Saturday, October 4, 2025
  • Who’sWho Africa AWARDS
  • About TimeAfrica Magazine
  • Contact Us
Time Africa Magazine
  • Home
  • Magazine
  • WHO’SWHO AWARDS
  • News
  • World News
    • US
    • UAE
    • Europe
    • UK
    • Israel-Hamas
    • Russia-Ukraine
  • Politics
  • Crime
  • Lifestyle
  • Sports
  • Column
  • Interviews
  • Special Report
No Result
View All Result
Time Africa Magazine
  • Home
  • Magazine
  • WHO’SWHO AWARDS
  • News
  • World News
    • US
    • UAE
    • Europe
    • UK
    • Israel-Hamas
    • Russia-Ukraine
  • Politics
  • Crime
  • Lifestyle
  • Sports
  • Column
  • Interviews
  • Special Report
No Result
View All Result
Time Africa Magazine
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • WHO’SWHO AWARDS
  • News
  • Magazine
  • World News

Home » World News » Putin Plays Tough in Opening Move with Trump

Putin Plays Tough in Opening Move with Trump

November 8, 2024
in World News
0
544
SHARES
4.5k
VIEWS
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

Vladimir Putin did not come running. He let his spokesman react on Wednesday to the outcome of the U.S. presidential race, proclaiming that the Kremlin has no plans to congratulate Donald Trump on his victory. If the U.S. wants the peace deal Trump promised during his campaign, the Russians signaled that he would need to earn it, and the price for Ukraine would be particularly high.

“The message is, if you want a deal, you’re going to crawl on your knees for it,” says Nina Khrushcheva, an authority on Russian politics and foreign affairs at the New School. “Putin feels he is starting out with Trump from a position of strength.”

That makes the Russian president an outlier among European leaders. On Wednesday, many of them issued flattering statements and promises to cooperate with the Trump administration. But the Kremlin noted drily that the U.S. and Russia remain at war, “both directly and indirectly,” while Putin’s conditions for ending that war, his spokesman said, “remain unchanged, and are well known in Washington.” Indeed, over the last few years, Russia has issued a series of conditions for ending the war in Ukraine. Most of them were tossed aside by the Biden administration, which tended to see them as ultimatums rather than good-faith efforts to negotiate.

In December 2021, for instance, just a few months before Russia invaded Ukraine, Biden reached out to Putin with an offer to discuss a broad agreement on international affairs, ranging from nuclear and cyber security to the future of Europe and the NATO alliance. The response from Putin amounted to a middle finger. If Biden wanted a summit with Putin, the Kremlin said the U.S. should set the mood by pulling its military forces entirely out of eastern Europe, retreating to positions it held before Putin took power. As the lead Russian envoy put it at the time, “The U.S. needs to pack up its stuff and get back to where it was in 1997.”

ReadAlso

Mozambique welcomes $6 billion electricity project from World Bank backing

Trump says Club World Cup trophy will remain in Oval Office after tournament’s end

The U.S. rejected that notion out of hand. Instead of a summit, the White House promised sanctions that would cripple the Russian economy. Since then, Putin’s occasional overtures to the Americans have varied widely in tone and substance, depending on how the war in Ukraine happens to be going at the time. During a low-point for the Russians in the fall of 2022, when they faced the third in a series of humiliating losses on the battlefield, Putin’s rhetoric grew notably softer. He even referred to the Ukrainians as his “partners,” insisting that Russia had always been open to negotiating a deal to end the war.

Such talk evaporated as the fighting turned in Russia’s favor last year. In an ultimatum issued in July, Putin demanded that Ukraine withdraw from four regions that Russia has partly occupied. He also called on the West to lift all sanctions against Russia. Trump, during his campaign for the presidency, signaled a willingness to consider that demand, saying that sanctions “should be used very judiciously” in order to protect the power of the dollar in the global economy. When he was asked whether he stayed in touch with Putin in recent years, Trump declined to answer. But it would be a “smart thing,” he said, for a U.S. president to talk to the Russians.

ADVERTISEMENT

What Putin would hope to get from such talks is no mystery. Based on his statements in recent years, he wants to neuter Ukraine militarily, cut off all pathways for it to join NATO, and gain permanent control over its southern and eastern regions. Neither Trump nor his close advisers have declared a willingness to grant those demands. Vice President-elect J.D. Vance said on the campaign trail that a peace deal could turn the current front line into a “demilitarized zone” that would be “heavily fortified so the Russians don’t invade Ukraine.”

The Ukrainians balked at that idea. President Volodymyr Zelensky called it “too radical,” even though it would fall well short of what Putin has demanded. Others in Trump’s circle have outlined far tougher terms for Russia. Mike Pompeo, who served as the Secretary of State and CIA director under Trump, has called on the next administration to tighten sanctions, lift all restrictions on the use of American weapons in Ukraine, and create a “lend-lease” program worth $500 billion to help the Ukrainians buy the weapons they need from U.S. manufacturers.

“I hope we get the strategy right,” Pompeo told TIME during a visit to Kyiv in September. Although Congress has approved more than $174 billion in assistance to Ukraine since the start of the invasion, “President Biden squandered it,” Pompeo added. “Too slow, too little, too late, too restrained.”

Given the range of views in Trump’s orbit, and the absence of a strategy for ending the war in Ukraine, the Russians are likely to wait and see where the administration lands on this issue. They are in no hurry to make a deal. All along the frontline, especially in the eastern Donbas region, Russian forces have made slow but steady gains this year, using artillery and aerial bombs to decimate towns before rolling over them. The U.S. estimates that Russia has lost more than 600,000 soldiers, dead and wounded. But Putin has shown a remarkable ability to absorb those losses and to recruit more soldiers without causing any serious backlash among the Russian population.

“There’s no pressure on him to negotiate,” says a former senior U.S. official who maintains high-level contacts in both Washington and Moscow. If Trump decides he wants to make a deal with Putin, “the Russians will be interested,” he says. “I’m sure they’ve got a lot of feelers out about the menu of options. But they are not going to respond until the U.S. decides what it wants to offer.” It will be up to Trump, in other words, to make the first move in Putin’s direction.

—

TIME

Tags: PutinTrump
ADVERTISEMENT
Previous Post

2024 likely to be hottest year on record again

Next Post

Chad army inflicts ‘many dead’ on Boko Haram extremists

You MayAlso Like

UK

Woman appointed Archbishop of Canterbury 

October 3, 2025
King Charles and Prince Harry did not meet during the Duke's recent visit to the UK. (Image: Getty)
UK

Prince Harry issues strongly-worded statement over King Charles meeting

September 28, 2025
President Donald Trump attends a meeting with leaders of Qatar, Jordan, Turkey, Pakistan, Indonesia, Egypt, United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, during the United Nations General Assembly in New York. | Evan Vucci/AP
Middle-East

Trump ‘promised Arab leaders he would not let Israel annex the West Bank’

September 25, 2025
Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy leaves the courtroom on Thursday after the verdict in his trial for illegal campaign financing from Libya.Alain Jocard / AFP - Getty Images
World News

French ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy sentenced to five years in prison in Libyan campaign-financing trial

September 25, 2025
4.Young leaders trained by We Can program designed and delivered 17 projects across schools and communities
World News

Award-winning Chill Lab youth mental health program impacted 146,000+ lives in two years with latest “We Can” student-led projects benefiting 17,000+ people

September 22, 2025
Two teenagers were sentenced to 12 years of hard labour in the gulag for watching banned South Korean TVCredit: BBC
World News

North Korea executing more people for watching foreign movies

September 14, 2025
Next Post

Chad army inflicts ‘many dead’ on Boko Haram extremists

Kamala’s Catastrophe: How it all went so badly wrong

Discussion about this post

Woman appointed Archbishop of Canterbury 

FIFA Strips South Africa of World Cup Qualifying Points After Administrative Blunder

The Guardian Newspaper Names Enugu Commissioner, Dr. Lawrence Ezeh, Amongst 65 Most Inspiring, Award-Winning Business Leaders

Egyptian ‘strong man’ pulls 700-ton ship with his teeth

Prince Harry issues strongly-worded statement over King Charles meeting

Six beers that are good for your gut health – and the ones to avoid

  • British government apologizes to Peter Obi, as hired impostors, master manipulators on rampage abroad

    1242 shares
    Share 497 Tweet 311
  • Maids trafficked and sold to wealthy Saudis on black market

    1067 shares
    Share 427 Tweet 267
  • Flight Attendant Sees Late Husband On Plane

    973 shares
    Share 389 Tweet 243
  • ‘Céline Dion Dead 2023’: Singer killed By Internet Death Hoax

    904 shares
    Share 361 Tweet 226
  • Crisis echoes, fears grow in Amechi Awkunanaw in Enugu State

    735 shares
    Share 294 Tweet 184
  • Trending
  • Comments
  • Latest

British government apologizes to Peter Obi, as hired impostors, master manipulators on rampage abroad

April 13, 2023

Maids trafficked and sold to wealthy Saudis on black market

December 27, 2022
Flight Attendant Sees Late Husband On Plane

Flight Attendant Sees Late Husband On Plane

September 22, 2023
‘Céline Dion Dead 2023’: Singer killed By Internet Death Hoax

‘Céline Dion Dead 2023’: Singer killed By Internet Death Hoax

March 21, 2023
Chief Mrs Ebelechukwu, wife of Willie Obiano, former governor of Anambra state

NIGERIA: No, wife of Biafran warlord, Bianca Ojukwu lied – Ebele Obiano:

0

SOUTH AFRICA: TO LEAVE OR NOT TO LEAVE?

0
kelechi iheanacho

TOP SCORER: IHEANACHA

0
Goodluck Ebele Jonathan

WHAT CAN’TBE TAKEN AWAY FROM JONATHAN

0

Woman appointed Archbishop of Canterbury 

October 3, 2025

The Guardian Newspaper Names Enugu Commissioner, Dr. Lawrence Ezeh, Amongst 65 Most Inspiring, Award-Winning Business Leaders

October 2, 2025

Poor sleep could make your brain age faster, study finds

October 3, 2025

Moroccans clash with police during protests against World Cup spending

October 1, 2025

ABOUT US

Time Africa Magazine

TIMEAFRICA MAGAZINE is an African Magazine with a culture of excellence; a magazine without peer. Nearly a third of its readers hold advanced degrees and include novelists, … READ MORE >>

SECTIONS

  • Aviation
  • Column
  • Crime
  • Europe
  • Featured
  • Gallery
  • Health
  • Interviews
  • Israel-Hamas
  • Lifestyle
  • Magazine
  • Middle-East
  • News
  • Politics
  • Press Release
  • Russia-Ukraine
  • Science
  • Special Report
  • Sports
  • TV/Radio
  • UAE
  • UK
  • US
  • World News

Useful Links

  • AllAfrica
  • Channel Africa
  • El Khabar
  • The Guardian
  • Cairo Live
  • Le Republicain
  • Magazine: 9771144975608
  • Subscribe to TIMEAFRICA MAGAZINE biweekly news magazine

    Enjoy handpicked stories from around African continent,
    delivered anywhere in the world

    Subscribe

    • About TimeAfrica Magazine
    • Privacy Policy
    • Contact Us
    • WHO’SWHO AWARDS

    © 2025 TimeAfrica Magazine - All Right Reserved. TimeAfrica Magazine Ltd is published by Times Associates, registered Nigeria. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our Terms of Service.

    No Result
    View All Result
    • WHO’SWHO AWARDS
    • Politics
    • Column
    • Interviews
    • Gallery
    • Lifestyle
    • Special Report
    • Sports
    • TV/Radio
    • Aviation
    • Health
    • Science
    • World News

    © 2025 TimeAfrica Magazine - All Right Reserved. TimeAfrica Magazine Ltd is published by Times Associates, registered Nigeria. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our Terms of Service.

    This website uses cookies. By continuing to use this website you are giving consent to cookies being used. Visit our Privacy and Cookie Policy.