Russian dictator Vladimir Putin is going to a phone conversation with US President Donald Trump, confident that Russia has an advantage and that his forces will be able to break through Ukraine's defenses by the end of the year to gain full control over the four regions he claims for Russia, but Putin's confidence in Russia's prospects on the battlefield differs from Western assessments, Bloomberg reports, writes UNN.
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"Vladimir Putin believes he has a strong hand ahead of a phone call with Donald Trump on Monday, and European leaders are trying to prevent the US president from rushing into a deal," the publication writes.
"Putin is confident that his forces will be able to break through Ukraine's defenses by the end of the year to gain full control over the four regions he claims for Russia," according to a person familiar with the Russian president's thinking, who wished not to be named in private conversations.
This, the publication notes, "means that the Russian president is unlikely to make any significant concessions to Trump when the two leaders talk, and European officials are concerned that Trump may try to push through a settlement anyway."
As the publication notes, there is a growing sense that US efforts to force a ceasefire are culminating, and officials in Europe are unsure whether Trump will increase pressure on Russia or simply move on to the next challenge if they fail. Trump has pledged to brief Zelensky and some of his NATO allies as soon as he finishes talking to his Russian counterpart.
"Despite all the talk of a cessation of hostilities, Putin is ready for a protracted war, if that is what it takes to achieve his goals, and he is optimistic about the prospect of further US sanctions," according to two other people close to the Kremlin, the publication writes.
"Trump wants Putin to agree to a ceasefire, but he absolutely does not want to," said Sergei Markov, a political consultant with close ties to the Kremlin. - But Putin is not interested in disrupting the negotiations. He is trying to maneuver so that these negotiations continue in parallel with the military offensive."
On Friday, during a phone call, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Emmanuel Macron of France and Keir Starmer of Great Britain tried to make it clear to Trump that Putin was leading him by the nose, according to one senior European official. They hope Trump will realize he risks looking like a loser if he imposes a bad deal on Ukraine, the official added. "Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was also on the phone call on Friday, but he looked depressed and exhausted by the events of the week," the official said. Zelenskyy and his European allies believed that Trump had pledged to impose new sanctions on the Kremlin if Putin refused to comply with a ceasefire regime since last Monday, but this did not happen.
"Putin was inspired by his ability to make maximalist demands of Ukraine without facing serious resistance from the Trump administration," said Bota Iliyas, a senior analyst at Prism, a strategic intelligence company in London. - Putin does not trust Trump. But he will push Trump to make a deal with Russia's vision of a ceasefire."
"Putin's confidence in Russia's prospects on the battlefield differs from Western assessments," the publication points out. According to European officials, having suffered huge losses in more than three years of fighting, Russia does not have the capacity to fulfill Putin's goals.
"The probability that Russia will achieve its goals of conquering these four regions by the end of this year is very low," said Ben Barry, a senior fellow in the land warfare division of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. - If Ukrainian defenses collapse, then gaining such an advantage will be very easy, but for now such a scenario looks very unlikely."
This skepticism is also shared by many Russian military personnel fighting in Ukraine, according to a person close to the Ministry of Defense in Moscow. In particular, he said, thanks to Ukrainian drones, conducting large-scale offensive operations is expensive and ineffective for Russia.
Nevertheless, Russian negotiators laid out Putin's tough position in Istanbul on Friday at the first face-to-face talks with Ukrainian officials in three years. "They demanded the withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from the Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, which Russia considers its territory but has never fully controlled," the publication writes.
"The risk for Putin is that he will overplay his hand and prompt Trump to carry out his threat to increase sanctions to end what the US president has called a 'bloodbath' in Ukraine," the publication reads.
According to European officials familiar with the matter, US officials have privately told their European counterparts that Trump is considering allowing a sanctions bill drafted by Republican Senator Lindsey Graham to move forward if Russia does not give in, and he may tell Putin that he cannot prevent it.
"We have repeatedly told the Russians for almost two months that this will happen if no progress is made," US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a Sunday interview with Face the Nation on CBS. - So I think this is only just beginning to bear fruit."
Finnish President Alexander Stubb, who spent the day playing golf with Graham and Trump in March, told a conference in Tallinn that he was "very optimistic" that Graham would introduce his bill next week.
"It depends on how the conversation with Putin and Trump goes on Monday," he said.