- Putin will fight until West gets involved with its terms: sources.
- Let’s say that economic pressure will not force Putin to change course.
- Trump promised weapons to Ukraine, threatened sanctions to Russia.
President Vladimir Putin intends to continue fighting in Ukraine until the West is dedicated to its terms of peace, it is not based on the threats of Donald Trump of tougher sanctions, and their territorial demands can be extended as Russian forces advance, three sources close to the Kremlin said.
Putin, who ordered Russian troops to Ukraine in February 2022 after eight years of struggle in the east of the country between the separatists backed by Russian and the Ukrainian troops, believes that Russia’s economy and his military are strong enough to resist any additional western measure, the sources said.
Trump expressed frustration on Monday with Putin’s refusal to accept a high fire and announced a wave of weapons supplies to Ukraine, including patriotic air missile systems. He also threatened with more sanctions to Russia unless a peace agreement was reached within 50 days.
The three Russian sources, familiar with high -level Kremlin’s thinking, said Putin will not stop war under pressure from the West and believes that Russia, which has survived the toughest sanctions imposed by the West, can endure more economic difficulties, including threatened US tariffs aimed at Russian oil buyers.
“Putin believes that no one has seriously committed to him in the details of peace in Ukraine, including Americans, so he will continue until he gets what he wants,” said one of the sources. Reuters under condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the situation.
Despite several telephone calls between Trump and Putin, and Visits to Russia for the special envoy of the United States Steve Witkoff, the Russian leader believes that it has not been detailed discussions on the basis of a peace plan, the source said.
“Putin values the relationship with Trump and had good discussions with Witkoff, but Russia’s interests come above all,” added the person.
He asked for a comment on Reuters reports, White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly blamed former President Joe Biden for allowing war to explode during his administration.
“Unlike Biden, President Trump focuses on stopping the murder, and Putin will face sanctions and scathing rates if he does not agree with a high fire,” he said.
Putin’s peace conditions include a legally binding promise that NATO will not expand the east, Ukrainian neutrality and the limits in their armed forces, protection for Russian speakers who live there and the acceptance of the territorial gains of Russia, the sources said.
He is also willing to discuss a security guarantee for Ukraine that involves great powers, although it is far from being clear how this would work, the sources said.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said that Ukraine will never recognize Russia’s sovereignty over his conquered regions and that kyiv retains the sovereign right to decide if he wants to join NATO. His office did not respond to a request for comments for this story.
A second source familiar with Kremlin Thinking said Putin considered Moscow’s objectives much more important than any possible economic loss of western pressure, and did not worry about the threats of the United States to impose tariffs on China and India for buying Russian oil.
Two of the sources said that Russia has the advantage in the battlefield and its economy, oriented to war, is exceeding the production of the NATO alliance led by the United States in key ammunition, such as artillery shells.
Russia, which already controls almost a fifth of the Ukrainian territory, has advanced about 1,415 km square (546 square miles) in the last three months, according to DeepstateMap data, an open source intelligence map of the conflict.
“The appetite comes with eating,” said the first source, which means that Putin could look for more territory unless war was stopped. The other two sources independently confirmed the same.
Russia currently controls Crimea, which annexed in 2014, plus the entire Eastern region of Luhansk, more than 70% of the Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, and fragments of Kharkiv, Sumy and Dnipropetrovsk regions. Putin’s public position is that those first five regions, Crimea and the four regions of eastern Ukraine, are now part of Russia and kyiv must be withdrawn before there may be peace.
Putin could fight until the defenses of Ukraine collapse and expand their territorial ambitions to include more than Ukraine, the sources said.
“Russia will act based on the weakness of Ukraine,” said the third source, adding that Moscow could stop his offensive after conquering the four oriental regions of Ukraine if he finds a rigid resistance. “But if it falls, there will be an even greater conquest of Dnipropetrovsk, Sumy and Kharkiv.”
Zelenskiy has said that Russia’s summer offensive does not go as much success as Moscow had expected. Its main brass, which acknowledges that Russian forces exceed those of Ukraine in number, say that kyiv troops are maintaining the line and forcing Russia to pay a high price for their profits.
Trump and Putin
The United States says that 1.2 million people have been injured or killed in the war, the most fatal conflict in Europe since World War II. Neither Russia nor Ukraine give full figures for their losses, and Moscow rules out Western estimates as propaganda.
Trump, since he returned to the White House in January after promising a rapid end of the war, has tried to repair the ties with Russia, speaking at least six times by phone with Putin. On Monday, he said that the Russian leader was not “a murderer, but he is a hard guy.”
In an abrupt break from his Democratic predecessor Joe Biden, Trump’s administration has expelled war as a conflict of mortal representation between Russia and the United States, he withdrew support to Ukraine that joined NATO and raised the idea of recognizing the annexation of Crimea de Russia.
Putin portrays the war as a decisive moment in Moscow’s relations with the West, which as he humiliated Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 by expanding NATO and invading what considers the sphere of influence of Moscow, including Ukraine and Georgia.
Putin has not yet accepted a Trump proposal for a high unconditional fire, which was quickly backed by Kyiv. The last days have seen Russia use hundreds of drones to attack Ukrainian cities.
However, Trump told the BBC In an interview published on Tuesday that he had not ended with Putin and that a Ukraine agreement remained on the cards.
The first source rejected Trump’s statement last week that Putin had thrown “shit”, saying that there had been no lack of transformation of positive conversations with Witkoff into a substantive discussion on the basis of peace.
A White House official said on Monday that Trump was considering 100% of tariffs on Russian goods, as well as sanctions secondary to other countries that buy their exports as a means to take Moscow to the negotiating table. China and India are the largest oil buyers.
Despite the existing sanctions and the cost of combating the greatest conflict in Europe since World War II, the economy of $ 2 billion of Russia has had much better than many in Russia or the West they expected. The Economic Ministry predicts a slowdown to an annual growth of 2.5% in 2025 from 4.3% last year.
The second person said that Trump had little leverage about Putin and suggested that even if Washington imposed tariffs on the buyers of Russian crude, then Moscow would still find a way to sell it to world markets.
“Putin understands that Trump is an unpredictable person who can do unpleasant things, but is maneuvering to avoid irritating it too much,” said the source.
Looking towards the future, one of the sources said that there was likely to be an escalation of the crisis in the coming months, and without the dangers of the tensions between the two largest nuclear powers in the world. And, predicted, the war would continue.
