Ruth Deyermond

It will be very difficult, and more so if - as seems likely - the Trump admin don't withdraw the US from NATO, but carry on damaging it from the inside. I think European policymakers still aren't fully grappling with what the European security architecture should look like minus the US.

Yes, meant to include it.

I assume that's a reference to Sweden and Finland joining NATO, which I left out, but should have included. It's been a mixed picture for Putin on NATO, of course: on the downside, NATO expanded; on the upside, the Trump admin seem to be working hard to make NATO irrelevant.

Yes, I didn't mean that they were better informed about Russia just because they're interested in it - they wouldn't persist in thinking of Russia as a great power if they were.

A "small, victorious war" - just what's needed for an unpopular president mired in corruption claims and questions about his capacity, facing a tricky election. But enough about 1990s Russian history; I wonder what the Trump administration is up to this week?

They seem unable to comprehend that states except the three they think of as great powers have any agency - in their terminology, apart from the US, China, and Russia, it's all NPCs. Since they've sacked most of the people with knowledge and experience, there's no-one around to tell them different.

Наступление России и нового мира Новый мир рождается на наших глазах. Военная операция России на Украине открыла новую эпоху — причем сразу в трех измерениях. И конечно, в четвертом,... РИА Новости, 26.02.2022

It's now over 4 years since state news agency RIA Novosti published an article celebrating the success of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, realised their mistake, and deleted it. The original is here web.archive.org/web/20220226...; translation is here: threadreaderapp.com/thread/14980...

Given the history of Trump's deadlines on Russia's war against Ukraine, it's hard to take the latest one very seriously. Russia isn't even pretending to care about it.

January 2026: Trump drops the use of deadlines, deciding to "personally ask" Putin for a ceasefire in the attack on Ukraine's energy infrastructure. That proves to be as effective as all his Russia-directed deadlines.

December 2025: Ukraine is now given a Christmas deadline to accept a revised, 20 point plan. This is a deadline that's actually met, but which is rendered pointless by Russia rejecting the plan in January 2026 and threatening to kill Western peacekeepers.

November 2025: The Trump administration publish a 28 point "peace plan" they say they wrote, giving Russia pretty much everything it wants. Trump sets a deadline of Thanksgiving for Ukraine to accept it. Ukraine does not accept it.

Early September 2025: Another deadline approaches, this one announced in late August. Trump is very disappointed that Putin is ignoring it. The deadline passes anyway.

8 August 2025: in a dramatic plot twist, Trump marks the deadline Russia has completely ignored by announcing that he'll be rolling out the red carpet for Putin in Alaska at the first US-Russia summit since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Mid-July 2025: Trump gives Russia a 50-day deadline. Late July: Trump cuts the deadline. Putin must now agree to a ceasefire by 8 August.

May 2025: Trump may or may not have given Putin a two week deadline. "Within two weeks. We're gonna find out whether or not (Putin is) tapping us along or not. And if he is, we'll respond a little bit differently." Putin is, but they don't.

Still April 2025: Three days after his non-specific deadline announcement, Trump gets specific-ish: it's 2 weeks or less. Or more.

April 2025: Trump threatens to abandon whatever it is he's doing if there's no progress on peace talks. A few days later he says he's got his own deadline; it's not clear when it is but there's speculation he wants to end the war inside his first 100 days in office.

March 2025: A new deadline. The length is unspecified but, excitingly, this time it's psychological. It's unclear whether Trump's psyche was damaged by Putin ignoring it.

February 2025: This time it's Europe facing the deadline. Europe does not, in fact, sign off on Ukraine's surrender.

21 January 2025: It's 24 hours into Trump's 2nd term and he's already missed his first deadline to end the war in Ukraine.

The credibility of the Trump administration on Ukraine and Russia would be helped if Trump stopped issuing arbitrary deadlines that then pass with zero consequences. A probably incomplete timeline 🧵

Thank you!

Thank you!

Putin has failed in Ukraine, thanks to the incredible bravery and resilience of Ukrainians. He is currently winning in the US. Whether he succeeds in the rest of Europe is up to us.

And as a result of that, it has pushed the most powerful states in Europe into higher defence spending, increased European autonomy, and a closer relationship with Ukraine.

Russia has failed to create a subordinate state in Ukraine; it has, however, managed to persuaded the US leadership to align with it. Trump and others repeat Russian narratives about the war and Ukraine while rolling out the red carpet for Putin.

But if Putin has failed in Ukraine, he’s succeeded extraordinarily in Washington. Since January 2025, Russia’s failure in Ukraine has been limited by the Trump administration, which has aligned with Moscow to try to force Ukraine into capitulation.

Putin has failed on a monumental scale in Ukraine. For four years he’s been dependent for survival on a war he started but which Russia cannot win. In the process, he’s turned Russia – which he desperately wants to be a great power - into the dependent of an actual great power.

Russian lives for Ukrainian lands Moscow’s gains have slowed to a crawl, while the cost in Russian lives has mounted.

Putin started a war against Ukraine because he thought Ukraine wouldn’t put up a fight and it would all be over in a few days. As a result, Russia has had 1.2 million dead, wounded, and missing and has been fighting longer than the USSR fought WW2. www.reuters.com/graphics/UKR...

Putin started against Ukraine because, he claimed, of the need to stop genocide. As a result, Russia has been waging a war designed to completely erase Ukrainian identity, language, and culture, including stealing and indoctrinating Ukrainian children.