Russia Immediately Dumps Cold Water on Trump’s Ukraine Wins

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said his meeting with Donald Trump Monday may have been their “best” yet—not a particularly high bar—but that doesn’t mean that Russian President Vladimir Putin is ready to play ball.

During CNN’s News Night Monday, Josh Rogin, lead global security analyst for CNN, said that it had certainly been a “much better meeting than the last time.”

“But I think it’d be going too far to say that Putin has agreed to a meeting with Zelenskiy,” Rogin added. “In fact, the Kremlin put out a statement right after this meeting and they said, ‘No, we’ll have meetings at a high level,’ but they didn’t say with Putin and Zelenskiy.”

Trump reportedly called Putin in the middle of his meeting with several European leaders to begin making arrangements for a trilateral summit between himself, Zelenskiy, and Putin. But as Rogin pointed out, Russia hasn’t actually agreed to such a meeting. In a statement, Moscow said only that the leaders had discussed “the idea of raising the level of Russian and Ukrainian representation in the negotiations.”

Rogin continued, “And then they said, ‘Oh, yeah, we’re totally against NATO troops in Ukraine.’ So, the two big deliverables out of this meeting, Russia has already rejected, which kind of gets to the core of the issue, which is President Trump said 50 times today that he believes Putin wants peace. And I don’t know, call me skeptical. I don’t think that’s true. I just don’t buy it.

“And I’m basing that on all the evidence. Everything Putin says. Everything Putin does. Everything we know. And that’s what you see those European leaders doing. They’re testing that. They’re saying to President Trump, ‘If he gives you a ceasefire, he’s gonna stop killing Ukrainians at least for a couple days, then maybe he’s serious. And if he doesn’t, then he’s not serious.”

At the end of the day, the clearest signal that Putin could give that he wants to end the killing is, well, to stop killing. But he hasn’t done that.

Trump already appears to have agreed with Putin’s demands to permanently seize Crimea, and to block Ukraine from its long-awaited NATO membership. Moscow has demanded even more territory from Ukraine, while Zelenskiy has insisted that his country will not cede land to Russia.

Donald Trump believes he’s added yet another peace agreement to his roster.

Speaking with Fox & Friends Tuesday morning about his efforts to negotiate a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia, the president claimed that he had settled seven wars.

“I’ve solved seven wars. We ended seven wars,” Trump said. “I thought this would be one of the easier ones, and this has turned out to be the toughest one.”

“India, Pakistan, these were big ones, also. All big ones. And some going for 31, 32 years. One for 35 years,” he continued. “I got them all done. But this one is the one that is the most difficult, and I thought it would be an easy one. I hope President [Vladimir] Putin is gonna be good, and if he’s not it’s going to be a rough situation. And I hope that President [Volodymyr] Zelenskiy will do what he has to do. He has to show some flexibility also. The thing is a mess.”

Trump has so far claimed responsibility for peace in several international conflicts, including between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Republic of Rwanda, between India and Pakistan, between Serbia and Kosovo, between Egypt and Ethiopia, and for “doing the Abraham Accords.”

But his sudden claim to have ended seven wars is especially remarkable, considering it’s up a digit from Monday, when he boasted on Truth Social that his actions had settled “6 wars in 6 months,” including “a possible Nuclear disaster.”

“I’m only here to stop it, not to prosecute it any further,” Trump said, blaming the Ukraine-Russia war on former President Joe Biden. “It would have NEVER happened if I was president.”

What’s more incredible: Trump posted Monday that his self-fulfilled accomplishments would be done without people who had long-term knowledge or expertise of Russia and Ukraine’s history, referring to such individuals as “STUPID.”

“I know exactly what I’m doing, and I don’t need the advice of people who have been working on all of these conflicts for years, and were never able to do a thing to stop them,” Trump wrote. “They are ‘STUPID’ people, with no common sense, intelligence, or understanding, and they only make the current R/U disaster more difficult to FIX. Despite all of my lightweight and very jealous critics, I’ll get it done—I always do!!!”

President Donald Trump thinks Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has operated with impunity since he invaded Ukraine, is somehow now ready to come to the table.

A hot mic caught Trump suggesting under his breath that Putin was willing to negotiate after the two leaders met in Alaska for a summit.

“I think he wants to make a deal for me. Do you understand?” he said before his press conference with Zelenskiy. “As crazy as it sounds.”

It does sound crazy. Trump and Putin haven’t been able to make a deal for six months, and they certainly didn’t reach one last Friday.

Any “deal” that could come about would be without a ceasefire, something that has been a huge priority for Zelenskiy. It would also involve Ukraine ceding Crimea and promising to never join NATO, which would be more capitulation than agreement.

Putin has been lying outright to Trump, but one face-to-face meeting, likely accompanied by some surface-level flattery, has the president twirling his hair and hoping that Putin thinks fondly of him, all while the Russian president continues his assault on Ukrainian sovereignty.

Before his summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin last week, President Donald Trump made his goal clear: “I won’t be happy if I walk away without some form of a ceasefire,” he told Fox News. The president also warned Putin of “very severe consequences” if one wasn’t reached.

With the summit past and no ceasefire in sight, that objective doesn’t seem so important to Trump anymore.

“I don’t think you need a ceasefire,” he told reporters Monday, sitting beside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. “You know, if you look at the six deals that I settled this year, they were all at war. I didn’t do any ceasefires.”

This is a curious argument. For one, it relies on a dubious talking point about the president having ended “six wars in six months.” It’s also misleading, in part, because it includes temporary ceasefires—which Trump has indeed described, explicitly, as “ceasefires,” confusing them with lasting settlements.

When more European leaders came to the White House Monday, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz pushed back against Trump’s newfound dismissiveness toward a Russia-Ukraine ceasefire.

“I can’t imagine that the next meeting would take place without a ceasefire,” Merz said, adding that peace efforts depend on “at least a ceasefire from the beginning of the serious negotiations, from next step on, so I would like to emphasize this aspect and would like to see a ceasefire [by] the next meeting.”

Trump refused to budge, repeating his earlier argument.

“In the six wars that I’ve settled, I haven’t had a ceasefire. We just got into negotiations,” the president said. “If we can do the ceasefire, great,” he continued, before beginning a sentence that trailed off in quintessential Trump fashion: “And if we don’t do a ceasefire—because many other points were given to us. Many, many points were given to us. Great points.”

President Donald Trump wanted his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska last week to be a grand display of power in an attempt to pressure the Russian autocrat into a ceasefire. 

Instead, for some, it came off as an act of fealty to one of the world’s most detested leaders.  

“Look at what happened on Friday. U.S. military personnel, in uniform, literally were on their hands and knees rolling out a red carpet for the most murderous dictator of the twenty-first century,” Democratic Representative and former Army Ranger Jason Crow told Face the Nation on Sunday. “Somebody who has kidnapped and is holding prisoner tens of thousands of Ukrainian children. Somebody who started this whole war.…  This is a historic embarrassment and defeat for U.S. foreign policy,” he concluded. 

Those on the center-right reacted similarly. 

“I think Trump may have thought that having a B-2 flyover accompanied by F-22s, the aircraft that, of course, were involved in Operation Midnight Hammer against Iran, was somehow suggesting a show of force to Putin,” former ambassador and Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Eric Edelman told The Bulwark’s Bill Kristol. “I don’t think that’s how Putin saw it. I think he saw it as a mark of respect, actually.… What it did was resuscitate him both domestically and internationally as a respected player on the international stage.” 

Russian politicians and media cast a celebratory light on the summit. 

“Putin gave Trump nothing, but still got everything he wanted. Trump finally listened to his demands,” an anonymous Russian foreign policy official told The Guardian.

“Western media are on the verge of completely losing it,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova declared, prior to the summit. “For three years they told everyone Russia was isolated and today they saw a beautiful red carpet laid out for the Russian president in the U.S.” 

The contradictory reactions to Putin’s visit—dismay from liberals and conservatives alike, rejoicing from pro-Putin Russians—only reaffirms that the Russian president has the leverage here, not Trump. 

President Donald Trump openly admitted Monday that he wants to end mail-in voting to keep Democrats out of office.

During a joint press conference with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the U.S. president readily gave up the game on his latest plot to rig the midterm elections.

“We got to stop mail-in voting, and the Republicans have to lead the charge. The Democrats want it because they have horrible policy,” Trump said. “If you [don’t] have mail-in voting, you’re not gonna have many Democrats get elected. That’s bigger than anything having to do with redistricting, believe me.”

Trump pledged that he would sign an executive order ending mail-in voting, falsely claiming that the United States was one of the only countries that still kept the practice. Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, and Switzerland are among the more than 30 countries that allow mail-in voting.

Trump’s newfound “movement” is predicated on claims of widespread voter fraud that are also false. Notably, Trump made no complaints about alleged mail-in voter fraud when he won in 2024, but he had a lot to say about mail-in ballots before and after losing the 2020 presidential election.

While the president does not have the power to strip states of their rights to oversee elections, Trump is clearly hoping to create a pretext for discounting mail-in votes during the upcoming midterm elections.

Trump also referred to his controversial redistricting gambit in Texas, which he hopes will gerrymander the state in Republicans’ favor.

In a brazen show of disdain for the First Amendment, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement posted a video Sunday of eight masked agents tearing down a sign protesting the agency’s presence in Washington, D.C.

The video, which Alex Koma of Washington’s NPR member station posted about on Friday, shows the agents surrounding the banner in the District’s Mount Pleasant neighborhood—which reads “Chinga la migra (‘Fuck ICE’).” Mount Pleasant melts ICE”—before ripping it off a fence.

A masked agent then tells the camera, “We’re taking America back, baby”—a process that apparently entails disregarding D.C. residents’ rights—and, continuing in Spanish, “This is for America. The United States is number one.”

Bizarrely, the video also indicates that the agents, in removing the sign, revealed a dildo that had been perched behind it. The sex toy is blurred in ICE’s video, but it can be clearly seen in photos shared online by Koma, who reported that, according to residents, the gaggle of agents had actually left the dildo at the scene of their free speech violation.

Within hours of the banner’s removal, another sign was reportedly put in its place, which states, “No deportations in Mount Pleasant,” and “No a la migra (‘No to ICE’).” Another sign that was hung up since then reads: “They are fascists. We are artists. We melt ICE.”

ICE captioned its video: “Make D.C. Safe Again!” But it seems like the only thing federal troops accomplished was violating the First Amendment and unveiling a dildo.

MAGA loyalists are seething as President Donald Trump prepares to welcome Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy—and the European leaders he’s brought along for support—to the White House on Monday. 

Trump has had an extremely contentious relationship with Zelenskiy. He’s berated him to his face in front of millions in the Oval Office and has constantly dismissed Russian aggression and Ukrainian requests for more military aid. 

 Zelenskiy and Co.’s visit comes just days after Trump’s Alaska summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, in which the U.S. leader moved even further away from ceasefire talks, much to Putin’s delight. But the EU crew accompanying Zelenskiy has Trump’s base worried that he’ll be “cornered” into making financial concessions to the European Union he’s promised never to make. 

“A big day at the White House. We have never had so many European Leaders here at one time. A great honor for America!!!” Trump wrote Monday in a feeble attempt to frame the meeting positively for his supporters. “Lets see what the results will be??? President DJT.” 

Zelenskiy will be accompanied by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, and Finnish President Alexander Stubb. 

MAGA was not pleased.

“After little Volodymir’s meltdown at the last meeting he is back but this time must be chaperoned by Europe’s regional manager caste,” author Hans Mahncke wrote on X. “The whole spectacle is so pathetic and humiliating.”

“Will Zelensky fck this peace deal up?” MAGA hardliner Gunther Eagleman chimed in. 

Trump also tried Sunday night to assuage his fans’ concerns. “The Fake News will say that it is a big loss for President Trump to host so many great European Leaders at our beautiful White House,” he wrote on Truth Social. “Actually, it is a great honor for America!!! President DJT.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio claimed that the EU wasn’t calling in the cavalry to give Zelenskiy much-needed backup but that they were cordially invited.  

“They’re not coming here to keep Zelenskiy from getting bullied,” he told CBS’s Margaret Brennan on Face the Nation. “They are coming here tomorrow because we’ve been working with the Europeans.… We invited them to come.”

Six of Europe’s most powerful leaders aren’t coming all the way to D.C. with Zelenskiy just to hang out. It’s clear that they see Trump’s recent moves toward Putin as a real threat to Ukrainian sovereignty, and this meeting as a last chance to pull Trump away from Putin’s anti-NATO, anti-EU, and anti-Ukrainian agenda.  

Despite what Donald Trump claims, authoritarianism is scaring away diners in Washington, D.C.

During a joint press conference Monday, Trump attempted to defend seizing the nation’s capital by claiming that doing so had reignited the city’s night life. “The restaurants the last two days are busier than they’ve been in a long time,” Trump said. But that couldn’t be further from the truth.

WUSA9 reported Sunday that restaurants in the nation’s capital saw a more than 25 percent dip in reservations in the days after Trump federalized the city’s police forces. Trump also deployed scores of federal forces and National Guardsmen to the city, giving them license to do “whatever the hell they want”—but apparently, that didn’t include getting a table at Le Diplomate.

Last Monday, when Trump invoked Section 740 of the D.C. Home Rule Act of 1973 to seize control of the Metropolitan Police Department, online reservation service OpenTable recorded a 16 percent decrease in reservations from the previous year. On Tuesday, as the National Guard mobilized, reservations dropped 27 percent, according to OpenTable.

The next day, reservations were down 31 percent, and the trend continued for the rest of the week. The two days Trump claimed had notably high visits, Saturday and Sunday, saw 20 and 22 percent drops, respectively.

Trump has claimed that his takeover is in response to a terrifying rise in crime—which is actually down. But the president’s sweeping law enforcement crackdown has already proven uniquely disruptive to city life.

As much as Republicans would like to make it seem that people are scared of roving criminals, it seems people are much more fearful of militarized law enforcement. The sudden decline in dining out could take a serious bite out of the city’s economy, as the district’s Restaurant Week—a week when restaurants offer discounted menus to entice new potential customers—is set to begin Monday.

This story has been updated.

President Donald Trump entered his summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin hoping to attain a Russia-Ukraine ceasefire—only to promptly drop that goal, instead favoring a Putin-approved “peace agreement” with Ukrainian territorial concessions.

Over the weekend, Secretary of State Marco Rubio took to the airwaves, scrambling to defend the president’s flip-flop—and the disappointing summit more generally—on four Sunday talk shows.

On Fox News’s Sunday Morning Futures, Maria Bartiromo asked Rubio why the summit hadn’t ended with a ceasefire.

“First of all, if you recall,” Rubio said, “we never said there was going to be a deal coming out of the meeting because the Ukrainians were not there.” He also mentioned that talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy are scheduled for Monday.

But prior to the summit, Trump had told Fox anchor Bret Baier, “I won’t be happy if I walk away without some form of a ceasefire.”

ABC News’s Martha Raddatz mentioned those comments on This Week: “The president went into that meeting saying he wanted a ceasefire and there would be consequences if they didn’t agree on a ceasefire in that meeting, and they didn’t agree to a ceasefire,” she observed. “So where are the consequences?”

“That’s not the aim,” Rubio said, to which Raddatz pointed out that Trump had explicitly said, “That’s the aim.” Rubio replied that more progress is necessary before Putin and Zelenskiy hopefully meet to “finalize a peace agreement.”

Kristen Welker of MSNBC’s Meet the Press asked Rubio, “Why not impose more sanctions on [Russia] and force them to agree to a ceasefire instead of accepting that Putin won’t agree to one?” (Trump had threatened to do so if the Alaska summit fell flat.)

Rubio dismissed the idea, leading Welker to ask whether Trump had made “empty threats.” Rubio replied that there are already sanctions on Russia and additional sanctions could derail peace talks.

Welker also asked the secretary of state to name “one thing that President Trump is asking Russia to give up in order to get peace.” He refused, saying the negotiations require utmost secrecy.

On CBS News’s Face the Nation, Margaret Brennan asked Rubio about the president’s ultimately empty rhetoric regarding a ceasefire in the lead-up to his meeting with Putin:

The president told … European leaders last week that he wanted a ceasefire. The president went on television and said he would walk out of the meeting if Putin didn’t agree to one. He said there would be severe consequences if he didn’t agree to one. He said he’d walk out in two minutes. He spent three hours talking to Putin, and he did not get one.

Rubio replied that the “goal here” is to reach a “peace agreement,” rather than “to stage some production for the world and say, ‘Oh how dramatic. [Trump] walked out.’” Enough progress was made, Rubio insisted, to continue moving toward an agreement (though he elided Trump’s newfound embrace of a peace agreement instead of a ceasefire).

You may recall that Trump promised to end the Russia-Ukraine War on day one of his presidency. It’s been 210 days.