German defence minister says Putin ‘is playing a game here’ and calls Russian president’s demands ‘unacceptable’

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European leaders have reacted sceptically to the limited ceasefire in Ukraine agreed by Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, saying it has made it abundantly clear that the Russian president is not serious about seeking a peaceful end to the three-year-old conflict.

During a call with the US president, Putin agreed to a partial ceasefire that would stop his forces targeting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, but declined to commit to the 30-day full ceasefire plan pitched by Trump last week and agreed to by Ukraine.

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A highly touted partial ceasefire in Ukraine, brokered by Donald Trump, disintegrated shortly after the end of a phone call between the U.S. president and Russian leader Vladimir Putin during which it was agreed. 

An hour after the confab, where the two leaders settled on a very partial 30-day ceasefire halting attacks on “energy and infrastructure,” 40 Russian drones flew into Ukrainian airspace, striking civilian buildings including a hospital in Sumy, in northeastern Ukraine, and an energy substation in Sloviansk, Donetsk region.

“You see? [There is] already an air alert, so this [ceasefire] is already not working,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Tuesday night while speaking to reporters.

Zelenskyy also noted that if Russia does not adhere to the fragile ceasefire, Ukraine will fight back: “There won’t be a situation where Russia will continue to shell our energy infrastructure and we won’t respond. We will respond.” 

Following Tuesday night’s strikes, Russian officials in Krasnodar claimed that a Ukrainian drone attack caused a fire at an oil depot Wednesday morning, and the Russian Defense Ministry also reported that several Ukrainian drones had entered Russian airspace.

In the much-awaited call between Trump and Putin, which came after weeks of American diplomatic efforts to find a resolution to Russia’s war in Ukraine, Washington tried to persuade the Kremlin leader to accept the proposal for a 30-day ceasefire, which had already been agreed to by Kyiv.

However, Russia only agreed to a partial ceasefire on civilian and energy infrastructure.

“Today, Putin effectively rejected the proposal for a full ceasefire,” Zelenskyy stressed, adding that “the pressure on Russia must continue for the sake of peace.”

The extraordinary demands of the Russian leader to weaken Ukraine would make a mockery of any peace deal

• Vladimir Putin agrees to 30-day halt to attacks on Ukraine’s energy grid

Donald Trump began his conversation with Vladimir Putin with a simple demand: a 30-day ceasefire on land, sea and air which Ukraine has already signed up to, as an initial measure on which to build towards a peace.

Instead, what the US president got from Putin were questions, half-offers and limited concessions – and, above all, an extraordinary demand from the Russian leader to weaken Ukraine that would make a mockery of any peace agreement.

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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has accused Russia of effectively rejecting a US-backed ceasefire proposal, following a barrage of attacks on civilian infrastructure just hours after Moscow agreed to pause strikes on Ukraine’s energy grid.

THEY TALKED ABOUT UKRAINE, BUT Ukraine wasn’t at the table. They spoke of peace, but the bombs kept falling.

They called it a ceasefire, but it’s nothing more than a gift to a war criminal.

Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin had their little phone call, their moment of mutual admiration. Trump, a convicted felon. Putin, a wanted war criminal. And together, they came to an agreement: a ceasefire that Ukraine never asked for, that Ukraine was never even consulted on.

As they spoke, Ukraine was under massive missile attack. This is the "result" of their negotiations.

Trump calls it peace. But do you call it peace when entire families are buried under rubble? When stolen Ukrainian children are still trapped in Russia, renamed, brainwashed, erased? When the invader still occupies your home, your city, your country?

That is not peace. That is submission.

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Trump says the war "should never have started", as if it was some tragic accident. As if Ukraine had a choice in whether its cities were bombed, its women raped, its people abducted.

The war didn’t merely "start." Russia attacked. Putin attacked.

And now Trump wants to reward him with a deal. Not a deal for Ukraine. Not a deal for justice. A deal for Putin, so he can stabilize his economy, sell his gas, stockpile his weapons, and prepare for the next round of war.

Can you believe that?

A ceasefire doesn’t mean Russian troops leave. It doesn’t mean war criminals face trial. It doesn’t mean justice for Bucha, for Mariupol, for every city turned to rubble by Russian bombs.

It means Russia gets time. Time to regroup, time to rearm, time to prepare for another slaughter, another invasion, another genocide.

Because let’s take things clear: this is a war of extermination.

Russia doesn’t just want land. It wants Ukraine erased. Our culture, our people, our history. Russia wants Ukraine to stop existing.

And Trump, whether through cowardice or corruption, probably both, is handing Putin exactly what he wants.

Trump’s plan is simple: protect Russian oil and gas so Putin can keep funding his war.

Not a word about returning abducted Ukrainian children. Not a word about stopping Russian missile strikes on civilians. Not a word about justice for those tortured in the occupied territories.

Because this was never about peace. It was about business.

About "huge economic deals." About Trump’s personal interests.

About the wealthy few who stand to profit from Russian gas, from war, from suffering.

The mask is off. There is no diplomacy, no neutrality here. This is Trump openly doing Putin’s bidding, propping up a dictator who has spent the last 25 years waging war, silencing dissent, assassinating opponents, killing anyone who stands in his way.

We don’t need a ceasefire. We need Russian troops out of Ukraine.

We need war criminals on trial in The Hague. We need the return of every stolen Ukrainian child.

A ceasefire without withdrawal is surrender. Would you call it peace if an intruder broke into your home, killed your family, stole your belongings, then sat down at your table and told you to move on?

A ceasefire without justice tells every dictator that war crimes work.

That genocide is just a phase of war, not a crime.

A ceasefire without Ukraine at the table is an insult. As if Ukraine is some distant land, not a country of millions of people fighting for their lives.

No, we will not accept a "peace" that lets Russia keep its stolen land, its mass graves, its war crimes.

No, we will not pretend that Trump and Putin are negotiating peace when they are simply negotiating how best to carve up a nation that refuses to die.

They are making their choices. To accept occupation, to let war crimes go unpunished. But we also need to make our choice.

We have already chosen to fight.

If this were your land, what choice would you make?

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📖 “The Divine Comedian: Ukraine’s Journey Through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise” is more than a book: it's my attempt to capture Ukraine’s unbreakable spirit in our darkest and brightest moments. If you want to see this war through the eyes of those who refuse to surrender, I invite you to read it. Download it for free in PDF and Kindle formats:

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Jamie Dettmer is opinion editor at POLITICO Europe.

“Plan A is: Get the shooting to stop,” said U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday, noting the U.S. administration’s main goal is to secure a quick ceasefire before moving on to broader talks about a settlement to permanently end Russia’s war on Ukraine.

But that clearly isn’t what Russian President Vladimir Putin has in mind, as he demonstrated by withholding his agreement to a full 30-day ceasefire in his 90-minute phone conversation with U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday. Shortly after the call, Russia launched a drone assault over Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities.

Offering the diplomatic bare minimum, the Russian leader said he would hold off striking at Ukraine’s energy infrastructure for 30 days — a self-serving concession as that will save Russia’s energy system from being hit by the Ukrainians, who have just dramatically increased the range of their powerful Neptune subsonic cruise missiles from 200 kilometers to 1,000 kilometers.

All in all, Trump and his motley crew of special envoys, family members and presidential pals seem keener to converge with Russia on broader geopolitical issues than really press Putin hard on Ukraine.

The Kremlin’s read-out from the call was long on the idea of a broad Washington-Moscow reset — on topics ranging from economic cooperation to ice hockey — and short on anything that looked like a meaningful peace deal for Ukrainians.

In a sign that a real breakthrough is a remote prospect, Russia stuck firmly to its maximalist guns on demanding an end to military aid and intelligence to Kyiv, while wanting a fix to the “root causes” of the war — Kremlin shorthand for eviscerating democracy in Ukraine and thwarting the country’s political trajectory toward NATO and the EU.

Going along with Volodya

The Trump camp is showing it is all too ready to go along with Putin as he purposely mixes discrete stages of the Ukraine negotiations, changing the sequencing either to ensure any final settlement is firmly in Russia’s favor or to avoid acceding to a full ceasefire altogether.

The Russian leader and his top aides have been emphatically outlining their red lines for a peace deal over the past weeks — conditions that would, in effect, rip the state of Ukraine to shreds. They want guarantees Ukraine will never join NATO; that it will remain geopolitically neutral and unable to command its own fate, with severe limitations on weapons. Moscow also wants Crimea and the four eastern oblasts they claim as part of the Russian Federation to be internationally recognized as such. And they’ve ruled out the deployment of European troops to monitor any peace deal that’s agreed.

In short, Russia is delivering an absolute “no” to the security guarantees Ukraine wants to protect it against what its sees as inevitable further attacks from Putin.

Rather than wait for formal peace talks, the Kremlin is trying to cajole agreement on its red lines now, holding the ceasefire proposal hostage without having to formally reject it — a move that would risk Trump’s wrath. Trump has promised more sanctions against Moscow if Putin doesn’t commit to a peace deal but, for now at least, he’s allowing the Russian president to slip off the hook and set the tempo.

A familiar playbook

Watching this play out, some commentators argue Putin is dithering, playing for time and unable to make up his mind. But it can also be said that he is merely dipping into a playbook he’s used before. Much like he did with American negotiators over Syria, he’s forcing his interlocutors deeper into a labyrinth of conditions and “root causes,” seeking to wear them down and either manage to secure his main goals or drive everything into an interminable back-and-forth.

As far as the Kremlin sees it, negotiations are the continuation of war — just by other means.

In flipping the negotiation process, Putin is getting a helping hand from Team Trump.

Trump and his special envoy Steven Witkoff have already been discussing the terms of the settlement in order to try to get the ceasefire deal, while Trump and Putin have been talking about “land,” “power plants” and “dividing up certain assets” before any “official” peace talks.

Before speaking with Putin this week, Trump boasted on his Truth Social media platform that “many elements of a Final Agreement have been agreed to.”

That’s news to Ukraine. Trump notionally agreeing to Putin’s terms about land and Ukraine’s assets is forcing Kyiv into a position of either rolling over and accepting what the two leaders have privately agreed or rejecting the pre-packaged deal.

If Ukraine were to object to being presented with a fait accompli, Putin can simply blame Kyiv for any breakdown in negotiations, which would feed into Trump’s predisposition to identify Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as the villain.

Team Trump has already made its disdain for Zelenskyy patently clear. It was on public display during the ugly clash in the Oval Office in February. And it has also been made obvious behind-the-scenes, with the secret talks between members of Trump’s entourage and Zelenskyy’s domestic political rivals, which POLITICO revealed earlier this month.

Those talks were part of a U.S. bid to muster support for early elections — which they’re convinced Zelenskyy would lose, despite current opinion polls indicating otherwise. And according to three Ukrainian lawmakers and a Republican foreign policy expert, all granted anonymity to speak freely, the back-channeling involved Trump’s son Don Jr., his son-in-law Jared Kushner, controversial conservative talk-show host Tucker Carlson and Witkoff — the latter being the only one who has any official role. POLITICO has since reached out to all four for comment about the talks but has received no response.

“They see Zelenskyy as an impediment,” the Republican foreign policy expert said. “How do you undercut Zelenskyy and make him more compliant? Well, you engage his political adversaries, and you show him that the United States has other Ukrainian partners and other options.”

“But I think that much of the Trump world, or at least some of the Trump world, is delusional in thinking they can anoint someone in Ukraine to be their partner and to electorally succeed in the short-to-medium term whenever elections take place,” they added. “It’s very much a lack of understanding of Ukraine.”

Likewise, there may be some delusion as to what Putin is about, as he tries to dictate the broad terms of a final deal before the guns have fallen silent — terms that if largely accepted, would accomplish his main war aim: subjugating Ukraine and keeping it within Moscow’s grasp.

“Putin appears to have been partially successful in holding the ceasefire proposal hostage as part of his efforts to extract preemptive concessions from U.S. President Donald Trump in negotiations to end the war,” the Institute for the Study War noted, in a similar vein.

“Putin is attempting to change the sequence of talks in order to push Trump into making preemptive concessions on issues that are not part of the U.S.-Ukrainian temporary ceasefire but are part of Russia’s war aims,” the think tank warned.