Why Trump Is Giving Putin Everything He Wants

For the past year or more, the conventional wisdom was that Vladimir Putin needed a deal on Ukraine. If Putin is weak and desperate, and Trump holds all the cards, why is Putin getting everything he wants and giving up nothing in return? As National Security Adviser Waltz, Special Envoy for Ukraine Keith Kellogg, Thiessen, and even Trump himself understood, Trump had leverage. To get such a deal, Trump would have had to bluff convincingly that he was willing to help Ukraine if Putin balked. For weeks, Trump said that Putin wanted a meeting with him, while Putin’s people said they had received no proposal for talks but were ready to talk if Trump wanted to.