Once again, Vladimir Putin indicates he wants the war in Europe to go on

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Editorial: By entertaining a Ukrainian peace deal whose miserable terms not even a desperate US president could accept – before then promptly abandoning it – Moscow is stalling for time. The coalition of the willing must put more pressure on the faltering Russian economy

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The Kremlin has denied that Vladimir Putin rejected a peace deal brokered by the United States, but even Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s emissaries, could draw no other conclusion after five hours of talks with the Russian president.

Mr Witkoff, the US president’s special envoy, and Mr Kushner, his son-in-law and an informal architect of the Gaza peace plan, reflect their president’s desperation to do a deal. Yet even after these stooges talked to Putin from 7pm until midnight, all that a Kremlin spokesperson would say was that the meeting was “useful, constructive and meaningful”, but that “we are no closer to resolving the crisis in Ukraine, and there is much work to do”.

In other words, the Russian president is stalling for time. Again. He hopes that Mr Trump’s visible hankering for the Nobel Peace Prize will cause him to put pressure on the Ukrainians to agree to a deal that is tantamount to surrender.

Yet every time Mr Trump tries to push for a deal, Putin – like Lucy taking away Charlie Brown’s football – keeps a viable agreement out of reach. The US president is hungry for a deal, but not on any terms. Mr Trump knows that the Nobel Prize committee – never mind the American people – will not approve of a sellout that allows Putin to turn Ukraine into a province of a new Russian empire.

Meanwhile, Mr Trump has still failed to carry out his threat to withdraw the support of the US for Ukraine, knowing full well that it would make him look weak. Thus, the diplomatic dance continues, as Russian forces continue to make incremental progress on the battlefield and the Russian economy continues to falter.

The only thing that has changed is that the group of Ukraine’s allies, known as the coalition of the willing and including the United Kingdom, has strengthened its resolve to step up in support of the Ukrainian people.

Germany, Poland, the Netherlands – and also Canada, notably – have announced that they will spend hundreds of millions of dollars more to buy US weapons to give to Ukraine.

The Russian leader responded to the sharper tone of European leaders in his news conference when he protested that “we are not planning to go to war with Europe”, before appearing to issue a threat by saying that “if Europe suddenly wants to fight us and starts, we’re ready right now”.

This is classic Putin – playing on deep reserves of Russian nationalist paranoia, protesting his defensive aims and blaming wars of Russian aggression on “provocation” by the West.

It is intended for consumption by his domestic public opinion, which still sees the invasion of Ukraine as a defensive operation to protect Russia’s southern border from the “threat” of Nato.

Which is why, as well as increasing military supplies and civilian support to the Ukrainian people, the coalition of the willing must do more to increase the pressure on the Russian economy. The resilience of the Russian people should not be doubted, but the more they have to bear the economic costs of the conflict – in addition to the casualties – the harder it will be for Putin to sustain this senseless war of attrition.

Russian oil and gas are still leaking across borders in exchange for hard cash. If President Trump really wants peace, he should be persuaded to use the economic power of the US as leverage to turn off the taps.

But in the end, if President Putin is to be persuaded to agree to peace on equal terms with Ukraine, the Europeans (and Canada) must step up to their responsibilities and make up for Donald Trump’s erratic support by giving the Ukrainian people the tools they need to finish the job.

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