from Europe than he's gotten from Putin.

3:45And I think that he has finally realized that Putin has been tapping in along. I think he's frustrated with it. Does any of that move us closer to an end to the war in Ukraine? Yeah, well, the only way you were ever going to get Putin to pay attention was to make the war in Ukraine as painful for him as possible and to show that there was not a road to complete victory. and he has not come off his very maximalist ideas of what that victory would look like. It's basically subjugation by Ukraine to Russia. And if you make that very painful and stay steady on that, i.e. continue to send weapons to Ukraine, which President Trump has done because he got the EU to agree to buy those weapons and transfer them to Ukraine, and by the sanctions, and we'll see if he follows through with these secondary sanctions, which can be very powerful, but also a double-edged sword because they could cause global oil prices to spike.

4:41But if you make it painful for Putin at some point, yeah, he might be willing to back off because he can't see a road to victory. Now, you mentioned the secondary tariffs. This is part of the president's possible plan. And so it would target Russia's trading partners. Which countries would be at risk? Well, I mean, the two countries that buy most of Russia's oil are China, which is not at risk because it's already shown that it's willing to use. its monopoly on hard-earth minerals and magnets that are absolutely essential to our production lines. So China, we're not going to put secondary sanctions on China, I don't believe.

5:19India would be second. And yeah, I mean, you could cause India some pain by saying if you keep buying Russian oil, we have a huge trade with India, and that could have an effect. But again, you're dealing with a pretty large country that has its own ability to respond. So secondary sanctions can be very powerful, but they're also a double-edged sword. We're talking to journalist and author James Kitfield about the president's revised deadline on Russia to end the war in Ukraine. At a third round of Ukraine-Russia peace talks held in Istanbul last week, we saw Moscow again reject a full ceasefire.

5:58And James, over the past two weeks, following the president's directive to end the war in 50 days, Russia's made massive strategic advances. It's captured key towns in the north and east of Ukraine. And as you said, President Putin has been pretty clear about his goals. So what challenges is Ukraine facing on the battlefield right now? Well, I mean, they're facing a lot of challenges. Number one of which, they're fighting a larger army and with more weapons. And we have, as we've just discussed, have turned the tap on and off with weapons. They need defensive air defense systems, really, in the worst way.

6:38And they're starting to be delivered, but it's been slow. So they need more missiles. They need more air defense systems. And they have a manpower shortage. I mean, Russia has much more manpower. I'm not sure, Jen, that I would say that their Russian advances have been massive. They have made some incremental advances for months because, again, Zelensky and Ukraine have been on their back foot, which is why it's so important that we have a steady support of weapons systems to them. But, I mean, they are outmanned, and they've been fighting a very courageous rearguard action to try to stop the Russian advance, but it has been incrementally successful this summer.

7:21We'll talk about some of the political challenges President Volodymyr Zelensky is facing in Ukraine in a moment. But how are the people of Ukraine holding up under this ongoing onslaught? At the beginning of the war, we saw a lot of national energy and a push to fight and push back against Russia. But how is the civilian population holding up now? Well, the best, you know, they don't, you can't, it's hard to trust public opinion polls in Ukraine because I don't think that they let, you know, a lot of that go on independently. But you've seen some, you know, protests against Zelensky's rule, which we haven't seen in the past.

8:05So you get the sense that they're war-weary and, you know, why wouldn't they be? They've been bombarded for three years now and lost a lot of soldiers themselves, not as many as Russia, but they've lost a lot of soldiers. They keep that number secret, so we don't know exactly. But you do sense a war weariness, and it's completely understandable. So how does this revised deadline from President Trump complicate things, perhaps, for Ukrainians as we see these Russian advances on the battlefield? Well, I mean, what complicates their equation is the unpredictability of President Trump. I mean, he goes back and forth on these sanctions, threatens sanctions.

8:46We've seen that time and time again. So you're fighting the war and your primary supporter is kind of back and forth. And I think that has been their biggest problem. If they had full backing of the United States and NATO and didn't have to worry about looking over their shoulder, I think that would be the thing that they were looking for most. But again, they're fighting a larger army, a determined dictator who's willing to sacrifice in human waves his own soldiers. It's a tough equation for Ukraine. They have fought, again, a courageous battle for three years. But, you know, there's no guarantees that they will, you know, be able to hold up.

9:28Well, we mentioned some of the political challenges President Vladimir Zelensky is facing. Last week, the first anti-government protest since Russia invaded the country in 2022 happened on the streets of Kiev. Protesters were angry that Zelensky seized power over the National Anti-Corruption Bureau and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office. Now, he quickly reversed course, but it did earn a rebuke from the European Union, and they paused, $1.7 billion in aid to Ukraine. How does Zelensky's government's challenges complicate things in the country? Well, I mean, he is their leader.

10:04He is the rallying point for that war, And I think a change of leadership would be disastrous. I mean, can you imagine a new leader coming into this situation and trying to establish a new government with new ministers? So it complicates things. And I think it was a big mistake for Zelensky to do that. It's clear to him, I think, by now, that the EU and the United States are worried about corruption in Ukraine. So for him to abolish that oversight committee was a mistake. And hopefully he's learned from it. But I don't think there's any substitute for Zelensky at this point. Well, you said it would be disastrous to switch out political leadership at this point.

10:42But is there any movement in Ukraine to try to do that? Sure. These protesters are basically saying we're tired of you. You are too dictatorial yourself. You're acting like you don't have to worry about our democracy. So, yeah, there is unrest. And I think it's caught his attention. But he needs to be very cognizant of that. What are you watching for next, James? Whether these sanctions that President Trump has threatened, he'll follow through on. And certainly the secondary sanctions, if supported and steady, could have an impact. That's author and journalist James Kitfield. He's senior fellow at the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress.

11:21James, always great to talk to you. Thanks. Good to talk to you, Tim. This program comes to you from WAMU, part of American University in Washington, distributed by NPR. I'm Jen White. Thanks for listening. And we'll talk more soon. This is 1A.