Words Of Advice For Trump Ahead Of High-stakes Call With Putin

President Donald Trump sees his Tuesday call with Russian President Vladimir Putin as a chance to bring an end to the war in Ukraine. But it also carries risks — both for the U.S. and its allies.

And so, some who know the region well have some advice for the president ahead of the highest-profile diplomatic discussions of his administration.

Former U.S. officials and diplomats say Trump should listen to Putin, but not make any commitments. Some recommend that he avoid expanding the conversation to broader questions about the entire security architecture in Europe.

And some think Trump — who has a long track record of sympathizing with Putin — should just scrap the call altogether.

The administration is setting high expectations for the call and the coming weeks. White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said Monday that Russia and the U.S. were at the “10th yard line for peace” and confirmed that Trump and Putin will discuss dividing land and other assets as part of a potential deal to end the war.

Former diplomats and U.S. officials who have dealt with Russia for decades say their expectations are low.

“There is no indication here whatsoever of any kind of concession coming from Russia,” said Fiona Hill, who handled the Russia portfolio for Trump during his first term and has become a critic of the president. “Now if that happens, it would be very interesting.”

Daniel Fried, whose career with the State Department spanned four decades, said that he would be watching to see whether either yields ground following the call.

“Then you will know whether Trump is staring back at Putin and trying to achieve peace through strength — which is possible — or whether he is allowing himself to be played by Putin,” he said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, under intense pressure after Trump cut off intelligence sharing and military aid to Kyiv for a week following their spat in the Oval Office, has agreed to a U.S. proposal for an initial 30-day ceasefire.

Putin has said he supports a ceasefire in principle but that there are issues that need to be discussed, including the “root causes” of Russia’s conflict with Ukraine, which led the Kremlin to launch a full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Many close observers of Russia say that language is a sign Putin is not in a rush to sign an agreement and that what he really wants is to change broader European security arrangements.

Mike Carpenter, a former senior National Security Council official in the Biden administration, said the No. 1 thing he’ll be watching for is whether Trump can convince Putin to agree to an initial 30-day ceasefire. That will show the U.S. has some leverage over Moscow.

“The bottom line is does he accept an unconditional 30-day ceasefire, which Ukraine agreed to, or does he not,” Carpenter said. If not, it is a clear sign that Putin is “playing rope-a-dope” with Trump.

Trump seems confident he can make that initial ceasefire happen. Asked by a reporter Monday if the Russians would agree to a 30-day ceasefire, Trump said simply: “They would.”

Another former U.S. official who has dealt with Russia, but who was granted anonymity to be candid, said not enough groundwork had been done by underlings to close gaps even for a brief ceasefire deal.

The person noted that Russia has made recent battlefield gains and has less incentive to pause fighting that could give Ukraine time to regroup.

“My first bit of advice would be not to have the phone call because you're not ready to have the phone call to agree on a ceasefire,” the former U.S. official said.

But if Putin shows willingness to engage directly with Zelenskyy, that would be an encouraging sign, Carpenter said.

Putin has previously ruled this out, questioning Zelenskyy’s legitimacy. Trump has piled on, calling the Ukrainian leader a dictator, in an apparent reference to the country’s decision to postpone elections because of the invasion.

The White House also needs to consider how other parties to the conflict fit into the call and subsequent negotiations, Hill said.

“There aren't just two sides here. That's a fundamental misreading of the situation,” she said, citing Europe’s investment in Ukraine’s defense, but also the involvement of U.S. adversaries Iran, China and North Korea in strengthening Russia’s hand.

“This is a European war with global as well as regional dimensions,” Hill said.

Reporters pressed Leavitt on Monday as to whether Ukraine had authorized the U.S. to negotiate on its behalf. She said only that the administration has been “engaged directly with President Zelenskyy and the Ukrainian team, and that has been part of the discussion.”

U.S. experts have been alarmed about the lack of Russia expertise in Trump’s orbit heading into the high-stakes negotiations and have questioned the ability of the president’s allies to parse fact from fiction in Moscow’s talking points about the war.

“The Russians will pitch their level of bullshit based on their estimations of your level of ignorance,” said Fried, whose diplomatic career included serving as U.S. ambassador to Poland.

On more than one occasion, Trump has appeared to echo Russia’s talking points about the war, as well as Moscow’s efforts to interfere in U.S. politics.

At a 2018 summit in Helsinki, Finland, Trump sided with Putin over his own intelligence community when he said he took the Russian leader at his word that he didn’t seek to influence the 2016 U.S. election.

Putin has led Russia since the turn of the millennium, and his Foreign Affairs Minister Sergey Lavrov has held his job for over two decades.

On the U.S. side, Steve Witkoff, a real estate developer with no previous foreign policy experience, has led in the talks with Russia.

Speaking on CBS News on Sunday after meeting with Putin in Moscow, Witkoff outlined a number of areas under discussion beyond the battlefield.

“There are regions that we all know the Russians are focused on. There is a nuclear reactor that supplies quite a bit of electricity to the country of Ukraine. That's got to be dealt with,” Witkoff said. “There's access to ports. There's the Black Sea potential agreement,” he said.

Ukraine has a number of nuclear reactors, including the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant which was seized by Moscow early in the war. But it’s unclear how they are being factored into current discussions with Moscow.

Speaking to reporters on Air Force One on Sunday, Trump said that “land” and “power plants” would be part of his conversation with Putin on Tuesday.

Spokespeople for the State Department and the White House declined to offer further comment for this article.

Putin, a former KGB agent, is well-versed in how to read others and to try to manipulate them.

“He knows that he needs to appeal to Trump's desire to be a peacemaker,” said Alina Polyakova, president and CEO of the Washington-based Center for European Policy Analysis.

That means Putin will likely try to find ways to agree with Trump, Polyakova said, “to thank him for everything he has ever done and for having the vision to try to bring this to an end. And then he will take you back to what have been Russia's maximalist demands.”

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H), the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, cautioned the president not to be swayed by Putin. “While I understand President Trump’s desire to engage in diplomacy, I would urge him not to be fooled by Vladimir Putin’s false flattery or manipulative tactics,” she said Monday.

Eric Green, a former senior National Security Council official who dealt with Russia during the Biden administration, said, as an example, Putin could try to take advantage of Trump’s seeming soft spot for Russia.

“Putin will likely say that 'This great warming of U.S.-Russian relations is going to be at risk' if he doesn't get traction on the conditions that he's putting forth for the Ukraine ceasefire," Green said.

Adam Cancryn contributed to this report.