As we count the fifth year since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the peace talks seem to remain in the same place they've been for the last couple of years. Meanwhile, no one significantly advanced on the battlefield, and hundreds of thousands of people died. 

Last year, US President Donald Trump entered the office promising he would end this conflict in the blink of an eye, at least 53 times. He said Russian President Vladimir Putin is his good friend. Now, it's been more than a year since his inauguration. Throughout this year, he has accused Russia of disrupting the negotiations, accused Volodymyr Zelenskiy of being a dictator who doesn't want peace, and threatened tariffs on Russia or stopping the sending of aid to Ukraine. Then, the US started a new operation in Iran, and many politicians and experts say that Trump lost interest in the war in Ukraine completely. 

However, Robert Horvath, professor of politics at La Trobe University, who studies contemporary Russian politics, says it might be best for Ukraine. 

"Arguably, Russia's done better when Trump has been really interested in Ukraine than when he's not been interested," he says, recalling the infamous White House quarrel between Trump and Zelenskiy in February 2025.  

Since entering the office, Trump has met with Zelenskiy in person at least eight times. Some of the meetings were part of larger diplomatic missions, such as the UN annual conference or the inauguration of Pope Leo, others were exclusively about Ukraine, like the meeting in the White House on the 28th of February.

"Think of it, a modestly successful comedian, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, talked the United States of America into spending $350 Billion, to go into a War that couldn't be won..." Trump posted on Truth Social on February 19, 2025.
 "I love Ukraine, but Zelenskyy has done a terrible job, his Country is shattered, and MILLIONS have unnecessarily died. And so it continues..." 

When Trump won the elections, there was a rise in optimism among Russian elites and among the public. They saw in Trump someone more predictable and logical than Putin, a gendarme who could end this war. Even the advertisement for signing a contract with the military promised getting the money for enlisting and not going to the war, because Trump would end the war before the end of the training. But as the war continued, elites got disappointed, political observer for a Russian media in exile, Meduza, Andrey Pertsev says. 

“It’s starting to come up in conversations, and it’s like, well, he makes promises but doesn’t follow through,” he says. “There’s so much he planned to do but didn’t.”

In total, Trump spoke with Putin on the phone at least 12 times since his inauguration in 2025, and once met with him in Alaska on August 14. He became the main person in the West to pay attention to Putin since French President Macron, who called the Russian president 16 times only in the first two months of the war. At least 52 times, Trump mentioned Putin in his posts on Truth Social in 2025, including reposts. Only 22 times has he mentioned Zelenskiy.  

In August last year and again in February, he promised to organise direct peace talks between Zelenskiy and Putin. Throughout the year, he had many "lengthy", "good", and "well" conversations with the Russian president, according to his posts on Truth Social. Five of the calls he called "productive", and the Alaskan summit was "great and very successful"—none of the talks he described negatively. Shortly after the Summit, he promised to organise a meeting between Zelenskiy and Putin, and then he repeated his promise this February.

The CSIS created graphics showing the number of missiles and drones launched by Russia every day. The graphics show there were two major drops in airstrikes. One in March-April 2025, when Trump talked Putin into a ceasefire on infrastructure, and another in August, when the Alaskan summit took place. Other than that, there are no significant changes in airstrikes that could be connected to the Trump-Putin talks. 

Pertsev says even those considered hawks in Russian politics, like the Kovalchuk brothers, billionaires and close friends of Putin, got tired of the war and don’t see any positive outcome for them. 

This can be noticed in the change of the narrative in the media they control. Newspapers that are brought to Putin started covering economic troubles more. No changes in the actions have been seen, though. And there’s no belief that someone can convince him, at least not from the civil block.

“It’s considered that reality itself can persuade him, maybe,” Pertsev says.  “Difficulties both in war and in economics. Maybe somehow, Putin will get the idea that it’s time to end. But this thought has to be his own. Not to hear that from someone, but understand himself that something is wrong.”

For now, the war interests Putin. He attends meetings with the generals and listens to reports about another small village taken and infantry advancing in a town, street by street. The economy doesn’t seem to interest him now, and ending the war just to please Trump isn’t a good reason.

Former United States ambassador to Ukraine, and now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, Steven Pifer, says Trump could do more to push Putin towards accepting the peace. 

“Trump wants a deal, but he doesn't care about the specifics,” he says. “He just wants a deal to say I've solved another war, the commission or the committee in Oslo should send me my Peace Prize, but he doesn't worry about whether or not it's durable.”

Peace initiatives such as the 28-point, 10-point, and 20-point plans failed and were soon forgotten. The Russian conditions haven’t changed much in recent years. Putin still wants, at least, the whole Donbas region. Common tactics for negotiations are to demand more than you can get, and you’ll get at least what you wanted, but for Russia, Donbas seems to be a non-negotiable condition.

Sometimes, Trump acts as a negotiator for Russia. When Ukraine declined Russia’s proposal for a one-day ceasefire so that Putin could hold a military parade in Moscow this May, Trump came to negotiate with Zelenskiy, and then with Putin, to extend the truce to three days. 

During Joe Biden's administration, the US sent a lot of weapons and provided billions of dollars to Ukraine, but Trump minimised this support. Biden could threaten to stop aid, and Ukraine obeyed, and, for example, didn’t strike deep inside Russian territory. Trump doesn't have such leverage now. 

“Trump talks about who has cards,” says Pifer. “I actually think Trump now has weaker cards than Biden had.”

This year, Putin’s ratings fell for the first time since the invasion, even in official polls, and some experts wrote about feeling the wind of change in Russian domestic politics. But the predictions of the soonish collapse of the Russian military and economy were around for four years and haven’t come true. Pertsev says that even if something is happening, we have no way to know for sure. 

“If Putin loses popularity, let’s say, and he is already losing it,” he says. “How strong will they [elites] hold onto him? This question is hypothetical. Something can be happening, but for now it’s the way it is.”

On May 9th, during the annual Victory Day military parade on Red Square, Putin said that the war will be over soon. Many times before, he said that Russia welcomes peace. But a peace deal requires concessions from both sides, and as Putin demands the rest of Donbas be gifted to him, there are no signs that Russia is ready to make one.