Peace in Ukraine looks further away after Trump’s call with Putin

 https://edition.cnn.com/2025/05/20/politics/trump-putin-russia-ukraine-ceasefire-talks

So much for Donald Trump’s “force of personality” forcing Russian President Vladimir Putin to prove he wants to end the war in Ukraine.

The president’s hyped-up phone call with his Russian counterpart on Monday mostly served to highlight how far away any such breakthrough may be.

And more importantly, looking ahead, it raised new questions about how involved Trump really wants to be and widened transatlantic divisions on ending the war.

“It feels to me that the president maybe didn’t really try to pressure Putin at all. It’s good that they had a two-hour conversation but coming out of that what do we have?” asked Beth Sanner, a former deputy director of national intelligence.

“We have Putin continuing very maximalist demands … an agreement to talk about a framework for talking about a future peace deal and possibly a ceasefire that would come after agreements for many things,” Sanner told CNN’s Boris Sanchez.

“This is a call that I think it’s really hard to see this in any other way than Putin seemed to get exactly what he wanted.”