President Trump inadvertently encourages the Russian Army to launch its summer offensives:
Axios now reports that Putin allegedly told Trump he plans to ‘intensify’ the Russian summer offensive in the next 60 days, with the goal—according to some sources—purportedly being to capture the remainder of nominal Russian territory, i.e. Donetsk, Lugansk, and Zaporozhye oblasts.
If there’s any hint of truth to such reports, then Trump’s “50-day notice” would seem to line up with Putin’s timeline, given that the conversation happened days ago, and thus Putin’s “60-day plan” would fall almost precisely on Trump’s deadline.
The basic interpretation of that could be that Trump is giving Russia two months to capture whatever territory it claims belongs to it, then “the hammer” will come down.
In conclusion: the entire charade appears to be a sneaky but brilliant act of jugglery by Trump, wherein he once again gives the appearance of major ‘action’ against Russia to silence critics and placate neocons, while in actuality doing little to further Ukraine’s war efforts, apart from plugging the previous status quo back onto life support. The act is meant to play both sides, relieving pressure on himself, while not overly risking his relationship with Putin in the hopes he can still clinch his big Nobel-earning armistice.
Color me dubious. Putin isn’t just going for capturing the rest of the four oblasts that were annexed to Russia, they’ve already got troops in at least two additional oblasts and I don’t see any chance that the Russians agree to a ceasefire until they control Odessa.
I think it’s more likely that this will a) extract more money from Europe and b) allow Trump to kick the can down the road again when the 50-day period is up. It also gives saner parties in Ukraine time to get rid of the current Kiev regime in order to be in a position to reach a lasting agreement in two months.