“Trump is the best chance Putin has to bring this fiasco to a close and re-integrate his economy with the Western world.”
Trump hasn’t offered that. And as for trying Trump’s patience too much, there are limits to what we can do. We have done the “nuclear option” sanctions. We are at the limit of attacks we can do inside Russia without getting nuked.
We can try sanctions against anyone who does business with Russia...and then we will have sanctions against Singapore, India, Brazil, Turkey, China, Mexico, etc.
And then there is that sticky problem. Whatever they agree to now is what they will have forever and the president and a future Congress will probably want the neocon thing on again. Last, all of the EU is braying to throw gasoline on the war.
There are some hard realities as to why Putin is not simply obeying.
“We have done the “nuclear option” sanctions.”
No, the “nuclear option” sanctions would be the ones that Trump has just said he might do - secondary sanctions on any buyer of Russian oil (25 or 50% is what he said, as well as mentioning barring them from business with the USA). That would effectively halt Russia’s oil export revenue cold, in a financial train wreck far more sudden and severe, than what brought down the Soviet Union.
China and India have already both already been tested with American (Biden) sanctions on some of the shadow fleet tankers, and both have shown to be unwilling to broach US sanctions on those small subsets of Russian oil exports.
The bottom line is that US trade is much more vital to all the large buyers of Russian oil - as long as adequate essential quantities can be purchased elsewhere. That was not the case in 2022, but is the case in 2025 - with or without OPEC.
Russia’s financial buffers have been exhausted by the adventure in Ukraine, and they are more vulnerable to an oil revenue shock than ever.
Trump card. Who’s the boss?