For Ukrainians, for all Europeans, for Americans who are positively disposed toward Ukraine and hope for its victory in the war with authoritarian Russia, the main event of October was undoubtedly Donald Trump's decision to increase pressure on Putin. As the American president himself said, “The time has come, we have waited too long.”

To tell the truth, Donald Trump is right about this. From the first days of his tenure in the White House, the American president tried to convince his Russian counterpart of the need to end hostilities on the Russian-Ukrainian front. At the same time, Trump offered Putin privileged conditions for ending the war: Russia would retain control over the occupied Ukrainian territories, and the lifting of sanctions against Russia, and the return of its assets frozen in the West, and fruitful economic cooperation with the United States, and even something unheard of — recognition of Russia's status as occupier of Crimea since 2014.

But one phone call between Trump and Putin followed another, and the Russian president still did not agree with his American counterpart's proposals. When, in May, the United States had already agreed on new sanctions against Russia with the European Union, Putin proposed resuming the negotiation process between Ukraine and Russia, which had allegedly been interrupted in Istanbul in 2019. Trump agreed to this proposal, abandoned the new sanctions, forced the Ukrainian delegation to fly to Turkey — and again faced a simulation of negotiations. The Russians stubbornly repeated the same demands, known since 2022, which lead not only to Ukraine's capitulation, but also to its gradual disappearance from the political map of the modern world.

When it became clear that the negotiation process was not moving forward, Trump decided to take matters into his own hands and met with Putin in Anchorage. Obviously, the American president hoped that in a personal meeting he would be able to convince his Russian counterpart of the rationality of his proposals and the need for a ceasefire. But this did not happen either. Moreover, the summit in Alaska was described in the media as a real foreign policy fiasco for Donald Trump — although he himself denies this. However, a big question remains: why did the American president invite the Russian president to the meeting if he did not achieve any concessions from him on fundamental issues?

Nevertheless, the summit in Alaska was a serious lesson for Trump. He realized that if his meetings with Putin were fruitless, it would affect his political reputation and even the Republicans' chances in the upcoming midterm elections. Now Trump needs a concrete decision from Putin that will stop the fighting in the Russian-Ukrainian war. To achieve this result, the American president resorted to serious threats against Putin — up to and including the possible allocation of Tomahawk long-range missiles to Ukraine for strikes on the sovereign territory of the Russian Federation and the introduction of serious sanctions against Russia.

Putin responded to these threats by calling Trump with new conciliatory words and compliments. The American president once again had hope that the Russian president might be inclined toward peace. That is why Trump's meeting in Washington with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky took place in a somewhat tense atmosphere — because the American president already believed that he might have to put pressure on his Ukrainian counterpart in order to reach any real agreements with Putin.

But no agreements were reached. There was not even any hope of reaching agreements. Trump, already schooled by his experience in Alaska, refused to arrange a future meeting with Putin through informal channels—as he had done when he sent his special representative Steve Witkoff to Russia, who then tried to interpret Putin's signals and promises. Now, the American president has decided to arrange the meeting through official channels in order to achieve a real document that would define the mechanism for a ceasefire on the Russian-Ukrainian front. The heads of the foreign ministries of the two countries were supposed to prepare such an outcome.

 

But the very first conversation between US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov showed that the Russians had not abandoned any of their demands and that Putin was not even considering a ceasefire on the Russian-Ukrainian front. This Kremlin stubbornness forced Trump not only to cancel the meeting in Budapest, but also to impose his first sanctions against the Russian Federation — against energy giants Rosneft and Lukoil.

 

And this is not just about money, but also about symbols. After all, the state-owned corporation Rosneft was created by Putin in the early years of his rule in Russia as a result of the expropriation of the Yukos company for one of Putin's closest associates, Igor Sechin. Like the state-owned Gazprom, this corporation is one of Putin's most important sources of income, and, of course, the Russian president would not want to part with his profits. So Washington understands very well where to strike Putin where it hurts.

Putin reacted angrily to Trump's actions. He demonstratively conducted tests of long-range missiles that can carry nuclear weapons and sent his special representative Kirill Dmitriev to Washington, who reminded Americans in numerous television appearances about both the testing of these missiles and the possible increase in gasoline prices. However, these warnings are unlikely to scare the administration, which has already realized that the Russian president only responds to the language of force and that no other arguments work on him.

Therefore, we can be sure that in the coming months, Washington and Moscow will continue on the path of further escalation. Yes, this is very dangerous, but there are simply no other ways to end the Russian-Ukrainian war, and there never have been.

Putin himself also chooses the language of escalation and pressure. Only he is putting pressure on Ukraine. Combined shelling of our country using the entire arsenal currently at the disposal of the Russian army has become systematic. It is obvious that Putin hopes to completely destroy Ukraine's energy potential — its gas production, distribution stations — and plunge Ukrainians into the worst winter since the beginning of the great Russian-Ukrainian war.

The Russian president continues to hope that the Ukrainian population will realize that only complete and absolute surrender to Russia, with the elimination of its own “artificial” state, will save it from these hardships. He may not be able to advance far with his army, but as long as the Ukrainian army holds its positions, he is turning Ukraine into a deserted wasteland. This is also one of the important goals of the Russian-Ukrainian war, which the regime's propagandists do not even hide.

One of them, Vladimir Solovyov, said outright that the depopulation of large Ukrainian cities should take place in the near future. And I am sure that this is precisely the scenario for the coming months and years that is being discussed and approved in the Kremlin. After all, a demographic victory of the Russians over the Ukrainian people would be a real triumph for Putin — no matter how much Ukrainian territory he manages to capture.

In order to counteract this well-thought-out cruel scenario, it is necessary to increase pressure on Russia to end the war as soon as possible and implement Trump's scenario for a ceasefire on the Russian-Ukrainian front. Otherwise, Ukraine's demographic and social problems will become irreversible, and we will never return to the state we lived in before the Russian attack.

And this fact must be understood by everyone who thinks about Ukraine's future, about the future of Europe and the future of America as well — because Ukraine's defeat will be a defeat for the entire West and a sad triumph for authoritarianism.