A Man With “No Cards to Play”

According to observations of my Kyiv friends, the shelling of Ukrainian cities has greatly increased since the start of Trump's "peace talks" with Russia.
“If you want peace, prepare for war.”
……….

The convicted felon Mr. Trump favors war criminal Mr. Putin.

Mr. Trump promised to end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours. This did not happen and could not happen. Now Russia and the US pretend that there is some progress in the negotiations because it is beneficial for both of them: Mr. Putin wants to continue the war, but not to look like an aggressor, and Mr. Trump promised to end the war, but could not and did not want to influence the Russians. It is already clear to many that the negotiations will end in nothing. Mr. Putin is playing for time and clearly outplaying Mr. Trump: he predictably sent a low-level delegation with the old set of Russian demands to the meeting with the Ukrainians in Istanbul on May 16. Mr. Zelensky could not help but come, although he did not count on Mr. Putin’s coming. Mr. Trump also did not go there because he was formally busy in the Middle East. If he had gone, it would have been even funnier.

Mr. Putin has masterfully caught Mr. Trump in his boasts of "ending the war in 24 hours" and was stringing the US President along. Mr. Trump is clearly pandering to Mr. Putin's every whim and does not want to impose new sanctions on Russia, give weapons to Ukraine or put any other pressure on Mr. Putin at all and is already moving away from the role of mediator. This is what Mr. Trump told to European leaders and Mr. Zelensky immediately after his useless and widely publicized phone call with Mr. Putin on May 19.

Mr. Trump has said many times that he believed Mr. Putin wanted the war to end despite the obvious fact: the Russian president could do that any time since February 24, 2022. Now it seems Mr. Trump has finally saw that «Putin isn’t ready to end war,» effectively admitting that Russian President has been stringing him along.

Mr. Trump's hollow calls “Vladimir, STOP!” on his Truth Social are ridiculous and it's not even clear which Vladimir he was addressing to — Mr. Putin or Mr. Zelensky. Mr. Trump also wrote in the same post that he was “not happy with the Russian strikes on KYIV. Not necessary, and very bad timing… 5000 soldiers a week are dying. Lets get the Peace Deal DONE!”
In my opinion, Mr. Trump doesn’t care at all about Kyiv or 5,000 soldiers dying every week. In 2018, he refused to visit a military cemetery near Paris where American soldiers were buried. He called them “losers” then. I don’t believe Mr. Trump cares more about the Russian and Ukrainian soldiers dying now than he did about the American soldiers who had died then. They are all “losers” for him. I wonder whether Mr. Trump’s supporters also think so.
Mr. Putin is clearly counting on Russia's summer offensive, Mr. Trump's special attitude to him, the split they both are causing in the former unity of opponents of the war in Ukraine, and he does not want to go to peace now.

Mr. Trump is clearly losing the peace talks about Ukraine and gives the impression of “a man with no cards to play,” even though he has “the cards to play.” He has no desire and lets America down.

Mr. Trump can do nothing about Israel’s war in Gaza, too. Thus, he may get the Nobel Peace Prize, but not for making peace, but for the sum of his peacemaking efforts.

Many Republicans are upset by Mr. Trump’s impotent position in negotiations with Russia.

Many GOP lawmakers want Mr. Trump to take a tougher line with Mr. Putin. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) recently said: “You can’t have a peace deal without good-faith negotiators on both sides, and I’m concerned that Putin is not negotiating in good faith; he’s just stringing the U.S. and President Trump along.”

Senators L. Graham (R-S.C.) and R. Blumenthal (D-Conn.) can take on the role of Putin's dream killers if they pass their law through Congress with 500% sanctions on Russia and the countries which buy from it oil, gas, uranium and other products. The Senators state that their hard-hitting sanctions bill has over 80 cosponsors in the Senate, i.e., it can even overcome the President's veto.
Ok, let's see how much the decency of Mr. Graham and Mr. Blumenthal are above their instinct for self-preservation.

However, even if the senators are not afraid and submit this law for consideration, it will not be adopted anyway. A 500% tariff will have to be imposed then on all goods from India and, most importantly, from China.
Mr. Trump already tried to do something similar after April 2, 2025 and introduced his famous import tariffs on 185 countries, and, in particular, brought tariffs on goods from China to an absurd 145%. That practically meant stopping the international trade of the US. As a result, the stock and bond markets of America plummeted, but Mr. Trump (probably thanks to a tip from Treasury Secretary Mr. Bessent) came to his senses and urgently took a 90-day pause with tariffs, and then reduced them on Chinese imports to 30%. I think Mr. Trump realizes he looked ridiculous with this hasty retreat, so the 500% tariffs from Senators Graham and Blumenthal will never pass. Mr. Trump and the Treasury Secretary will not allow that happen.
China and India can safely keep buying Russian cheap oil, etc.

And Israel, too...

Mr. Trump also has no influence on the developments in Gaza and Israel. Moreover, relations between the US and Israel have been deteriorating very quickly lately.

At first, Mr. Trump was very active in supporting the Israelis, frequently calling B. Netanyahu, in particular when Israel withdrew from the ceasefire in March and began a new phase of the war. However, Mr. Trump’s recent visit to the Middle East, the reception he received there, expensive gifts, the US President’s active contacts with the authorities of the Persian Gulf countries and even with the interim President of the Syrian Arab Republic, Ahmed al-Sharaa, changed Israel’s attitude towards the US. And on May 16, the Israelis launched the next offensive in the Gaza Strip despite Mr. Trump’s peacemaking efforts.

And yet, according to the US intelligence, Israel is preparing strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities despite ongoing US-Iran nuclear negotiations.

World War III, consisting of several conflicts, is flaring up. This is a huge field of activity for a peacemaker like the US President, but two peacekeeping missions of Mr. Trump have already failed.


P.S. Tom Nichols recently expressed a seditious idea in his article in “The Atlantic”: “Trump is the junior partner in the Russian-American relationship.”
Yes, but Mr. Putin is a junior partner of Mr. Xi Jinping! That’s it. The America has fallen back to the number 3 position in the world! And perhaps that's right. The US is clearly deteriorating.

A good indicator of the deterioration is the economy and, in particular, the recent assessment of America's credit rating by Moody's. It is the last of the three major respected economic research agencies which downgraded the US credit rating from the highest Aaa to the next one, Aa1.
This means that the US is less trusted in the world. Yes, it is really time to make America great again.
But who will do that and how? Mr. Trump is clearly failing.