U.S. President Donald Trump began the week promising to hit Russia with new sanctions and tariffs on Friday, before then granting Russian President Vladimir Putin a one-on-one meeting getting any public concessions in return.YURI KADOBNOV/AFP/Getty Images
What began as U.S. economic pressure aimed at forcing Russia to make peace with Ukraine and then escalated into nuclear sabre-rattling, is now headed toward a very Cold War-like summit: a face-to-face meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, with the fate of Ukraine on the table.
As in the Cold War, the talks – which the Kremlin suggested could take place as soon as next week – could lead to a détente, and peace in Ukraine, or no progress at all. Unlike in the Cold War, the rules of the game in 2025 are far from set.
Mr. Trump began this week promising to hit Russia and its trading partners with new sanctions and tariffs on Aug. 8 if Mr. Putin didn’t halt his invasion of Ukraine by Friday. Then, 48 hours before that deadline, he granted Mr. Putin a one-on-one meeting – treating the Russian President as an equal after years of Western isolation – without the Kremlin boss making any public concessions in return.
Yuri Ushakov, a key foreign policy adviser to Mr. Putin, said on Thursday that the venue for the Putin-Trump summit had been “agreed in principle and will be announced a bit later.” While U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff said the White House hoped the meeting with Mr. Putin would later be expanded to include Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Mr. Ushakov said that had not been discussed.
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Mr. Trump will likely try to portray the summit as a result of his threats of new tariffs and sanctions, but it could equally be seen as the Kremlin calling his bluff by setting off an escalatory cycle that Mr. Trump – who is seeking a Nobel Peace Prize, not an expanded war – wasn’t interested in.
Suddenly, top Russian officials were posting on social media about nuclear war. That war of words sparked the redeployment of nuclear submarines. Next came Moscow abandoning restrictions on a class of nuclear-capable missile.
Ian Bremmer, president of the New York-based Eurasia Group, a global political risk analysis firm, said the nuclear rhetoric served as a reminder that the war in Ukraine is essentially a proxy war between Russia and NATO – one that could yet boil over into a more direct conflict.
“The fact that this war has been going on for 3½ years and the people bearing the brunt of this are largely Ukrainians shouldn’t distract us from the fact that this could escalate into something very dangerous,” he said.
Mr. Bremmer added that Mr. Trump had shown an “outsized reaction to the threat of nuclear war” in the past, recalling how he had accused Mr. Zelensky of “gambling with World War Three” during their public clash in the White House earlier this year.
It was former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, writing hours after Mr. Trump’s imposition of the Aug. 8 deadline, who first raised the possibility of a direct conflict between the two superpowers.
“Each new ultimatum is a threat and a step toward war. Not between Russia and Ukraine, but with [Mr. Trump’s] own country,” Mr. Medvedev posted on X on July 28.
Three days later, Mr. Trump used his own Truth Social website to warn Mr. Medvedev that he was “entering very dangerous territory” and referring to the Russian economy as “dead.”
Mr. Medvedev, who is now the deputy head of Russia’s National Security Council, retorted on Telegram that Mr. Trump should remember how dangerous a “dead hand” can be. The latter was interpreted as a reference to the Soviet Union’s “dead hand” system of nuclear deterrence – still believed to be in use by Russia today – which was designed to automatically launch intercontinental nuclear missiles in response to a nuclear strike against Russia, even if the senior leadership in Moscow were no longer alive to order it.
On Aug. 1, Mr. Trump declared that he had ordered two nuclear submarines “to be positioned in the appropriate regions, just in case these foolish and inflammatory statements are more than just that.”
On Monday, Russia responded by announcing that it was ending a self-imposed moratorium on deploying intermediate-range ballistic missiles.
A Cold War-era treaty signed in 1987 between the United States and the Soviet Union barred nuclear-capable missiles with ranges of between 500 and 5,500 kilometres. Mr. Trump walked away from that treaty in 2019, during his first term in office, though Moscow says it has continued to abide by it.
U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff has expressed hope that the meeting between Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin could be expanded to include Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images
On Wednesday, the Russian and Chinese navies carried out a joint drill in which they practised hunting and destroying an enemy submarine.
The entire sequence left Russia-watchers and Cold War historians struggling to assess this very modern round of nuclear brinkmanship.
“It is kind of unusual to have nuclear submarines being sent somewhere as a result of a spat on social media,” said Sergey Radchenko, a Cold War historian at the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs. “I don’t think that has ever happened before.”
While he clashed publicly with Mr. Zelensky early in his term, then cut off the flow of U.S. weapons to Ukraine, Mr. Trump has since become frustrated with Mr. Putin’s unwillingness to stop the fighting. Recently, his administration has authorized the sale of U.S.-made weapons to European countries for re-export to Ukraine.
Mr. Bremmer said the references to nuclear weapons clearly got under Mr. Trump’s skin. “Trump cares about the fact that the Russians are not only embarrassing him and making him look bad, but members of the so-called inner circle are making nuclear threats against the United States and the West,” he said.
Wednesday saw a return to more traditional diplomacy, as Mr. Witkoff travelled to Moscow for a three-hour meeting with Mr. Putin. Afterward, both sides described the talks as productive, and there were reports that Russia may be willing to agree to a ceasefire in the skies over Ukraine – an end to the missile and drone attacks on Ukrainian cities, so long as Ukraine halts its own long-range strikes on Russia’s military and energy infrastructure – though the ground war would continue to grind on. Russia currently occupies about 20 per cent of Ukrainian territory and claims five Ukrainian regions as its own.
There is no sign that Russia has altered its demands for ending the invasion. In addition to its territorial claims, Moscow is seeking the demilitarization of Ukraine, guarantees that it will never join the NATO military alliance, and changes to the Ukrainian constitution to enshrine the rights of Russian speakers.
New sanctions were never likely to deter Mr. Putin from pursuing a war that he sees as essential to Russia’s security, and which has become the Kremlin’s main tool for mobilizing and controlling society. Russia has been hit with an array of Western sanctions over the past 11 years, dating back to the 2014 annexation of Crimea, and its economy is still forecast to slightly expand this year.
The new economic measures are primarily directed at Russia’s partners, who would face additional tariffs on exports to the United States if they continued trading with Moscow after the deadline passes. On Wednesday, the White House announced it was imposing an additional 25-per-cent tariff on India as punishment for buying Russian energy. No measures were announced against China, which is an even larger consumer.
Both India and China have indicated that they intend to continue buying Russian oil and gas, which the Kremlin has been selling to them at double-digit discounts since the start of the war for Ukraine.
The summit will be a chance to cool tensions – though Ukraine will rightly be nervous about the price Mr. Trump may be willing to pay.
Mr. Radchenko said Mr. Trump looked “increasingly desperate” to end the war. “He’s manoeuvred himself into a situation where he actually, you know, either he has to basically back the Biden administration’s policy, which is something he doesn’t want to do … or he has to basically completely disengage and pull out of this.”
Mr. Putin, meanwhile, likely sees no reason to compromise – at a summit or anywhere else. “Putin is determined to press on while he has the advantage,” Mr. Radchenko said. “But he’s, of course, willing to play along and negotiate, if that can help his broader war effort.”