Is Putin overplaying his hand?
If the Russian president continues to drag out negotiations without making concrete concessions, Trump may grow tired of his games.
Vladimir Putin has agreed to halt all strikes on Ukrainian energy infrastructure for a period of 30 days following a telephone call with his American counterpart, Donald Trump, this afternoon. According to the White House’s official report on the call, Presidents Trump and Putin have also agreed that “technical negotiations” will now begin on a maritime ceasefire in the Black Sea, and to secure a “full ceasefire and permanent peace”.
However, the Kremlin has not agreed to an unconditional 30-day ceasefire agreement with Ukraine, which had been proposed by President Trump after negotiations between the United States and Ukrainian representatives in Riyadh last week.
Is this the first step on the way to a durable peace deal? The answer to this question hinges on whether one believes that Putin is serious about wanting to find a resolution to the conflict. Some analysts believe that he may be amenable to a negotiated peace, but suggest he is only likely to agree to a settlement that explicitly excludes NATO membership for Ukraine and acknowledges Russian sovereignty over the Crimea along with other occupied territories in the Donbas.
The danger is that Putin has used this phone call to stroke Trump’s ego, providing some slight, but ultimately meaningless, concessions while dangling before him the prospect of business deals and cooperation in the Middle East. This is suggested by the White House report, which stated that Putin and Trump “spoke broadly about the Middle East as a region of potential cooperation”. Perhaps playing into Trump’s obsession with deal-making, they “agreed that a future with an improved bilateral relationship between the United States and Russia has a huge upside. This includes enormous economic deals and geopolitical stability when peace has been achieved”.
Ultimately, however, there is a risk that Putin may be overplaying his hand. At the moment, he enjoys Trump’s favour. Yet if he continues to drag out negotiations without making further, concrete concessions, it is possible that the American president will grow tired of his games.
All the while, the rapprochement between Russia and the United States has continued to keep European rearmament rolling onwards. Across the continent, European leaders have been busy trying to turn talk of higher defence spending into action. Crucially, this afternoon the German Bundestag passed a measure to reform Germany’s debt regulations and invest a colossal €1 trillion in projects designed to renovate the country’s armed forces and infrastructure.
Friedrich Merz, the leader of the Christian Democratic Union and Germany’s chancellor-in-waiting, has made it clear that he considers it to be an “absolute priority” for Europe to “achieve independence from the USA” on defence and foreign policy.
The Bundestag’s historic move will significantly boost the collective military capacity of European NATO countries. Nonetheless, questions continue to hang over Germany’s drive to expand and modernise its armed forces. Figures within the Bundeswehr have pointed to deep structural problems in the force’s dysfunctional procurement system, and have expressed concerns over its difficulty recruiting and retaining young Germans. Solving these problems and spending extra resources wisely will not be simple or easy.
Germany isn’t the only country on the move. In another indication of the way the wind is blowing in Europe, Estonia’s Prime Minister has committed to increase his country’s defence budget to 5% from 2026. Referring to Russia’s “imperialistic ambitions”, he said: “Our aim is clear – to make any aggression against us unfeasible.”
Meanwhile, earlier today, President Emmanuel Macron of France visited the Luxeuil-Saint-Sauveur airbase in the Franche-Comté region, where he announced that he would buy more Rafale warplanes than previously planned, and invest €1.5 billion into the base to equip it with the latest nuclear missile technology. He told those present that “Our country and our continent must continue to defend, equip and prepare itself if we wish to prevent war”. Notably, Macron has been consistently stating that he would like to see France spend 3-3.5% of its GDP on defence as soon as possible.
A big question remains: where is all this leading? After the shock caused by vice president J.D. Vance’s speech at the Munich Security Conference last month, European leaders have continued to talk a big game about ensuring that Europe can flex its geopolitical muscles and assert its strategic autonomy from the United States. In a speech delivered to Danish military cadets today, the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, declared that “Europe is ready to step up” to the challenge of shaping “a new international order.”
Yet while this vision of an autonomous Europe might sound alluring, the means are still lacking. Even with governments acting to rebuild long-neglected armed forces, there is little prospect in the short term of European countries being ready to stand on their own two feet without US material, air and intelligence support.
In the end, this continuing dependence means that European leaders’ plans to guarantee Ukraine’s sovereignty, or to deploy troops to safeguard any peace deal, are still overwhelmingly reliant on the whims of one man: Donald Trump. For now, it is still the American president who has the most cards to play. Time will tell whether Putin will overplay his hand and provoke Trump’s fury.
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Good summary of the situation. One thing, I think re: "Yet while this vision of an autonomous Europe might sound alluring, the means are still lacking."
I think it's not so so much the means, as the self-belief. I doubt Europe in 1914 had more means available, but they had the self confidence, both at the top and among the people, to put their best foot forward (for better or worse). This was still true even in 1939. Europe in 2025 has lost any faith in the nation as a force for good and as something to cherish, and doesn't really know what to do about anything, beyond a vague hope that everyone should be nice to each other, and that regulation solves any variation from that ideal. As you can see, I don't really think Europe has ever recovered from WW1.