Expert: Trump 'Flat-Out Wrong' on Putin's War Intentions

President Donald Trump’s public confidence that Vladimir Putin is ready to wind down the war in Ukraine does not match the evidence on the ground, according to an analysis published Thursday by Forbes, which calls the president “flat-out wrong” to think the Russian leader is serious about a settlement. The judgment lines up with a week of developments that show little sign Moscow is moving toward compromise, even as Washington and Brussels pursue sharply different tracks toward the same war.

A credibility gap on Putin’s intentions

The Forbes assessment cuts against the optimistic framing the White House has offered in recent weeks as envoy-level contacts with Moscow continued. That optimism already looked shaky after Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov said peace proposals carried by U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff to Putin lacked concrete substance, as this desk reported in Kremlin Peace Proposals ‘Lack Substance,’ Witkoff Tells Putin. If the Kremlin’s own account of the talks is that there is no real plan on the table, the premise that Putin is close to a deal becomes harder to sustain.

The battlefield has told a similar story. Hours after one round of Russia-U.S. contact, Kyiv was struck by cluster-warhead missiles, a sequence detailed in Kyiv Hit by Cluster-Warhead Missiles Hours After Russia Talks and Russia’s Cluster-Warhead Missiles Hit Kyiv Around Talks. Ukrainian officials have pointed to that timing as evidence Moscow is negotiating and bombing in parallel, not negotiating instead of bombing — the argument at the center of Ukraine Rejects Appeasement as Kyiv Strikes Continue Alongside Putin Talks.

Europe is betting against a near-term deal

The clearest sign that European governments do not expect an imminent settlement is the direction of their own policy. The European Union is preparing a new sanctions package aimed squarely at the revenue base that funds Russia’s war effort, according to Kyiv Independent. The listings target Russia’s oil processing, refining and exporting capacity, spanning 31 entries from St. Petersburg to Sakhalin — a move that came in direct response to a separate Trump administration diesel arrangement with Moscow. A bloc preparing to tighten the economic noose on an adversary’s energy sector is not a bloc that believes a ceasefire is close.

That divergence matters strategically. If the U.S. is pursuing bilateral accommodations on energy trade while the EU escalates sanctions on the same sector, the two allies are sending Moscow contradictory signals about the cost of continuing the war — and contradictory signals are easy for the Kremlin to exploit.

One cooperative data point, on a separate track

Not every U.S.-Russia interaction this week was adversarial. Trump and Putin negotiated the release of Stephen Hubbard, a retired teacher and U.S. Air Force veteran held in Russian custody for more than four years, who was freed Wednesday, Defense News reported. Prisoner exchanges have functioned as a durable, largely transactional channel between Washington and Moscow even during periods of otherwise frozen diplomacy — they are evidence the two governments can still make narrow deals, not evidence that Putin has shifted his position on the war itself.

That distinction is the crux of the Forbes critique: conflating a working channel on prisoner swaps, or a diesel accommodation, with genuine movement toward ending the war risks misreading Moscow’s broader strategy. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said he would accept a ceasefire along current front lines as a starting point, a position covered in Zelensky Open to Freezing Front Lines for Ceasefire — a concession Kyiv has offered publicly while continuing to absorb missile strikes. If Moscow were serious about ending the war on reasonable terms, that offer would be the obvious place to start.

What to watch

The near-term test of the Forbes thesis is straightforward: whether the next round of U.S.-Russia contacts produces a written framework with specifics — territory, security guarantees, sanctions relief triggers — or another round of vague language from Kremlin aides. Until that changes, the EU’s bet, reflected in its expanding sanctions list, is that the war continues. This desk will track the next scheduled contact between Washington and Moscow negotiators.