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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky hit back when President Trump warned him he had “no cards" in the Oval Office, saying he was “not playing cards." In the months since, the Ukrainian leader has softened his approach in an attempt to keep Trump on side.
Now, it appears the deck has always been stacked against him.
Zelensky agreed to an unconditional cease-fire proposed by the U.S. leader, signed up to a minerals deal that the White House had pushed as a condition for further support, and flew to Turkey for talks called for by Russian President Vladimir Putin—all while gently urging Trump to pressure Russia to agree to the truce.
Three months later, that approach has brought him next to nothing. On Monday, after a two-hour call with Putin, Trump again pivoted to the Russian president’s sequencing toward ending the war: negotiations before a cease-fire. And he signaled the U.S. could walk away if the two sides didn’t reach an agreement.
When Putin refused to sign on to a 30-day cease-fire on Monday, Trump didn’t impose further sanctions on Russia, as he has threatened to do, but instead said Russia and Ukraine should carry on negotiations among themselves.
Ukrainian officials met the continued lack of pressure on Putin wearily on Tuesday. After speaking with Finnish President Alexander Stubb, Zelensky called for more sanctions on Moscow to coerce the Kremlin to end its three-year invasion.
“It is obvious that Russia is trying to buy time in order to continue its war and occupation," he said. “We are working with our partners to ensure that pressure forces Russians to change their behavior."
Trump’s willingness to tolerate Putin’s prevarication over a cease-fire contrasts with his explosive reaction to Zelensky’s wariness in February over Russian intentions. In the Oval Office, Trump assailed Zelensky and accused him of not supporting U.S. diplomacy or wanting a cease-fire.
“I want a cease-fire," Trump told the Ukrainian president. “Because you’ll get a cease-fire faster than an agreement."
“Of course we want to stop the war," Zelensky said.
Zelensky’s willingness to comply with Trump’s demands after the meeting won him a sit-down with the U.S. leader at the Vatican in late April, where the two appeared to make up. “It makes me think that maybe he doesn’t want to stop the war, he’s just tapping me along, and has to be dealt with differently," Trump said after that meeting referring to Putin.
Now, Trump appears to have endorsed Putin’s approach that a cease-fire can only be agreed to if Ukraine agrees to Russian conditions, which boil down to leaving Ukraine as a vassal Russian state.
“Unfortunately, following the Trump-Putin phone call, the status quo has not changed," Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said on X.
Podolyak said that Trump’s mistake is to assume that Russia is capable of negotiating and willing to end the war for the sake of strategic or business interests. Meanwhile, Russia’s position, he said, is unchanged.
Putin says he is open to ending the war, but he has repeatedly declined to endorse the 30-day cease-fire agreed to by Kyiv in March. He has insisted that a litany of complex issues must be resolved before any such pause in fighting can take effect. Those include a mechanism for enforcing such a cease-fire and a commitment from Ukraine not to use it as a window to bolster its forces. Russia has made no such commitments.
Before any peace deal can be discussed, Putin said the two sides must address what he describes as the “root causes" of the war. Russia set those out in a draft treaty drawn up with Ukrainian negotiators in Istanbul in April 2022, weeks after Moscow’s full-scale invasion. Putin has cited the terms of that treaty as a basis for current negotiations.
The Russian document envisioned a postwar Ukraine that is a disarmed, permanently neutral state, unaligned with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization or any other military blocs. Putin wants to reverse policies that have sidelined Russian cultural influence in Ukraine. And he wants to keep at least the 18% of Ukrainian territory Russia already controls, an area equivalent to Virginia in size.
“Russia’s position is clear: The main thing is to remove the root causes of this crisis," Putin said in comments after the call with Trump on Monday. He didn’t say the two sides had made progress in reaching an agreement, but voiced optimism that a memorandum could soon be drafted that commits them to working on one.
Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, said Putin is comfortable with his negotiators sitting down with the Ukrainian side in coming weeks because he knows the Russian side is resolute in its demands.
The Kremlin on Monday said that Putin had discussed with Trump a possible meeting between the Russian president and Zelensky, but it said there was no timeline for talks and that they would take as long as necessary. It said no location had yet been set for further talks between Kyiv and Moscow.
The vague memorandum Putin called for on Monday, Stanovaya said, is a way of offering Trump something that the U.S. president can claim as a Russian concession, even if it is little more than an agreement to keep talking.
Russia can use this memorandum to push through clauses on a cessation of Western military aid to Ukraine and to codify other demands it has before any cease-fire—including a new insistence on securing Kyiv’s withdrawal from the four Ukrainian regions Russia partially occupies.
“Putin will now try to push the Ukrainians to endorse an ‘Istanbul 2’ agreement," said Stanovaya, referring to the 2022 terms pushed by Russia, plus the territories. “If that doesn’t work, he can always say it was the Ukrainians who didn’t want peace."
Stanovaya said that the U.S.’s potential withdrawal from the process is an acceptable outcome for Putin, who is focused on wringing as many concessions out of Ukraine as possible.
The Kremlin leader conceives the Ukraine war as a chance to right what he sees as historical injustices that go back to the collapse of the Soviet Union and an opportunity to roll back Western influence across Eastern Europe. As such, he is unlikely to settle for an interim deal that fails to address his maximalist demands.
“Putin will be fighting for Ukraine by any means until his death," Stanovaya said. “He’s absolutely obsessed. He believes that if Russia doesn’t get what it wants in Ukraine, then it faces its own possible destruction. And one way or another, he believes he will get what he wants."
Write to James Marson at james.marson@wsj.com and Matthew Luxmoore at matthew.luxmoore@wsj.com
ABU DHABI—President Trump elevated Persian Gulf monarchies in his four-day swing through the Middle East, eroding at least for now the centrality of America’s decadeslong alliance with Israel.
His embrace of leaders in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates stood out as Trump bypassed Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, with whom he has turned more distant in recent months.
Even before Trump arrived in the region, moves including the administration’s unilateral deal with Hamas to secure the release of the last remaining American hostage in Gaza either sidelined or surprised the Israelis, underscoring the two allies aren’t fully in sync on the region’s biggest flashpoints.
The moves also highlighted a difference with his predecessor, Joe Biden, who focused on wooing Netanyahu, months of often-fruitless diplomacy to halt the Gaza war and mending his relationship with Saudi Arabia, which he had called a “pariah state" before taking office.
The question for Trump is whether the shift from Israel is anything more than tactical. The U.S. remains Israel’s closest ally and main arms supplier. Israel’s support in Congress, though damaged by its war in Gaza, makes it tricky if not impossible for any White House to significantly downgrade the relationship.
Trump has long had a wary relationship with Netanyahu. He hasn’t gotten over Netanyahu’s public congratulations to Biden after his 2020 presidential election victory, associates say. But their current disagreements have more to do with Trump’s agenda than any long-term divergence, analysts said.
“The differences are real and the tension is real," said Steven Cook, a Middle East expert at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington. But “folks are making too big a deal that Israel has been left off the itinerary." Netanyahu has had two meetings with Trump and Israeli leaders remain in close contact with their American counterparts, he noted.
For Arab governments, even a temporary swing in their direction was welcome.
“To those in the Gulf who thought that the only way to America was through Israel, now we see an opening where we can go directly to the States," said Bader al-Saif, an expert on Persian Gulf and Arabian affairs at Kuwait University. “We have access to the number one guy. He listens."
Gulf countries are “becoming the partner of choice," Joel Rayburn, Trump’s nominee to be the State Department’s top Middle East official, said at a Senate confirmation hearing Thursday. The president’s trip “proves it is time we expand on our relationships in the Gulf, expand them from security to prosperity," he added.
But in a reminder that the region’s conflicts have often soured optimism about transformed relationships, Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry condemned Israel’s war in Gaza as Trump departed the region, denouncing what it called “repeated assaults by the Israeli war machine on the Palestinian people."
Gaza had drawn drew little mention as the oil-rich Gulf nations paraded Trump through grand palaces and an ornate mosque, committed to trillions in U.S. investment, invited top business leaders for opulent gatherings, lined streets with mounted camels and horses, and lighted up buildings—including the world’s tallest skyscraper in Dubai—with projections of the American flag.
Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, president of the United Arab Emirates, welcomed President Trump upon his arrival Thursday in Abu Dhabi.
His hosts heaped praise on Trump, who avoided delivering what had become familiar messages by past administrations about human rights. Arabs didn’t need Westerners “giving you lectures on how to live," Trump said.
No one pulled out the stops more than the Saudis, the deep-pocketed regional heavyweight that has begun to flex its muscle after decades of passivity. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman guided Trump throughout the entire 36-hour visit, ending with Trump bidding the monarch farewell on the tarmac.
“The U.S.-Saudi relationship has been a bedrock of security and prosperity," Trump said during his stay in Riyadh. “It is more powerful than ever before, and, by the way, it will remain that way."
Trump added that it was his dream for Saudi Arabia to normalize relations with Israel, which would amount to a diplomatic masterstroke that could transform the Middle East and was a major unfulfilled goal of Biden’s presidency. Trump told a large gathering in Riyadh, with Prince Mohammed in the front row, that the kingdom could reach that decision on its own time, an acknowledgment that a formal diplomatic rapprochement was unlikely as long as the Gaza war continued.
Arab governments have heard vows of U.S. support before—including from Trump during his first term—only to see Washington stay more closely aligned with Israel than with them. In 2019, during his first term, Trump vowed to retaliate against Iran after a drone attack on a Saudi oil facility that the U.S. blamed on Tehran but he canceled the strike, angering Saudi leaders.
Qatari military jets escorted Trump’s plane as it prepared to land in Doha Wednesday.
But it has been Netanyahu who has found himself on the outside recently, starting in April when Trump announced nuclear talks with Iran during the Israeli leader’s visit to the White House.
Although Trump says he would prefer an agreement with Tehran not to develop a nuclear weapon, he has threatened that Iran could face attack if no deal was reached. That approach would align Trump more closely once again with Netanyahu’s view about how to halt Iran’s nuclear program. Yet that is only one of the disagreements between him and Israel.
Earlier this month, he struck a deal with Houthi militants to stop attacking U.S. ships, but not Israel. Before arriving in the Middle East, he negotiated the release of Israeli-American hostage Edan Alexander with Hamas while Israeli hostages remained in captivity, and during the trip this week he agreed to lift sanctions on Syria after a personal appeal by Prince Mohammed, breaking with Israel, which has been skeptical of the new government in Damascus.
When Trump came to the Middle East during his first term, he also made Saudi Arabia his first stop, but he later flew to Israel, met with Netanyahu and prayed at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, becoming the first sitting president to do so.
This time, in Abu Dhabi, Trump made his first visit to a mosque as president, a stunning turnaround for a politician who once declared, “Islam hates us."
Write to Alexander Ward at alex.ward@wsj.com, Alex Leary at alex.leary@wsj.com and Stephen Kalin at stephen.kalin@wsj.com