Trump admits why he's 'not happy' after long call with Putin to discuss Ukraine peace deal

President Donald Trump said Thursday that no progress was made in ending the war with Ukraine after he conducted another lengthy call with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Trump spoke to reporters at Joint Base Andrews ahead of a trip to Des Moines, Iowa.

We had a call. It was a pretty long call. We talked about a lot of things including Iran and we also talked about, as you know, the war with Ukraine,' Trump said.

Trump was then asked if he made progress with Putin on a peace deal with Ukraine.

Trump also pushed back when a journalist asked why the U.S. paused weapons shipments to Ukraine.

He then said that, 'Biden emptied out our whole country giving them weapons and we have to make sure that we have enough for ourselves.'

The problem now for Trump, and for DC, is that there is no personal charm, no art of the deal, none of the DC sophistry and scams that will get Russia to sign on.
This war is the end result of about 20 years of western insults, provocations, lies, and subterfuge. They have finally run into an actual red line. And Trump in DC don’t know how to act when they bump into someone that actually means literally what they say.

Bottom line, we desperately want this deal to protect our Nazi friends in Ukraine, and for us to be able to quit shipping weapons, and start the rebuilding and that land rush.
And Russia has no interest in that frozen conflict concept DC has been pushing for a year now. They play chess, not checkers. They know the minute there’s a cease-fire, NATO is going to flood in with no-fly zones, advisers, so-called peacekeepers to embed in every Ukrainian position, and then give them some sort of NATO, or NATO light status.

It’s good that they are talking, but DC needs to understand a little reality.

And of course, we won’t do anything that even slightly seems like it could be a victory for Putin. And we won’t let the Nord stream line be repaired, we won’t return all the currency and gold we stole. Hundreds of billions. We won’t drop the sanctions, basically, there’s not much reason for a Russian leader to sign onto this cease-fire concept.
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Exactly. The West blew up the Nordstream, destroying EU manufacturing. Their problem.

The sovereign wealth fund that we stole has accelerated the USD decline ( down to 96/97, 10 percent in a few months). Countries are dumping US debt instruments, our BIG problem.

The Sanctions increased global commodities huge increases. The world’s problem.

Why is the West committing suicide?

Here are things I do not see:

1) I see no indication that Russia is afraid of US arms.

2) I see no indication that Trump would try an Iran style strike on Russian production. His advisors are surely talking about the risk and disaster that a shot down B-2 would be — with debris headed for labs ASAP.

3) I see no justification for the default presumption of US superiority. The US has zero operational hypersonics. The Russians have several or many, in fact so many they shared with China. Additionally, our media managed to shield us from the utter humiliation at time of Space Shuttle retirement of embarking on 10 full years during which the only access a US astronaut could get to the ISS was via a Russian Soyuz. 10 years! And no one displayed the humiliation that they should have.

4) I see no indication of the eradication of Russia oil and gas — which in the final analysis is all that matters. Russian oil output is fully aligned with OPEC+ specificiations. That Zeihan wacko that said their pipes would freeze and clog from disuse should also have been humiliated. And as of the latest update of the bible of global energy, Russian gas output 2024 was 7% above 2023.

1) Russia certainly may talk like they think they’re better than these US, but none of their bragging has ever produced a significantly superior product. Russia knows US equipment is generally more than capable than published, whereas Russian stuff generally underperformed its specs. And they’re definitely not happy with the complete failures of Russian air defense systems in the middle east. While that certainly can’t be blamed entirely on equipment, it sure doesn’t make them feel good about the gear.

2) Certainly not likely, unless Russia decides to go hot directly with us. Losing a B2 would not be good, but it would be very unlikely, and if it happened, you bet there’d be saturation strikes on the wreckage well before Russia could nab it. And even having wreckage is only so useful. Reverse engineering is difficult, and the biggest factor is why China has no domestic engines - you can’t reverse engineer complex manufacturing techniques required for this kind of stuff.

3) Huh? Every ballistic missile we, they, and everyone else owns is a hypersonic vehicle. If you mean direct-flight, yea, we don’t currently, but those are much more expensive and limited in range. Hypersonics are not the auto-win everyone seems to think they are. They aren’t that much harder to shoot down. They are only really good on mostly-fixed targets, as anything moving (like a carrier) is near-impossible to hit. You need immediate location, constant location updates, and to send that data to a vehicle that’s extremely difficult to communicate with, and almost entirely unable to use any sensors of its own, and is nowhere near as maneuverable as a slower alternative.

Speaking of carriers, how many does Russia have? Right, one. That burns coal, uses a ski-jump (severely limiting fuel/ordnance capability), and sinks in drydock. These US has how many? Nuclear-powered, steam/magnetic catapult, and carriers way more more-capable combat and support aircraft?

Speaking of support aircraft, any idea how US and Russian EWACS compare? Does Russia even have any left? Aerial refueling capability? Transport/logistics capability? If we went hot, they couldn’t do anything besides fight on their tury and maybe 50 miles past their border. All they have offensively is ballistics and a couple submarines.

Speaking of submarines, do you really think we don’t know where all of theirs are? That we don’t have an attack sub within immediate torpedo range, likely ready to rock as soon as they hear the Russians start launch procedures?

The only area Russia truly excels over these US is their icecutter fleet. Although looks like we’re finally going to start evening that out if Trump can get those billions going into this.

Space Shuttle retirement wasn’t an embarrassment, besides, yes, the complete lack of Bush’s planning for post-retirement that Obama didn’t do anything to fix. The Shuttle was a stupidly expensive boondoggle, but it was actually successful, as opposed to Russia’s copycat. They inherited the Buran and did nothing but let it rot. The Soyuz works, but it’s nothing to really be proud of technologically. And now who’s the number one space launch company? It’s not Soyuz, it’s an American company.

4) I don’t disagree with you here, but Russia is still hurting some, just not as bad as everyone thought they would. Having limited customers and selling at a discount is way less $$ made than they could be making.

You put some time and thought into that, which is not common on FR.

Various issues —

It is common to point at aircraft carrier numbers and air to air refueling and often, also, transport aircraft. There is a compelling difference to understand — Russia does not make an issue of far flung military bases it has to supply or defend around the world. Nor need it defend oil supply lines across oceans.

Until very recently the US was depending on oil imports, often by sea from KSA and UAE. The shale production has eroded that (though in “All liquids” we are still not self sufficient) to zero, but shale output is projected to peak and decline late this year. There will be no undoing that. All the shale sources are now known domestically, and Alaska, if anything, will produce gas, not oil.

The point being all those force projection considerations for the US military exist because of desperation in previous years (that likely will now return). Russia doesn’t have a lot of carriers because it does not need them.

As for hypersonics, the issue is ionized gas. Plasma. It is absorbtive, non-reflective of about 1.0 - 6 GHz, which is radar. You can track ICBMs when they are near apogee (no air for their velocity to ionize) but on descent they will disappear because their sheer velocity smashes electrons off of atoms.

This is why that blackout period exists for re-entering manned space vehicles. Plasma forms during descent and radio is absorbed. When velocity declines and parachutes deploy, no more plasma.

Point being, you have only seconds to see the target and get an intercept there.

SLBMs . . . practice. These are top quality crews. They drill continuously. The sounds they make preparing to launch . . . they make weekly. As do our own. You can be on top of the enemy sub and hear this, and you cannot immediately attack because they are merely drilling. If you kill subs that are practicing, they will do the same to ours. The final step of launching is less than a minute to get all 20+ missiles away. No torpedo can get there in that time.

And lastly, strategically, have a look at a map. Measure distance from, say, 30 miles offshore Maryland to the Pentagon. Then measure distance from near shore Baltic or Gulf of Finland to Moscow.

Who has more warning?

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